Magazine (periodical)

“ It is a well-known fact among successful magazine editors that their most striking successes have been made by material to which unknown names were attached, where the material was fresh, the approach new, the note different. That is what builds up a magazine; the reader learns to have confidence in what he finds in the periodical, whether it bears a famous name or not. ”

“ In analyzing a newspaper or magazine in order to determine the type of reader to which it appeals, the writer should consider the character of the subjects in its recent issues, and the point of view from which these subjects are presented. Every successful periodical has a distinct individuality, which may be regarded as an expression of the editor's idea of what his readers expect of his publication. To become a successful contributor to a periodical, a writer must catch the spirit that pervades its fiction and its editorials, as well as its special articles. ”

“ At times such journals as the Knickerbocker and Graham's, and even others less successful, boasted lists of contributors quite as distinguished as those which most later magazines have been able to show. It is true that in the last sixty years there has been great development in the arts of magazine editorship and of magazine authorship—the writing of articles especially adapted for publication in a periodical. ”

“ The best basis of differentiation among magazines, then, is not the extent of circulation but the class of readers appealed to, regardless of the part of the country in which the readers live. The popular general magazine, monthly or weekly, aims to attract readers of all classes in all parts of the United States.
How Magazines Get Material. Magazine articles come from (1) regular members of the magazine's staff, (2) professional or amateur free-lance writers, (3) specialists who write as an avocation, and (4) readers of the periodical who send in material based on their own experience. ”

“ We are about to exhibit to our countrymen a new monthly collection, to which the well-deserved popularity of the first undertaking of this kind, has now made it almost necessary to prefix the name of Magazine. There are, already, many such periodical compilations, of which we do not envy the reception, nor shall dispute the excellence. If the nature of things would allow us to indulge our wishes, we should desire to advance our own interest, without lessening that of any other ”

“ Care has been taken that the Magazine should never become the organ of any local clique in literature, or of any sectional party in politics.
At no period since the commencement of the Magazine have its literary and artistic resources been more ample and varied; and the Publishers refer to the contents of the Periodical for the past as the best guarantee for its future claims upon the patronage of the American public.
TERMS.—One Copy for One Year, $3 00; Two Copies for One Year, $5 00; Three or more Copies for One Year (each) , $2 00; “Harper’s Magazine” and “Harper’s Weekly,” One Year, $4 00. ”

“ It must be clearly understood that first magazine publication is not here referred to. The only periodical issue of a book that can rank with book issue is that in parts, according to which the text of a novel made its appearance in monthly or weekly sections, separately wrappered, under its own title and unaccompanied by any extraneous matter save advertisements. ”

“ One monthly magazine, for instance, has a department of personality sketches which range from 800 to 1200 words in length, while the other articles in this periodical contain from 2000 to 4000 words.
The practice of printing a column or two of reading matter on most of the advertising pages influences the length of articles in many magazines. To obtain an attractive make-up, the editors allow only a page or two of each special article, short story, or serial to appear in the first part of the magazine, relegating the remainder to the advertising pages. ”

“ The Publishers of the New Monthly Magazine intend to remedy this evil, and to place every thing of the Periodical Literature of the day, which has permanent value and commanding interest, in the hands of all who have the slightest desire to become acquainted with it. ”

“ It is not, of course, that American journalism, whether of the daily or monthly sort, has consciously set itself to supplant the habit of book-reading. A thousand social and economic factors enter into such a problem. But 264 few observers will question the assertion that the influence of the American magazine, ever since its great period of national literary service in the eighties and nineties, has been more marked in the field of conduct and of artistic taste than in the stimulation of a critical literary judgment. ”

“ The modern magazine is a distinctly new product. When the slow, thick stream of book-making first began to spread and filter out through the new channels of periodic publication, a magazine was a serious literary production. ”

“ Considering the number of periodicals at present published in Great Britain, the extent of their aggregate circulation, and the range and variety of topics discussed in their pages, their effect on the public mind of that country for good or evil can scarcely be overestimated. A magazine holds a middle place between the legitimate literature of books and the ephemeral and generally ill-digested effusions of newspapers, and appeals, especially to the middle classes, as it were, in science, taste, and art. ”

“ If I insist a little upon the high office which this modern form of publication fulfils in the literary world, it is because I am impatient of the antiquated and ignorant prejudice which classes the magazines as ephemeral. They are ephemeral in form, but in substance they are not ephemeral, and what is best in them awaits its resurrection in the book, which, as the first form, is so often a lasting death. An interesting proof of the value of the magazine to literature is the fact that a good novel will often have wider acceptance as a book from having been a magazine serial. ”

“ Then, too, on the score of emolument, justly recognised now as a very essential matter, and legitimately entitled to grave consideration, the magazine offers advantages not within the reach of either book or newspaper. ••• But after all, the great point is, that magazines are more read than any other kind of publications. They just adapt themselves to the leisure of the business man, and the taste of the idler ”

“ Our sets of monthlies, bi-monthlies, and semi-monthlies only run back a hundred or two years, therefore—to the joy of librarians, to whom, be it confessed, they bring misery untold.
But in the East, where printing has existed so long that the memory of man goes not to the contrary, it is almost impossible to say how far back was the introduction of the monthly literary magazine. ”

“ Hence, if the editor is more keenly alert for one thing than for another, it is for the new writer. The frequency of the new note in his magazine is his salvation; for just in proportion as he can introduce that new note is his success with his readers. A successful magazine is exactly like a successful store: it must keep its wares constantly fresh and varied to attract the eye and hold the patronage of its customers. ”

“ A sixth mainstay of the magazines is in the presentation of articles dealing with happenings of national interest or personalities prominent in the day's news. This task grows increasingly difficult as the newspapers tighten their grip upon the public's attention and as the news pictorials of the moving picture screen gain in popular esteem by improved technical skill and more intelligent editing. The magazine of large circulation must go to press so long before the newspapers and the films that much perishable news must be thrown out, even though it is of nation wide appeal. ”

“ Hiram M. Greene, to judge from the host of letters I have received from readers who have not read the best magazines in the past because, as many of them state, they feared that they were too “high-brow,” but who have been convinced, by the introduction to the best contemporary fiction afforded them weekly in the supplement to their Sunday newspaper, that such periodicals as Harper’s Magazine and Scribner’s Magazine have many qualities to commend them to the untrained reader. ”

“ An immense, imposing, and highly useful current of literature flows through the magazines, which have, by their number, beauty, and adaptation, come to be a distinguishing feature of the nineteenth century. This class of literature is usually called “Periodical,” and it embraces the magazines and reviews devoted to general literature and science, the class magazines devoted to particular branches of science, art, or industry, and the publications of schools and societies. Most periodicals published in the English language are monthlies. ”

“ A great artist—Millais especially—could introduce the crinoline and the Dundreary whiskers, so that even to-day their ugliness does not repel you. But less accomplished draughtsmen, who followed slavishly the inelegant mode of the sixties, now stand revealed as merely journalists. Journalism, useful and honourable as its work may be, rarely has lasting qualities which bear revival. Aiming as it did to be a 'smart' and topical magazine, with the mood of the hour reflected in its pages, it remains a document not without interest to the social historian. ”

“ The wide range of information gained by the regular perusal of a good city daily newspaper, and a first class monthly magazine is of too great value to be over-estimated. If you cannot afford a daily paper, you certainly can a semi-weekly, a large one, like the Semi-Weekly Tribune, for instance. ”

“ It does not avail to say that the daily papers teem with facts far fouler and deadlier than any which fiction could imagine. That is true, but it is true also that the sex which reads the most novels reads the fewest newspapers; and, besides, the reporter does not command the novelist’s skill to fix impressions in a young girl’s mind or to suggest conjecture. The magazine is a little despotic, a little arbitrary; but unquestionably its favor is essential to success, and its conditions are not such narrow ones. ”

“ Nothing can be more absurd; and the history of the leading penny commercial and weekly papers in large cities attests this. In magazines the world does not take unfledged genius and untried promises at par. The magazine world—by which we mean that part of the world that reads magazines—has grown cautious, cute, shrewd, or whatever may happen to be the choicest phrase to designate a careful squint into the “bag” before “buying the pig.” ”

“ We propose to supply week by week a magazine fully equal in the quality of its contents to any of the popular monthly magazines; whilst the quantity of reading matter and the number of illustrations will be fully one-half of those given in publications costing six or even twelve times as much."
No one can charge the projectors of the new weekly with lacking a robust belief in its deserts and its fortunes:
"In the New Penny Magazine," the editorial pen proceeded, "readers will find themselves in possession of a treasure-house of literature old and new, both solid and entertaining. ”

“ It is not enough to plan, work, and economize, one must make and seize opportunities. And this he can do only as he is alive to passing events. In a few years one may outgrow his usefulness through losing touch with advancing ideas and methods of work. To keep abreast of the times one must read the newspaper and the magazine. The newspaper is the history of the hour, the magazine is the history of the day. The magazine corrects the newspaper, and "sums up in clear and noble phrase those fundamental facts which are only dimly seen in the newspaper." ”

“ That a magazine could succeed at all in Waco is one of the seven wonders of the literary world. That a magazine so located and written by one man, having but a paltry advertising patronage, no illustrations, no covers, could in three years' time rival the circulation of any magazine then published is as much a miracle as the parting of the Red Sea waters or the bountiful persistence of the widow's oil. ”

“ Their circulations began to go up—a hundred thousand increase a month was not unknown in those days of popular delirium. Magazine publication became what it had never before been in American history, and what it has never been since—a competitive industry, instead of a camouflaged propaganda. Is it not a complete vindication of my thesis, that in a couple of years half a dozen magazines were able to build up half a million circulation, by no other means whatever than telling what the newspapers were refusing to tell? ”

“ Then, too, books were expensive, because many had to be imported from abroad, and those printed here could not be sold as cheaply as now. These conditions favored the magazines, which were inexpensive and furnished to their readers, besides [10] original matter, republications of the best literature of Europe. They kept the public abreast with the times and supplied the place now occupied by the numerous libraries and books which can be purchased at a moderate cost.
Another element which the magazine of a century ago did not have to contend with so vigorously was the newspaper. ”

“ 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. ”