MAGAZINES

Magazines in the colonial era faced significant challenges. Paper and printing presses were in short supply and expensive, and the existing transportation and postal systems did not facilitate widespread distribution of periodicals. Also in short supply were readers with enough leisure time and surplus money to support magazine ventures. Nor were there enough authors available to craft the stories, essays, sketches, and poems required by periodical publishers. By 1829 none of these obstacles had been completely overcome, but the industry was poised on the brink of an era in which the number, variety, and readership of magazines grew exponentially and authors could make a living by their pens. Thus the periodical made only intermittent contributions to the political, economic, and cultural fabric of the colonial and early national periods; the story is rather one of gradual growth and laying the groundwork for a periodical boom in the antebellum years.

The birth of the American magazine can accurately be traced to February 1741, when rival Philadelphia printers Andrew Bradford and Benjamin Franklin introduced the American Magazine and the General Magazine, respectively. Both were monthlies that took as their models the English Gentleman's Magazine and London Magazine. They attempted to fill a publishing niche between two already popular formats, the newspaper and the almanac. Though neither lasted more than six months, Bradford and Franklin provided the organizational model for the colonial magazine: print shop proprietors founded the majority of the approximately seventeen magazines attempted between 1741 and 1776. Articles in early magazines tended toward sober essays on subjects such as government legislation, economics, and European military campaigns. Often, little distinguished magazines from early newspapers other than their greater length (the General Magazine averaged seventy-five pages) and less frequent issue. However, newspaper, pamphlet, and broadside publishing thrived during the era, whereas no American magazine lasted more than three years and most folded within a year. Conditions were not yet right for longer, more expensive periodical experiments.

The magazine also played only a small role in the Revolutionary era, when material constraints were, if anything, more pronounced than in colonial years. The Boston-based Royal American Magazine (1774–1775) was founded by the most successful printer in early America, Isaiah Thomas, and featured copper engravings by Paul Revere. It combined Patriot politics with a miscellany of original and reprinted fiction, advice columns, and essays on history, agriculture, literature, and religion. In Philadelphia, Thomas Paine served as editor and primary contributor to printer-bookseller Robert Aitken's Pennsylvania Magazine (1775–1776). Though Paine's Revolutionary ardor was prominently featured, so too were articles on love, marriage, and the rights of women. That the Pennsylvania Magazine attained some fifteen hundred subscribers—large for its time—suggests that its domestic leanings were a sign of things to come.

Two important early American magazines were the Columbian Magazine and the American Museum, both published in Philadelphia. Mathew Carey, the prominent printer, helped found the Columbian Magazine with three others in 1786. In 1787, Carey, upset by the frustrations of co-ownership, began the American Museum. Both magazines lasted until 1792

and thus constitute the first successful American periodicals. They featured topical and historical essays, short narratives, poetry, and one or two engravings per issue. Much of the material was reprinted from other newspapers and magazines, from America and abroad, but they also included original texts when possible. Charles Brockden Brown and William Byrd contributed articles to the Columbian Magazine, while Benjamin Franklin and the poets known as "the Connecticut Wits" appeared in the American Museum.

Two other influential periodicals prior to 1800 were Noah Webster's American Magazine (1787–1788) and the New York Magazine (1790–1797). Both contributed to a characteristic magazine ethos—that of a cultivated forum in which an educated aristocracy adjudicated republican virtue and taste. The elite tone persisted through the first quarter of the nineteenth century in magazines such as Joseph Dennie's Port Folio (1801–1827), the longest-lived periodical of the era. The Port Folio began as a staunch advocate of conservative Federalist politics, but by 1809 eschewed politics for a literary agenda of short fiction, poetry, book reviews, and author biographies to assert its claim to cultural stewardship.

The Port Folio was never financially prosperous, a fate it shared with most of its peers. However, several developments during the early national period boded well for the growth of the industry. The practice of unsigned or pseudonymous publishing began to wane, which allowed authors to establish their names as recognizable commodities. Authors began to be paid for their efforts, and Washington Irving (1783–1859) built on his periodical experience to become the first American to earn a living as a writer. Magazines devoted to single subjects—such as medicine, agriculture, or humor—appeared as the industry took tentative steps to market specific products to segmented reading audiences.

Women played only a small role during this era as owners, editors, or writers, but they began to make their presence felt as readers. Much of the material provided for their consumption consisted of fashion, domestic advice, and sentimental fiction, but some articles did cover larger issues such as suffrage, the need for equitable education, and the right to enhanced legal stature.

See alsoBook Trade; Fiction; Newspapers; Nonfiction Prose .

bibliography

Clark, Charles E. "News and Opinion in the Popular Press." In The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World. Edited by Hugh Amory and David D. Hall. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press; Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 2000.

Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines. Vol. 1: 1741–1850. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Nord, David Paul. "A Republican Literature: Magazine Reading and Readers in Late-Eighteenth-Century New York." In Reading in America: Literature and Social History. Edited by Cathy N. Davidson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Peter Molin