A periodical “Conducted by Pastors of Congregational Churches”; Leonard Bacon, the first editor; Reverend George B. Cheever and Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, contributing editors. Its purpose was to be a progressive religious journal, particularly for Congregationalists, who protested against conservatism in theology and proslavery politics. Eventually it became an open forum for the liberally minded of all sects, being carefully nonpartisan in politics. From 1870 to 1890 it printed good verse, notably poems by Joaquin Miller and Sidney Lanier. The religious and political viewpoints broadened out from 1873. By 1898 an evident attempt was made to popularize the magazine. Since 1914 it has absorbed the Chautauquan, the Countryside, and Harper’s Weekly.
Knickerbocker Magazine, The, 1833–1865. A New York monthly.
The first editor was Charles Fenno Hoffman. From 1839 to 1841 Irving wrote monthly articles for a salary of $2000. Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, Halleck, and most of the secondary writers contributed. The second editor, from 1841 to 1861, was Lewis Gaylord Clark. In its later years the magazine declined, chiefly because it was carrying the tradition of polite and aimless literature into Civil-War times. During its period it stood in the North for the same interests that its contemporary, the Southern Literary Messenger, did in the South (see “The Knickerbocker Gallery,” 1855, and Harper’s Magazine, Vol. XLVIII, p. 587).
Liberator, The, 1831–1865. A Boston weekly.
The most famous and effective abolition journal, founded and edited throughout by William Lloyd Garrison. It was proscribed in the South and denounced in the North. Wendell Phillips and Henry Ward Beecher praised it, but Mrs. Stowe criticized and Horace Greeley misrepresented it. The financial straits it passed through were augmented by the rivalry of other abolition papers. After the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s second Inaugural, announcement of discontinuance was made. The last issue appeared December 29, 1865.
Lippincott’s Magazine, 1868–1916. A Philadelphia monthly.
One of three magazines founded near 1870—the others Scribner’s Monthly and the Galaxy—that made an active market for American writers. Lippincott’s, “a magazine of literature, science, and education,” made an unpretentious start and throughout its career published little prose of distinction. Its poetry, however, was excellent. Bayard Taylor and Paul Hamilton Hayne appeared in the first and following numbers. Margaret Preston, Emma Lazarus, Thomas B. Read, George H. Boker, Thomas Dunn English, and Christopher P. Cranch contributed frequently. Whitman, rare in the magazines, wrote in prose, and, most important of all, Lanier found here a channel for much of his verse from 1875 on. In later years a feature of many issues was a complete short novel. In 1916 Lippincott’s was absorbed by Scribner’s Magazine.
Littell’s Living Age, 1844——. A Boston monthly.
This is the longest-lived of the eclectic, or “scissors and paste-pot,” magazines. It has been made up of reprints from foreign periodicals, sometimes quoting from English apparent sources articles which had been borrowed there from original American publications. In 1874 it absorbed Every Saturday (see p. 491) and in 1898 the Eclectic Magazine. It still survives.