The first volume of this work, covering the period from 1741-1850, was issued in 1931 by another publisher, and is reissued now without change, under our imprint. The second volume covers the period from 1850 to 1865; the third volume, the period from 1865 to 1885. For each chronological period, Mr. Mott has provided a running history which notes the occurrence of the chief general magazines and the developments in the field of class periodicals, as well as publishing conditions during that period, the development of circulations, advertising, payments to contributors, reader attitudes, changing formats, styles and processes of illustration, and the like. Then in a supplement to that running history, he offers historical sketches of the chief magazines which flourished in the period. These sketches extend far beyond the chronological limitations of the period. The second and third volumes present, altogether, separate sketches of seventy-six magazines, including The North American Review, The Youth's Companion, The Liberator, The Independent, Harper's Monthly, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's Weekly, The Atlantic Monthly, St. Nicholas, and Puck. The whole is an unusual mirror of American civilization.

A union list of serials commencing publication after Dec. 31, 1949.

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) was a nineteenth-century American who combined in his writings and career a catalog of accomplishments and creations that made him one of the most celebrated literary men of his time. The range and significance of Taylor’s oeuvre explains his growing importance today to scholars working in the fields of American studies, gender and queer theory, and the aesthetics of racial and class identities. In less than 35 years, he wrote seventeen volumes of poetry, four novels, eight critical works and translations of German classics, nineteen travel narratives, innumerable magazine essays, stories, and reviews, and thousands of letters to friends, admirers, hostile reviewers, business acquaintances, and intimate male companions. His extraordinary success on the public lecture circuit made him one of the best-known men of his day. Taylor's diplomatic career enhanced his reputation and influence as a travel writer and included service as a writer for the Perry Expedition to Japan, as a charge d’affaires to Russia during the Civil War, and ambassador to Germany in 1878. This analysis of Taylor’s life and works helps to explain three important shifts in American culture: the contradictory development of American ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism in the nineteenth century; the impact of homophobia and homophilia upon American literary production, criticism, and culture; and the inspirational role played by poetry within a religious and economically-driven society. The introduction describes Taylor's changing fortunes within literary history and presents a methodological approach to the Genteel tradition that recovers its distinctive aesthetic and social values and explains how Taylor is its most winning and significant representative. Taylor was a key figure in the genealogy of American interactions with the Islamic world, and his travel writing demonstrates how individual advancement in an egalitarian society can be linked with aggressive imperialism abroad. Taylor’s novels display a subtle pattern of transgressive sexuality and demonstrate how Taylor's manipulation of reputation and genteel aesthetics created a space for individual expression and freedom. Taylor’s 1870 novel, Joseph and His Friend, is frequently cited as America's first gay novel. This book's analysis of Taylor’s poetry draws the strands of egalitarian racialization and male-male intimacy together with his abiding concern with regional American identities and the mixed influences of religious subcultures.

On August 26, 1835, a fledgling newspaper called theSunbrought to New York the first accounts of remarkable lunar discoveries. A series of six articles reported the existence of life on the moon—including unicorns, beavers that walked on their hind legs, and four-foot-tall flying man-bats. In a matter of weeks it was the most broadly circulated newspaper story of the era, and theSun, a working-class upstart, became the most widely read paper in the world.An exhilarating narrative history of a divided city on the cusp of greatness, and tale of a crew of writers, editors, and charlatans who stumbled on a new kind of journalism,The Sun and the Moontells the surprisingly true story of the penny papers that made America a nation of newspaper readers.