American Magazine

“ 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. ”

“ I AM delighted to learn of the creation of a magazine in which the American soul will become fully aware of its own individuality. I believe in the lofty destinies of America, and the events of the hour render the realisation of that destiny urgently necessary. In the Old World, civilisation is imperilled. ”

“ THE ADVERTISING ECSTASY Such was the fate of a magazine which rebelled. As for those which submitted, the answer is writ large on our newsstands. “McClure’s,” “Collier’s,” “Everybody’s,” the “American” have survived, as a woman without virtue, as a man without honor, of whom his friends say that he would better have died. The masters of finance have taken not merely the conscience from them, they have taken the life from them. If there was a man on the editorial staff with red blood in his veins, they turned him out to become a Socialist soap-boxer, and in his place they put a pithed frog. ”

“ It is in the field of polite literature that our later taste refuses to discover anything in common with the readers of the "American Magazine." What impresses one most in such a periodical is the value which the conductors set upon American historical material. ”

“ Half of them are written in the same style, the American Magazine or, let us say, Saturday Evening Post style, and might have been written by the same brisk, ingenious hand.”
“The circumstances under which the book is spun out at the public over the heads of the rejecting editors are an indictment of the magazine editors of the whole country. ... And it is a mighty good thing that somebody has had the spirit and the confidence in the American public to make such a test of its intelligence. ... Some of the thirteen stories reach a much higher level of literary quality than do others. ”

“ I know no more pitiful story in the history of our Journalism than that of the “American Magazine.” It was founded because Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker and Finley Peter Dunne found they were no longer permitted to tell the truth in “McClure’s.” They purchased the “American,” assuming a debt of four hundred thousand dollars. Soon afterwards one of the assistant editors told me that they were having trouble in meeting their interest payments; and then came a crisis, plainly revealed in their columns. ”

“ We have received most abundant and cordial promises of assistance and support in our effort to maintain a thoroughly spirited, 'wide-awake,' and vigorous American magazine, from the very first in the land, and therefore go on our way rejoicing. We enter into no rivalry, for we take a well-nigh untrodden field, and shall fail in our dearest hope unless we present the public with a monthly of a thoroughly original and 'go-ahead' character. ”

“ THE FAMILY MAGAZINE Readers who like magazines will be pleased, those who do not like them perhaps distressed, to learn, if they are not already aware of it, that the magazine as we know it to-day is distinctly an American creation. They may stir, or soothe, their aroused emotions by considering that the magazine which began in England literally as a storehouse of miscellanies attained in mid- nineteenth century United States a dignity, a harmony, and a format which gave it preeminence among periodicals. ”

“ It is a fact acknowledged by the English press that American magazines, by enterprise, able editorship, and liberal expenditure for the finest of current art and literature, have won a rank far in advance of European magazines. ”

“ Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempt to gain these rights and realize these ideals. The magazine will be the organ of no clique or party and will avoid personal rancor of all sorts. In the absence of proof to the contrary it will assume honesty of purpose on the part of all men, North and South, white and black. ”

“ The modern American magazines have now fallen heir to the power exerted formerly by pulpit, lyceum, parliamentary debates, and daily newspapers in the moulding of public opinion, the development of new issues, and dissemination of information bearing on current questions. ”

“ Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, that are as yet innocent of books, but have nevertheless contributed largely and well to the growing stock of American literature. How many more who are bringing themselves into notice by their monthly efforts in the pages of some popular magazine. In fact, the magazine is the true channel into which talent should direct itself for the acquisition of literary fame. ”

“ Another poet who has enriched the magazines this year, after a period of silence, is Mr. Edwin Arlington Robinson, and in “The Field of Glory” we are under the spell once more of that characteristic magic with which he is endowed alone among American poets.
As in former years, in my annual summary in the Boston Transcript, I have examined the contents of the leading American monthly magazines.viii I originally started, nine years ago, when the first summary appeared, with these six: The Atlantic, Harper’s, Scribner’s, Century, Lippincott’s, and McClure’s. ”

“ A dozen years later The New England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure announced its motto, “Alluring Profit with Delight we blend,” but it confined itself to hackneyed essays on old models. In the same year, however, at Philadelphia, a magazine of decided originality and of genuine importance in colonial literature was coming out month by month with the first provost of the new college as its editor and guiding spirit. ”

“ The excellence, in point of illustration, of American magazines is justly a matter of national pride — one of the shining exceptions to which we refer the carping foreigner; and it is well to learn something of leading personality and methods of the illustrators. Touching the illustration of books and magazines in general, the author observes that it “may be said to have been born in our time, so far as variety and abundance are the signs of it ”

“ And the general trend of the volume is scarcely a matter for enthusiasm. A fair conclusion must be that magazine editors were frequently hard pressed for copy. As a faithful and stupidly patriotic American, one should ponder long over certain attempts to found new “American” verse-forms ”

“ I am not sure that the Americans have not brought the short story nearer perfection in the all-round sense that almost any other people, and for reasons very simple and near at hand. It might be argued from the national hurry and impatience that it was a literary form peculiarly adapted to the American temperament, but I suspect that its extraordinary development among us is owing much more to more tangible facts. The success of American magazines, which is nothing less than prodigious, is only commensurate with their excellence. ”

“ The illustrated magazines of the United States are indeed a fact of profound significance, for which the Englishman when he measures the taste and intellectuality of the American people by its press makes no allowance. Magazines of the same excellence cannot find the same support in England. ”

“ The illustrations in the magazines, wondrous vignettes of old street vistas, old architectural treasures, gateways and ramparts, odds and ends, nooks and corners, crowned with the sweetness of slow decay, conveyed the sense of these delights and renewed at frequent intervals their appeal. But oh, as I was to observe, the school of “black and white” trained up by the magazines has much, in the American air, to answer for: it points so vividly the homely moral that when you haven’t what you like you must perforce like, and above all misrepresent, what you have. ”

“ It is what we are for in this country to prove to a world that this thing can be done, and that we are doing it, to have some place like a great national magazine where three million people can show they are doing it. ”

“ It tells exactly what our parents, teachers, editors, doctors, pastors, evangelists, Sunday school workers, social, civic and moral reformers, and our young men and young women ought to know,—tells it in a pure, chaste way. It is a magazine that ought to be in every home, in every library, and in every office. ”

“ In the parlance of the street, the modern newspaper is “giving ’em what they want”; and while the preference is a sad reflection on public taste, its gratification is an equally sad reflection on the quality and standing of American journalism. ”

“ We appreciate this, and shall do our best to carry it to the satisfaction of our readers, and though this, our first number, is but a modest attempt at some of the things at which we aim — to establish a magazine that will be a fit representative of the young and virile West, a magazine of literature, art, education and progress, a record of our unique history and traditions — we believe that it will be received with encouragement and commendation. ”

“ To define the attitude of the press is in modern times to define the attitude of the State. From our point of view this is frigid. In America, there are no means of gauging a novelist's position, for American classification rests upon celebrity and fortune. Ours rests upon breeding and reliability. America is more adventurous ”

“ In the magazine the patchwork of daily journalism is assembled into more meaningful designs. Local news is sifted of its provincialism to become matter of national concern. Topics which you rapidly skimmed in the afternoon newspaper three or four weeks ago are re-discussed in the weekly or monthly magazines in a way which often makes you feel that here, for the first time, they become of personal import. ”

“ We thank our editorial brethren throughout the country for the favorable manner in which they continue to notice our Magazine. They do us but justice when they say that all our efforts will be put in exercise to keep our Magazine in the enviable position we have so long occupied. Always in advance of every contemporary, we shall show in the new volume upon which we are entering, what enterprise, zeal and energy can accomplish in the elevation of the standard of literature and the arts. ”

“ What’s being Speaker of the House to having the fat knave and the lean sneak virtually tell the world, in a magazine bearing your name, that you are wealthy and therefore could afford to work for them for nothing? ”

“ They manage, or, at any rate, they are beginning to manage these things better in America. That America is the country of the [138] future is open to less doubt as a prophecy when the critic has made acquaintance with the new and renewed magazines now appearing in that country. A tone of provinciality still dominates a considerable part of the American literary Press, but it is obvious that tremendous efforts are being made to recover or, let us say, to discover centrality. ”

“ As a small boy I had Our Young Folks, which I then firmly believed to be the very best magazine in the world—a belief, I may add, which I have kept to this day unchanged, for I seriously doubt if any magazine for old or young has ever surpassed it. ”

“ The popular magazines have steadily improved and have been important agencies in making the American people the best educated and most wideawake in the world. There has also been a great increase in the number of books produced and in the cheapness with which classic literature can be secured. ”

“ It enters on an unpretentious scale, to be sure, for we prefer to "creep before we walk." But why not a magazine for our organization? Every other organization of any importance has some form of periodical of special interest to members. ”

“ But clever young men in various parts of the country who may desire to join the society, may make application to the Editor of Eraser's Magazine, enclosing testimonials of moral and intellectual character. Applications will be received until the First of April, 1861.
I wonder whether any real impression is produced by those puffing paragraphs which appear in country newspapers about some men, and which are written either by the men themselves or by their near relatives and friends. I think no impression is ever produced upon intelligent people, and no permanent impression upon any one. ”

“ The magazines give only a small place to the news of the day, a larger place to articles in which scholars and men of public life discuss significant problems. Much American history in the last two decades was deeply influenced by the columns of the illustrated magazines. ”

“ There was a huge suspicion that the leaders of the so-called Democratic Party in 1904 betrayed the people into the hands of Wall Street, and your editorials have certainly confirmed this suspicion. Indeed the “magazine with a purpose back of it” is having a mighty influence with every honest and fair-minded man. The literary features of your Magazine are excellent. The “Educational Department” alone is worth more than the subscription price. In fact your Magazine has no peer for the price in America. ”

“ Erard continued, sipping at his tea. “Don’t believe the journalists of life. Really we Americans have done nothing but journalism in the arts. Certainly many of the ‘smart’ things in the salons this season, every season, are signed with American names.” ”