Yet in spite of such strictures, the contents of The Dial are now immensely significant of the social agitation then going on in New England; and much of its matter has become a part of our permanent literature.
The New World, a large weekly established in New York by Park Benjamin (1840–1845), reprinted much from the English magazines, but included also contributions from Epes and John Osborne Sargent, James Aldrich, Herbert, Charles Lanman, Edward S. Gould, Charles Eames (editor for a time), and John Jay. George P. Putnam, the publisher, was for some years its London correspondent.
It was in Peterson’s Ladies’ National Magazine (a fashion journal begun in Philadelphia in 1841) that Frances Hodgson Burnett published her first story, “Ethel’s Sir Lancelot” (November, 1868). The magazine, long popular among readers of light literature, was a few years since merged with The Argosy.
The Union Magazine (New York, 1847–1848), edited by Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland, was bought by John Sartain, the engraver, and William Sloanaker, who had withdrawn from the managership of Graham’s, and reappeared in Philadelphia (1849–1852) as Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art, attaining great popularity. It published works by Longfellow (“The Blind Girl of Castel Cuillé,” “Resignation”), Boker, Mrs. Sigourney, Lucy Larcom, Henry T. Tuckerman, Poe (“The Bells”), Park Benjamin, R. H. Stoddard, and Charles G. Leland.
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (New York), established by the Messrs. Harper in June, 1850, has long enjoyed a deservedly large circulation. For a considerable time it contained chiefly articles, especially fiction, reprinted from English periodicals. In later years it has included much more from American writers, and its contents have in general been of a high order of merit. Its records of travel and of scientific progress have been valuable. For many years the “Easy Chair,” conducted by George William Curtis, and later by William D. Howells, has been an interesting feature. In Harper’s first appeared Howells’ “Annie Kilburn” and “Their Silver Wedding Journey,” Warner’s “Studies of the Great West” and “A Little Journey in the World,” Constance F. Woolson’s “Jupiter Lights,” “East Angels,” and “Anne,” Poulteney Bigelow’s “White Man’s Africa,” Stockton’s “Bicycle of Cathay” and “The Great Stone of Sardis,” John Fox, Jr.’s “Kentuckians,” Stephen Crane’s “Whilomville Stories,” Mark Twain’s “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,” Woodrow Wilson’s “Colonies and Nation,” Mary E. Wilkins’ “Portion of Labor,” Mary Johnston’s “Sir Mortimer,” and Margaret Deland’s “Awakening of Helena Richie.” The International Magazine, founded by Rufus W. Griswold in New York in 1850, was two years later merged with Harper’s.
Putnam’s Monthly Magazine began publication in New York in 1853. Its earlier editors were Charles F. Briggs (whose pen name was “Harry Franco”), Parke Godwin, George W. Curtis, and George P. Putnam. Among the more important of the early contributions may be mentioned “Shakespeare’s Scholar” by Richard Grant White, “Early Years in Europe” by George H. Calvert, “The Potiphar Papers” and “Prue and I” by George W. Curtis, a series of political essays by Parke Godwin, “Fireside Travels” and “A Moosehead Journal” by James Russell Lowell, the “Sparrowgrass Papers” by Frederick S. Cozzens, “Cape Cod” by Henry W. Thoreau, “Wensley” by Edmund Quincy, and “Israel Potter” by Herman Melville. Putnam’s was one of the first of American magazines which restricted its pages to original contributions, and which gave special attention to the encouragement of the work of American writers. Published till 1857 and from 1868 till 1870, it was revived in 1906 as Putnam’s Monthly, under the editorial direction of Joseph B. Gilder and George H. Putnam. Putnam’s is still to be described as a literary magazine, although space is given also to illustrated articles on popular topics. Putnam’s arranges with certain of the English magazines, such as The Cornhill Magazine and The Fortnightly Review, to share contributors, English as well as American. The essays of Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (Thackeray’s daughter) and of Mr. Arthur C. Benson, for instance, have, under such an arrangement, been published simultaneously in The Cornhill and in Putnam’s.
The year 1857 is memorable for the founding of The Atlantic Monthly by the publishing firm of Phillips & Sampson of Boston. James Russell Lowell became the first editor, accepting the post on condition that Dr. Holmes, who suggested the name, should be engaged as the first contributor. Among those who wrote for the first number were Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Motley, Holmes (who began “The Autocrat”), Whittier, Charles Eliot Norton, J. T. Trowbridge, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Parke Godwin. Most of these were already well known authors. The list of contributors to The Atlantic during the half-century of its life includes all of the most illustrious of American writers—not only of New England, but of all parts of the country. In religious thought its attitude has been reverent but liberal. The achievements of science have been set forth by men like Agassiz, Percival Lowell, Simon Newcomb, John Trowbridge, George F. Wright, and George H. Darwin. The new political and economic questions have been discussed by such men as President Roosevelt, former President Cleveland, Richard Olney, Woodrow Wilson, Carl Schurz, John W. Foster, Henry Loomis Nelson, Edward M. Shepard, Benjamin Kidd, John Jay Chapman, and Thomas Nelson Page. The fiction of The Atlantic has been produced mainly by American writers—Hawthorne (“Septimius Felton”), Henry James, Jr. (“Roderick Hudson,” “The Portrait of a Lady”), Aldrich (“The Stillwater Tragedy,” “Prudence Palfrey”), Bret Harte, Howells (“Their Wedding Journey,” “A Chance Acquaintance,” “The Lady of the Aroostook”), Mark Twain, Marion Crawford (“A Roman Singer,” “Paul Patoff,” “Don Orsino”), Stockton (“The House of Martha”), S. Weir Mitchell (“In War Time”), Hopkinson Smith (“Caleb West”), Cable (“Bylow Hill”), Paul Leicester Ford (“The Story of an Untold Love”), Mary Johnston (“To Have and to Hold,” “Audrey”), Sarah Orne Jewett (“The Tory Lover”), Margaret Deland (“Sidney,” “Philip and His Wife”), Kate Douglas Wiggin (“Penelope’s Progress”), and many others. An equally brilliant list might be made of the essayists whose best work has made its initial appearance in the form of Atlantic articles. The editors have been Lowell (1857–1861), James T. Fields, of the firm of Ticknor & Fields, then the publishers (1861–1871), William Dean Howells (1871–1880), Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1880–1890), Horace E. Scudder (1890–1897), Walter H. Page (1897–1899), and Bliss Perry—an illustrious roll. The Atlantic has never changed its original purpose.
It is still [to quote a recent writer] an American magazine for American readers.... It holds that the most important service which an American magazine can perform is the interpretation of this country to itself, by the promotion of sympathy between the different sections of our varied population, the frank examination of our national characteristics, the study of our perplexing problems, the encouragement of our art and literature, and the reinforcement of those moral and religious beliefs upon which depends the success of our experiment in self-government.
These ideals largely explain the success and permanence of The Atlantic. The Galaxy, founded in New York in 1866, after furnishing for several years an entertaining literary and scientific miscellany, was in 1878 incorporated with The Atlantic.
Lippincott’s Magazine, established in Philadelphia in 1868, continues to devote its chief energies to fiction, though it has also published some notable poetry. Here appeared Lanier’s “Corn,” Edward Kearsley’s “CampFire Lyrics,” and some of the verse of Emma Lazarus, Maurice Thompson, Paul H. Hayne, Celia Thaxter, and Philip Bourke Marston.