It has always seemed to us that the boobery is divided into two classes:
1. The grade B boobs, (of which we are one,) whom Mencken attacks, and who do not read him.
2. The grade A boobs, whom he praises and who believe everything he says.
Of the two, the grade B boobs are, of course, the lesser evil. Great is their patience. And when they suffer, they suffer in silence.
We actually look upon them with considerable respect. Granted they have a certain type of stupidity, it is the type that is largely and unconsciously responsible for these United States being the pleasant and profitable place they are.
So long as the grade B boobs remain as they are, so long will our country remain a merry spot where one may live, labor, sin and pass out ’mid pleasant surroundings.
On the other hand, if Old Doctor Mencken could wave his wand (which falls some several thousand miles short of being magic) and commit us to the dominion of the boobs of the second class, how much worse off we would be I
For, given a little power and turned loose, the intellectual boob can raise hell in a grand manner; our little world, now somewhat astigmatic, would be downright cock-eyed—and that, too, quickly. Let this never come to pass, Jehovah I
And in the meantime, to the boobs of today— prosit! They all use Listerine. And a special prosit to the grade A boobs, because they use more of it.
St. Louis, Mo., U.S.A.
LISTERINE ADVERTISEMENT SATIRIZING MENCKEN
Appearing in the American Mercury for September 1927, this was one of an amusing series of Listerine advertisements that criticized the Mercury and Mencken.
was losing the esthetic and cultural tone that he valued most, and in 1930 he severed his connection with it entirely and sold his stock to Knopf. 30 Charles Angoff, a young Harvard graduate with a brief experience on Boston newspapers, joined the Mercury in 1925 as assistant editor, and eventually outstayed his chief on the staff.
The early thirties marked the end of an era of American life, and they also marked the end of the Mencken Mercury. The magazine’s circulation dropped from 62,000 in 1930 to a little more than half of that in 1933. Relations between editor and assistant editor were often strained. 36 Samuel Knopf, the publisher’s father and a heavy stockholder, died in 1932. In the probation of his will, the value of the magazine was placed at zero; 37 and this was supported by a comptroller’s affidavit which declared that the Mercury was “a one-man magazine catering to a very selective class of readers who are followers of its editor,” and that it must be reorganized to survive. 38
The fact was that the beginning of the depression had coincided with a marked recession in the popularity of H. L. Mencken. In 1926 Walter Lippmann had called Mencken “the most powerful personal influence on this whole generation of educated people,” though he had added the observation that “the man is bigger than his ideas,” which are “sub-rational” —that is, he appeals to “those vital preferences which lie deeper than coherent thinking.” 39 But the “vital preferences” of the twenties were not those of the thirties. Wrote Angoff many years later: “The world was leaving him behind. Even the college boys had begun to sneer at him. . . . The clippings from the [college] newspapers were becoming more and more unfavorable, and one literary editor on the West Coast referred to him as ‘The Late Mr. Mencken.’ ” 40
The sober counsel of the more “coherent” thinkers was be-
35 Manchester, Disturber of the Peace, pp. 219-20.
36 Angoff, Mencken, pp. 217-18.
37 Newsweek, v. 8, Sept. 26, 1936, p. 48.
38 Manchester, Disturber of the Peace, p. 266.
39 Saturday Review of Literature, v. 3, Dec. 11, 1926, p. 413. This article was reprinted in pamphlet form by Knopf.
40 Angoff, Mencken, p. 225. Manchester, a much more sympathetic biographer, agrees about the decay of Mencken’s popularity; Disturber of the Peace, pp 266-67.
18 AMERICAN MERCURY
ginning to prevail under the stresses of the thirties. The Mercury formula was no longer so acceptable, even to the young intellectuals. Norman Cousins, trying to account for the failure of the review under Mencken, orice wrote:
There was something wrong with its basic diagnosis. America was not the home of the fools and the land of the boobs they [the editors of the Mercury] thought it was. There was plenty of surface stuff that made us look silly, but there was also solid stuff far more significant that had to be recognized. The items that appeared in the Mercury's Americana were part of the froth and not of the essence.
. . . The pulsebeat of historical America failed to come through in the Mercury. . . . To be totally without respect for the mechanism of hope in man as were the editors of the Mercury was to live in the wrong century . 41
Doubtless the decline of Mencken’s popularity had something to do with his growing wish to retire from the editorship of the Mercury, but there were other reasons. Because of the magazine’s financial straits, he was drawing no salary. 42 He was tired and unwell. When he visited Upton Sinclair in California in the late twenties, that worthy, always a severe critic of the review “with the arsenical green covers,” remarked upon his tiredness. Sinclair argued with Mencken over the Mercury’s emphasis on “the absurdities of democracy,” and later said: “If you ask Mencken what is the remedy for these horrors, he will tell you they are the natural and inevitable manifestations of the boobus Americanus. If you ask him why then labor so monstrously, he will say that it is for his own enjoyment, he is so constituted that he finds his recreation in laughing at his fellow boobs. But watch him a while, and you will see the light of hilarity die out of his eyes, and you will note lines of tiredness in his face, and lines of not quite perfect health, and you will realize that he is lying to himself and to you; he is a new- style crusader, a Christian Anti-Christ, a propagandist of no- propaganda.” 43
41 Saturday Review of Literature, v. 37, June 12, 1954, p. 22.
42 Letter from Spivak, Jan. 30, 1959. Spivak adds: “According to my recollection Mencken never drew more than $9,000 a year.” Letter quoted with permission of the author.
43 Upton Sinclair, Money Writes! (New York, 1927), pp. 131-32. Chaps, viii and xxvi in this volume are devoted to criticisms of Mencken.
Mencken retired as editor of the American Mercury at the end of 1933. He was succeeded by Henry Hazlitt, who had been literary editor of the Nation, but who had spent most of his professional life as a financial writer for newspapers. The retiring editor wrote of his successor: “He is the only competent critic that I have ever heard of who was at the same time a competent economist . . . one of the few economists in human history who could really write.” He would continue the review’s established policy, playing “a bright light over the national scene, revealing whatever is amusing and instructive.” 44 But Hazlitt’s ideas, it soon developed, did not fit with the Mercury pattern, and after a few months he resigned the editorship to Angoff. 45
Changes in editorship, however, did not restore prosperity. The magazine continued to decline both in the zestful and uninhibited spirit that had once been its fundamental elixir and, more alarmingly, in circulation. And so, in 1935, Knopf sold the Mercury 46 to Paul Palmer and Lawrence E. Spivak, the former coming from the newspaper field, and the latter from magazine work. Palmer took over the editorship and Spivak the publisher’s chair. A new policy was proclaimed: the review would renounce its left-wing tendencies and become a kind of combination Forum-New Yorker-Collier’s. Lombard C. Jones was managing editor briefly; he was succeeded by Gordon Car- roll. Angoff, offered an associate editorship, declared that he “would rather go out and shovel manure . . . than associate myself with the publication they have in mind.” 47
Whatever Angoff preferred to shovel, the Mercury handled
44 American Mercury, v. 30, Dec. 1933, pp. 385, 386.
45 Hazlitt joined the editorial staff in the fall of 1933, and announcement of the change was made in the papers on October 5; but his name did not appear as editor until January 1934. Angoff took over with the May 1934 issue, though he was not given the title of editor until August.
46 This statement oversimplifies a complicated deal by which Business Manager Spivak bought the magazine in January 1935 for its debt ($38,000) to be paid out of problematical profits; but, as Spivak remembers it, Palmer a little later advanced some cash and he and Spivak divided the stock equally. In April, under this ownership, Spivak became publisher and Palmer editor. A year later the company needed money and Spivak gave up his half of the stock when Palmer put up more cash. Spivak then resigned as “publisher,” but continued as business manager (Spivak letter, Jan. 30, 1959).
47 Newsweek, v. 5, Feb. 2, 1935, p. 26.
much excellent and well-written material under the new management. Laurence Stallings wrote the book reviews in “The Library.” “The Clinic” had some resemblance to the old “Arts and Sciences” department; it contained short articles on social, scientific, and economic matters. Among contributors were Katharine Fullerton Gerould, William Henry Chamberlin (on Russia), Ralph Adams Cram, Ford Madox Ford, and Anthony M. Turano. Mencken contributed two articles attacking Roosevelt in 1936.
But circulation continued on the downward curve. A strike of the office staff called by the Office Workers’ Union in June
1935, which triggered picketing for fourteen weeks, did not help matters. 48 Advertising had fallen off dangerously and circulation had dropped below thirty thousand when, in the fall of
1936, radical changes in format, price, and editorial policy saved the magazine. The pocket, or “digest,” size was adopted, with 128 double-column pages. The old fifty-cent price was cut in half. The magazine took a strong conservative stand—anti- New Deal, pro-capitalism. “President Roosevelt,” declared an editorial in 1938, “no longer desires recovery under the present Capitalist system.” 49 A strong drive against Stalinism and against Soviet infiltration in America was initiated; Eugene
48 Much attention was given to the issues of this labor contest by the New Republic, v. 83, July 10, 1935, p. 254, and the Nation, v. 140, June 26, 1935, p. 741, and v. 141, July 31, 1935, pp. 128-29. [The strike was called by the Office Workers’ Union after the dismissal of two employees from the Mercury staff, which had joined the union only a few days before. The union chose to interpret the dismissal as reprisal for union affiliation, which would have been against the law according to NRA regulations; Spivak and Palmer disavowed previous knowledge that the staff had been unionized, and insisted the cause of firing was “inefficiency.” The dispute was taken to the Regional Labor Board which, in May, handed down a decision favorable to the strikers. However, the Supreme Court decision of that same month voided the NRA, resulting in the National Labor Relations Board dropping the Mercury case. Palmer had ignored the decision anyway, and tried to ignore the continued picketing and to carry on as usual. Mass picketing which developed in mid-June continued into July, with rough behavior causing many police problems. After fourteen weeks, the strike was called off in August, although a boycott continued. Spivak in the June 26 Nation attributed the trouble to a “radical group” which disapproved of the recent editorial change in the Mercury from an extreme left position of the previous editor to that of “liberalism” which was “always its tradition.” It is of interest to note that in 1949 the C.I.O. took action to expel the Office Workers’ Union from its membership because of Communist domination.]
49 American Mercury, v. 45, Nov. 1938, p. 257.
Lyons was the chief contributor in this field. Topics related to sex were common in the magazine for a few years. Havelock Ellis wrote on “Studies in Sex: A History” (January 1936) and Mencken on “Utopia by Sterilization” (August 1937); but the articles that provoked the most scathing replies in the “Open Forum” were two by anonymous women—“I Believe in the Double Standard,” by “A Wife” (April 1937) and “Chastity on the Campus,” by “A Co-Ed” (June 1938). A rather plaintive reply to the latter by a Brooklyn girl declares her intention to remain chaste in spite of everything. 50
Departments were reshuffled. “Americana” was retained, of course, though shrunken to two or three of the smaller pages. John W. Thomason, Jr., reviewed books in “The Library”; and “The Check List,” repository of brief reviews, was eventually taken out of the advertising section to appear in the body of the book. “Open Forum,” a revival of “The Soap Box,” which had appeared toward the end of the Mencken regime, invited short letters from irate or pleased readers; it occasionally ran to nearly twenty pages. “Book Preview,” giving extracts from forthcoming books, and “The Other Side,” in which prominent liberals were given their say, were short-lived departments. A little nature essay by Alan Devoe appeared each month under the heading “Down to Earth.” “Poetry” was a departmental heading for a few years; later the poems were again distributed through the magazine. Perhaps the best of the new departments was one in which Albert J. Nock for a few years discussed public affairs, speaking for the editorial board. And, finally, Nathan came back in 1938 to do a theater department for the ensuing twelve years.
Among leading contributors during the Palmer editorship were Harold Lord Varney, Benjamin Stolberg, and Stewart H. Holbrook. An article by Varney in the number for December 1936 accusing the American Civil Liberties Union of undue sympathies for Russia brought on a libel suit. When Mencken entered the picture by protesting that the suit was a threat to the freedom of the press, for which the A. C. L. U. had always stood, Director Arthur Garfield Hays of the Union suggested that Mencken act as arbitrator. The idea of Mencken the ex-
50 Ibid., v. 45, Sept. 1938, p. 117.
22 AMERICAN MERCURY
tremist judicially weighing the matters in dispute was ludicrous, but he did just that. The printing of his report in the Mercury was supposed to settle the whole matter; but inasmuch as he found against both contestants, there was an aftermath of replies. “I am substantially right,” Mencken concluded, “and decline to change a word.” 51
The new Mercury, in the smaller size and at the smaller price, more than doubled its circulation in a short time, but it lost advertising. American Mercury Books—reprints of popular books in soft covers at twenty-five cents—proved to be a money-maker, however. It began in 1937, with James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” advertised as “a classic of the tough school of American fiction”; and the series developed into the extensive business of Mercury Publications, Inc., publishers of mystery and science fiction magazines and books. 52 This was the first successful modern paperbound series in America. It was a Spivak idea, and it furnished the profits to keep the Mercury going during the Spivak administration.
Lawrence E. Spivak, son of a New York dress manufacturer, was a Harvard graduate and had been assistant publisher of Hunting and Fishing before he came to the Mercury as business manager in 1933. When he purchased complete control of the magazine in 1939, he installed Eugene Lyons as editor. Russian-born Lyons had been brought to New York as a child and there, after some work at City College, he had become very interested in Communism. He edited Soviet Russia Pictorial 1922-1923, and became an assistant director of Tass, the Russian news and propaganda agency; but he never joined the Communist Party. A term of six years as United Press correspondent in Russia brought him into close touch with events and situations and broke the spell that the Soviet ideology had held over him; and after his recall in 1934 at the demand of the U.S.S.R. authorities, he became one of the most prominent anti- Soviet writers in America. Under Lyons’ editorship and Spi- vak’s management, the Mercury became a leader in the attack on Stalin and in exposing Communist “penetration” in the
51 Ibid., v. 45, Oct. 1938, p. 240.
52 See Frank L. Schick, The Paperbound Book in America (New York, 1958), pp. 62-65.
United States. In this crusade he was assisted by John Roy Carlson, whose Under Cover was a sensational and controversial best-seller in 1943; Jan Valtin, whose Out of the Night scored a similar success in 1941; and others.
Another cause strongly and repeatedly presented in the Mercury in these years was that of the importance of the air force in our military system. Major Alexander P. de Seversky wrote many articles about the superiority of air attack and defense in the early forties. These were supported by several contributions of Colonel Hugh J. Knerr in 1942.
Articles were usually short, as they had been since the change to the smaller size, and content was varied. An outstanding article of Lyons’ editorship was Thomas Wolfe’s “The Anatomy of Loneliness” (October 1941). Mary M. Colum had charge of “The Library” for a year or two; thereafter the reviewing was shared by several hands. Associate editors for short terms were Allen Churchill, William Doerflinger and John Tebbel; in 1943 Angoff dropped his shovel and came back to the Mercury to serve first as literary editor and then as managing editor as long as Spivak remained as publisher.
With the number for July 1944, Lyons retired from the editorship to take charge of the new magazine Pageant; and Spivak became both editor and publisher. He and Angoff filled the Mercury with stimulating articles on lively questions. Kingsbury Smith’s series about the workings of the State Department was outstanding. The magazine, on the whole, took a more liberal position than it had once occupied. Norman Angell and Russell Davenport were contributors, along with many writers comparatively unknown. Nathan and Devoe continued their departments, and in 1948 Bergen Evans started a new one on popular superstitions headed “Skeptic’s Corner.” More attractive covers than the magazine had ever known were supplied by A1 Hirschfield; they carried colored caricature-portraits of public figures.
In the years 1943-1945, the Mercury gradually increased its circulation, reaching an average of eighty thousand per issue, the highest of its history; then it began to slide down again. In a day of mass circulations, the Mercury was a midget. Spivak was losing about $100,000 a year on the magazine, making up
its deficits out of the profits of Mercury Publications, Inc. 53 In 1949 the price per copy was raised to thirty-five cents, and circulation declined to forty thousand. The absorption of Common Sense, an anti-Communist monthly, did not help much. In the fall of 1950 Spivak sold the magazine to Clendenin J. Ryan for about $50,000, 54 and thereafter devoted himself to “Meet the Press,” which had started on radio in October 1945 and moved to television in November 1947. Four years later Spivak sold Mercury Publications, Inc,., to Joseph W. Ferman, who had been associated with him for several years on the magazine and in the publishing concern.
Ryan, the new owner, was the son of Thomas Fortune Ryan, and a man of wealth who could afford to experiment with a magazine of famous name and lively spirit. He had once been an assistant to Mayor La Guardia of New York City, and was interested in political reform. He now associated himself with William Bradford Huie, lecturer, author, and air-power devotee, who was given “complete autonomy of policy and action” in the conduct of the magazine. Huie at once declared his intention to “re-create the magazine in the Mencken tradition,” but with a difference: “The boobs,” he said, “have become bureaucrats; the censors have become commissars; the yahoos have been marshaled into pressure groups.” But he added, “We are more interested in manners, morals, and the arts than in politics.” 55 Angoff was succeeded as managing editor by Susie Berg. The price was again placed at twenty-five cents.
Manners and morals did indeed occupy much space in what was for a short time called The New American Mercury. The editor found time, between lecture engagements and television broadcasts, to write much for the magazine himself, including a fiction serial of 1951 entitled “The Revolt of Mamie Stover,” which was announced as “a serious book about a whore.” 56 Alfred Towne’s “Homosexuality in American Culture” ran in the fall of 1951. And so on. Lee Mortimer, author of Washing-
53 Correspondence with Spivak, Jan. 30, 1959.
54 About half in cash and half in subscription liabilities (Spivak correspondence) .
55 All quotations in this paragraph are from the editor’s statement, American Mercury, v. 71, Dec. 1950, pp. 665-68.
56 Ibid., v. 72, March 1951, p. 280.
ton Confidential and such classics, was a steady contributor.
But the magazine was not all sex. Huie hated Truman, and in an open letter to General Eisenhower advised him to break with the President and announce himself openly as a candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency. 57 The magazine was now throughly conservative in politics. Too much of its literary criticism was on the level of one writer’s dismissal of Irving Howe’s analysis of Sherwood Anderson: “The silliest damn statement I’ve heard in years.” 58 But the Mercury retained as contributors such writers from the Spivak regime as Nathan, Holbrook, Devoe, Tebbel, Stolberg, and Evans.
Two years of paying deficits were enough for Ryan, and in 1952 he sold the magazine to J. Russell Maguire, multimillionaire oil man and munitions-maker. The new owner was not as complaisant toward his editor’s policy as Ryan had been; and beginning February 1953 Huie was supplanted by John A. Clements, who had been promotion director of the Hearst magazines, with Joseph B. Breed as managing editor. The price went to thirty-five cents.
The emphasis on sex now disappeared, and the anti-Red theme was resumed with vigor. The Mercury defended Senator Joseph McCarthy in his drive against Soviet “infiltration”; and, in general, it took a strong right-wing Republican position. J. B. Matthews was chief editorial writer, assisted, especially in the crusade against Communism, by the indefatigable Lyons and Varney, as well as by Ralph de Toledano and Alan Set. George Fielding Eliot, John T. Flynn, and Harry T. Brundidge were frequent contributors. There were many short departments. Variety and brevity were watchwords; forty or more articles might appear in a single number, each from one to four pages in length. There were a few full-page cartoons.
A clean sweep changed the editorial management of the magazine in the fall of 1955. Editor Clements and his chief associates and contributors went out, and owner Maguire carried on until the appointment of William La Varre to the editorship in 1957. La Varre, explorer and feature writer, had the assistance of Natasha Boissevain, who had become managing
57 Ibid., v. 73, Dec. 1951, pp. 3-8.
58 Ibid., v. 72, May 1951, p. 616.
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editor on Clements’ retirement; and Maguire continued to write editorials. Maurine Halliburton succeeded to the editorship in the summer of 1958.
The editorial policy was now very clear: the Mercury was an organ of rather extreme right-wing Republicanism. It published short contributions by United States senators, members of Congress, and governors belonging to that faction; and its editorials supported that school of thought. Many of its articles dealt with international affairs, but there was still a wide variety in its offering outside of politics. The “Forum” departments for readers’ letters were lively and interesting. Articles on the popular religious movement had some prominence; Billy Graham, J. Howard Pew, and James Hargis wrote in that field. Circulation advanced gradually in the fifties to some seventy thousand.
It is impossible to measure such an intangible as the “influence” of a magazine. One cannot doubt, however, that the American Mercury under most of Mencken’s editorship had a considerable effect on the thinking of many people—chiefly, perhaps, in the younger and more literate groups. Also, it seems evident that the magazine under the Spivak management in the forties had a notable impact on public opinion. Its later adven- ures in sex problems and “McCarthyism” were less impressive. In the fifties it was in some ways a spokesman for conservatives in politics. But in 1960, when one sees the magazine on a newsstand, one is likely to exclaim, “Oh, is the American Mercury still published?” *
* This historical sketch was written in 1960. In 1966 the American Mercury was not likely to be seen on a newsstand, but it was still published, presumably by the Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Inc. (see n. 1). In the issue for June 1966, it was stated that Western Destiny, Folk, and Northern World had merged with the Mercury.
The magazine proclaims it has been “published continuously since it was founded by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan,” but certainly the only continuity is in name and volume numbering. It is now a vehicle for severe criticism by the ultra-conservatives.
In 1959 Lawrence Spivak wrote that if he had known what was going to happen to the Mercury when he sold it in 1950 to Clendenin J. Ryan, he “would have buried it. . . . It is a shame that the magazine that contributed so much and earned a great name in its day, should come to its present low state” (Spivak to Mott, Jan. 30, 1959, quoted with permission of author). Since 1960 the magazine has shifted ever further to the right in its editorial policy.
APPLETON’S BOOKLOVERS MAGAZINE 1
I T was at the very end of the nineteenth century that Seymour Eaton, journalist and promoter, founded a successful lending-library system international in scope. The Booklovers Libraries in the United States and England were the basis of this business; and a little later the Tabard Inn Libraries, in which the customer bought the initial book and then traded it for another for a small fee, spread throughout America.
The Booklovers Magazine, a monthly miscellany selling at twenty-five cents, was founded by Eaton in January 1903. It was published in Philadelphia by the Library Publishing Company, which was a subsidiary of the Tabard Inn Corporation. It was something more than a house organ for the circulating library business, 2 however; Eaton had ambitions in the direction of both book and magazine publishing, and the magazine advertised all his projects. He was president of the publishing company and editor of the magazine.
The Booklovers was different from other magazines. Its uniqueness consisted in the combination of three kinds of content: (1) short, signed “editorials” on all kinds of subjects by famous and near-famous people; (2) a lot of brief eclectic miscellany clipped from periodicals; and (3) copious illustration, much of it in color. It was of the same size as other standard magazines, whether they sold for ten cents or twenty-five— double-column royal octavo—but one had only to glance inside
1 Titles: (1) The Booklovers Magazine, Jan. 1903—June 1905; (2) Appleton’s Booklovers Magazine, July 1905—June 1906; (3) Appleton’s Magazine, July 1906—June 1909.
First issue: Jan. 1903, Last issue: June 1909.
Periodicity: Monthly. Regular semiannual vols., 1-13.
Publishers: Library Publishing Company, Philadelphia, 1903-5; D. Apple- ton & Company, New York, 1905-9.
Editors: Seymour Eaton, 1903-4; Ellery Sedgwick, 1905; Trumbull White, 1906-9.
Indexes: Poole’s Index, Annual Library Index.
2 Eaton published a weekly house organ for his business from October 21, 1901, through May 1, 1903. It was called Booklovers Weekly for about four months, and its title was then changed to Booklovers Bulletin.
27
28 APPLETON’S BOOKLOVERS
the cover of the Booklovers to see how different it was. What Eaton was doing was plain enough: he was attempting to capitalize on the popular magazine trends toward concise brevity and bright illustration.
The “editorials,” for which the magazine paid “cash and good prices,” were little essays of about five hundred words each, signed, in the facsimile of his autograph, by the author. In the first volume these short pieces were written by such contributors as Goldwin Smith, Hamilton W. Mabie, Julian Ralph, Henry Cabot Lodge, Norman Hapgood, Brander Matthews, Amelia E. Barr, Edgar Saltus, Theodore Dreiser, and others less well known. After the first year, the tendency was to abandon these brief essays for longer articles, particularly in the fields of art, travel, education, and literature. Personality sketches, in both the longer and the shorter forms, were favorites. Essays on contemporary literary movements early became common, and they were occasionally by foreign critics. In June 1903 Paul Bourget wrote on “The Evolution of the Modern French Novel,” and his article was printed in both French and English in parallel columns; in March 1905 Hall Caine wrote on “Religion in the Novel.” But when Joseph Conrad wrote for the Booklovers (May 1905) it was on “Sailing as a Fine Art.”
The brief miscellany, gathered together in a department called “The Best Things from the Periodicals of the World,” was an amusing and sometimes informative section which at first bulked large in the magazine. Newspapers, magazines, and the foreign satirical weeklies were laid under tribute. Cartoons, paragraphs of comment, anecdotes, verse, and bits of information were found in this department—the result in a considerable degree of the complaisance of copyright owners who considered brief quotations good publicity for the larger works.
The pictures were the expensive part of the magazine. The art reproductions in full color were attractive to many readers. Chief emphasis was on the contemporary and minor artists. If the artistic judgment and the excellence of the color printing were not quite first class, the brilliant pictorial displays in the Booklovers Magazine were at least interesting and instructive. Besides the art studies, portraits and picturesque foreign scenes were prominent in the magazine’s illustration.
In its second year the Booklovers Magazine absorbed another monthly of very similar name, Warren Elbridge Price’s New York Book-Lover . 3 Born in San Francisco, this had been a rather faddish journal of curious and interesting matter of a literary sort. But it had been unsuccessful, and it may be doubted whether the Booklovers gained much in acquiring it.
By its third year, the Booklovers had grown more like other magazines. A short story appeared in each issue, by Robert Barr, Susan Glaspell, or some other good fictioneer. Full length articles were much more common, especially some dealing with public affairs and famous personalities. The editing was less amateurish, and the magazine had a somewhat less casual air.
Apparently, however, it had grown rather out of proportion to Eaton’s other enterprises; and it clearly needed more attention, more money, and more experienced management if it was to develop into a great national magazine. Eaton therefore sold it in the early summer of 1905 to the New York book-publishing firm of D. Appleton & Company. Appleton’s was by no means inexperienced in the publishing of magazines. Their Popular Science Monthly was outstanding in its field, and the New York Medical Journal was scarcely less so. 4 They had published other class journals, and this was the second general literary magazine which they had attempted, Appleton 1 s Journal having once enjoyed a career of considerable value and importance, ending in 1881. 5 Joseph H. Sears, the new president of Appleton’s, had been connected with the Youth’s Companion and Harper’s Monthly and was convinced that a magazine was
30 APPLETON’S BOOKLOVERS
a necessary adjunct of a publishing business. 6 The new owners declared: “A huge publishing house, like the Appletons’, with its varied publications—more varied than those of any other publishing house in the world . . . manifestly, in order to complete its universal significance, must have a magazine.” 7
Completing universal significance was grandiloquence for what Appleton’s proceeded to do, but they did at once bring new quality and maturity into the pages of what was now called Appleton’s Booklovers Magazine. Edward S. Martin of Life wrote an editorial department full of charm and wisdom called “Current Reflections.” Serial publication of a historical novel by Robert W. Chambers, The Reckoning, was immediately begun. Rex Beach, Booth Tarkington, Harry Leon Wilson, and other short story writers were introduced. The magazine came to look very much like other “quality” monthlies—particularly like Scribner’s. Ellery Sedgwick, later famous as editor of the Atlantic Monthly, headed the staff of Appleton’s for a short time, and other editors followed in quick succession; 8 but in 1906 Trumbull White, a resourceful and experienced man, was hired away from the Red Book to conduct what had become virtually a new magazine. In its second year under the Appleton management, it dropped the word Booklovers from its title and became simply Appleton’s Magazine.
Appleton’s under Trumbull White was a high-class monthly in both form and content. There were pictures by such illustrators as George Brehm and John Cassel, reproduced by line-cut or halftone, with one occasionally in color. The type was readable, and the page was wider than in most octavo magazines. Among Appleton’s writers of serial fiction were Lloyd Osbourne, Frederic Jesup Stimson, Maxim Gorky, John Oxen- ham, Elizabeth Duer Miller, and Joseph C. Lincoln. Short fiction was contributed by James Branch Cabell, Zona Gale, Emerson Hough, Myra Kelly, Marie Van Vorst, Porter Emerson Browne, and others. Hall Caine’s autobiography was a fea-
6 Samuel C. Chew, ed., Fruit Among the Leaves: An Anniversary Anthology (New York, 1950), pp. 52-53. The editor supplies a history of Appleton’s as an introduction to this volume, pages 53-55 being given to Appleton’s Booklovers Magazine.
7 Appleton’s Booklovers Magazine, v. 6, Aug. 1905, p. 259.
8 Chew, Fruit Among the Leaves, p. 54.
APPLETON’S BOOKLOVERS MAGAZINE, 1905 COVER
This name was used for one year after D. Appleton & Company bought the Booklovers Magazine. Then it became simply Appleton’s Magazine. In the cover shown here the border was in brown, simulating tooled leather; the rectangular center area was blue.
31
ture in 1908-1909. John T. McCutcheon’s articles, illustrated by his own drawings, were amusing. The Reverend Charles F. Aked’s series in 1908 on contemporary religion attracted much attention. There were some good travel articles, and others about industry, public affairs, and politics. A series on prohibition by different writers appeared in 1908. Literary discussions, so prominent in the earlier phase of the magazine, were now infrequent; there were some, however, about art, music, and the stage. John Philip Sousa’s “The Menace of Mechanical Music” brought some sharp replies from defenders of the phonograph. Verse was comparatively infrequent and undistinguished.
An unusual feature was the editorial comment which White wrote for the first few pages of each issue. This was on various topics, but in general it reflected the conservative tendency of the magazine. Appleton's came just at the close of the muckraking era, and it fell in with the reaction against that movement. True, the magazine did print Rex Beach’s series on “The Looting of Alaska” in 1906. But the closing paragraph of the editorial for the October 1908 number read:
Great combinations have come in the natural course of evolution. They came as a necessity because it is better to work together than to struggle against one another. They have come to stay. Their evils are temporary and incidental. Their benefits are permanent and inherent. This is where this magazine stands . 9
In the next issue the lead article was entitled “Unjust Attacks on Business Must Cease,” by Senator Albert J. Beveridge, timed to appear just before the national election in which Bryan opposed Taft. In its last year or two Appleton’s seemed to be making an effort to interpret industry, big business, and transportation to the people.
The magazine’s circulation never exceeded 100,000, and that was too low to compete successfully in the field of popular general magazines, though it sold for fifteen cents. Advertising was sold at one hundred dollars a page, and it did not often exceed twenty pages. 10 For a magazine of 128 pages of “quality” text,
9 Appleton’s Magazine, v. 12, Oct. 1908, p. 389.
10 See N. W. Ayer & Son’s Newspaper Annual and Directory (Philadelphia, 1908), p. 1259; also the volume for'1909, p. 593, quoting the only circulation statement the magazine ever made.
this was far from enough. The June 1909 number was the last of Appleton’s Magazine; it ended abruptly with the misleading line “To be continued” at the close of an installment of a serial by Florence Morse Kingsley. It had consistently lost money for its publishers. 11
In its first form, the Booklovers was a curious and interesting periodical with little real significance. In its latter phase, it cannot be said to have completed the “universal significance” of D. Appleton & Company, but for three or four years it was a “quality” magazine reflecting credit upon that publishing house.
11 Chew, Fruit Among the Leaves, p. 55.
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