One Hundred Magazines

Abstract

One Hundred Magazines Selma K. Richardson (bio) Kelly, R. Gordon , ed. Children's Periodicals of the United States. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984. Although magazines intended primarily for children are mentioned at various points in Frank Luter Mott's authoritative History of American Magazines (Harvard University Press), juvenile periodicals receive so much as a subheading in only five of its many chapters. Mott describes Youth's Companion in a lengthy and highly readable essay, grants St. Nicholas an appreciative tribute, and describes four other magazines for children in briefer sketches. But before the publication of Kelly's Children's Periodicals of the United States there was no guide available to numerous other American childen's magazines. The body of Kelly's publication provides descriptions of one hundred (precisely!) magazines published for children from 1789 to the present. Among the titles are some that are notable, others that lasted briefly; all were intended for English-speaking Americans. According to the publisher's blurb, each essay offers a "summary of the history and development of the magazine including key individuals and events." The pieces have been prepared by fifty different contributors. In his preface, Kelly cites and comments upon the literature about American children's magazines, and evaluates studies about specific titles; he suggests these accounts are "both uneven and highly selective." By far the greatest number take St. Nicholas for subject. This preface brings together pertinent information about diverse investigations in the field. In the introduction that follows Kelly provides a chronological survey of magazines published for children, focusing on those addressed in the main part of the volume. After examining the forerunner, Children's Magazine (1789), Kelly moves to the "real beginnings of children's periodical publishing" in the 1820s, then discusses the next forty years by decade. The discussion is spiced with particulars about the publishing histories of magazines, and with phrases hinting of the social conditions of the times. The 1860s, called "a convenient watershed," brought the first issues of Demorest's Young America, Frank Leslie's Boy's and Girl's Weekly, Oliver Optic's Magazine, and Riverside Magazine for Young People, as well as ten other magazines analyzed in the book. The years following the Civil War saw an upswing in publishing activity; however, religious presses were churing out the majority of the titles. Kelly notes that at the turn of the century, some publishers began to offer titles prepared specifically either for boys or for girls. After briefly commenting on magazines for black children and classroom periodicals, Kelly proceeds to "literary" magazines published in the second quarter of this century. The chronology closes with observations about magazines new in the past two decades. The essay about St. Nicholas by Fred Erisman had served as a "model" for other contributors to the book. Erisman fittingly specifies in his introductory paragraph the theme he will develop in his exploration. Following several paragraphs relating the publishing history of the venerable magazine, he considers the inspired editorship of Mary Mapes Dodge. Then he analyzes the contents of the periodical under her reign (1873-1905). Little is said about the contents after Dodge's death, a period of decline. The concluding paragraph conveys the significance and influence of this "well-conceived, carefully edited, lavishly produced magazine." Almost all of the other entries are shorter, understandably, than Erisman's ten-page one; nevertheless, even those magazines that survived for only a few issues are given their due. While there are bound to be dissimilarities in essays written by a host of different authors, the entries in Children's Periodicals of the United States all adhere in one way or another to the underlying intent of the book. While the contents of the periodicals are [End Page 150] dealt with in various ways and to varying degrees, all the essays furnish descriptions of the nature and quality of the material and type of matter printed. The essayists usually provide commentary about contributors to the magazines, especially those writers who have distinguished themselves as authors of children's books. Not so frequently do they describe the physical format of the magazine at any length, and assessments of the illustrations in this highly pictorial...