Scribner’s Monthly, 1870–1881. A New York monthly.
Founded by Roswell Smith, manager, and J. G. Holland, editor, and published as Scribner’s, but not like Harper’s as a publishing-house magazine. The design from the first was to deal with matters of social and religious opinion from the liberal viewpoint. At the outset it absorbed Hours at Home and Putnam’s and in 1873 Edward Everett Hale’s Old and New. It was the first to undertake a series on the new South and to encourage Southern contributors, including Lanier, Thomas Nelson Page, George W. Cable, and Joel Chandler Harris. Most notable among its series were portions of Grant’s Memoirs and Hay and Nicolay’s “Life of Lincoln,” George Kennan’s Siberian papers, and Hay’s anonymous novel “The Breadwinners.” Scribner’s Monthly was a pioneer in the use of illustrations made by the new mechanical methods of reproduction. The magazine never printed or sold less than 40,000 copies, and when in 1881 it changed ownership and became the Century it had a circulation of 125,000. (See Tassin’s “The Magazine in America,” pp. 287–301.)
Southern Literary Messenger, 1834–1865. A Richmond monthly.
Founded at Richmond, Virginia, in August, 1834, by Thomas W. White, as a semimonthly, but changed to a monthly almost at once. Poe contributed to the seventh number and from then on in each number till he became assistant editor from July, 1835, to January, 1837. During this period the circulation increased from 700 to 5000. Well established by this time, it continued as the most substantial and longest lived of the Southern magazines. A vehicle for literature between the too heavy and the frivolous, and an honest review. Poe’s contributions outrank those of any other writer, but the list of contributors includes N. P. Willis, C. F. Hoffman, R. W. Griswold, J. G. Holland, R. H. Stoddard, W. M. Thackeray, Charles Dickens, G. P. R. James, John Randolph, R. H. Bird, Philip P. Cooke, J. W. Legare, P. H. Hayne, Henry Timrod, John P. Kennedy, and Sidney Lanier. (See “The Southern Literary Messenger,” by B. B. Minor.)
Southern Magazine, The, 1871–1875. A Baltimore monthly.
The most distinguished of the several short-lived Southern magazines established in the Civil War reconstruction period. It was a continuation of the New Eclectic, but included, in addition to the English reprints, original work by many Southern authors. These were, among others, Margaret Preston, Malcolm Johnson, Sidney Lanier, Paul Hamilton Hayne, and Professors Gildersleeve and Price. It could pay nothing for manuscript, however, and the new interest in Southern writing awakened by Scribner’s in 1873, and responded to by Harper’s, the Atlantic, Lippincott’s, the Independent, and others, furnished support as well as stimulation to its best contributors and hastened its death at the end of five years.
Western Messenger, The (Cincinnati), 1835–1841.
Begun by Reverend Ephraim Peabody. Published by Western Unitarian Society aided by American Unitarian Association. Purposed to make it a vehicle for clear, rational discussion of important and interesting topics. Discussed reform movements, religious questions and creeds, and encouraged expression of all cultural ideas,—literary articles, poetry, book reviews, etc. Contributors: Mann Butler, W. D. Gallagher, James H. Perkins, R. W. Emerson, J. S. Dwight, Elizabeth P. Peabody, Jones Very, James Freeman Clarke, Dr. Lyman Beecher, Professor Calvin E. Stowe, Margaret Fuller, C. P. Cranch. Sought to make it Western in spirit with many Western contributors and articles on history of the West. 1836–1839 in Louisville, under J. F. Clarke, then back to Cincinnati, under William H. Channing, till April, 1841.
Western Monthly Magazine, The (Cincinnati), 1833–1836.
Edited for two and one-half years by James Hall and for six months by Joseph R. Foy. Thirty-seven contributors, of whom six were women and only three from east of the Alleghenies. Harriet Beecher won “the prize tale” in April, 1834, and contributed another story in July. The contents made up largely of expository articles on art, history, biology, travel, education, economics, and modern sociology. The book notices were independent and discriminating.