VintageMeld

“Periodicals and Permanent Literature” reprinted from the North American Review, December 1920, by Harry T. Baker. This is the 8th of 8 parts. More on this selection at the bottom of the page.

Part 8: Conclusion:

The original Scribner’s, established in 1870, was edited for ten years by a man more gifted as editor than as writer, Josiah Gilbert Holland. Though extraordinarily popular during his lifetime both as author and lecturer, his works do not seem to have survived the “severe tomorrow” of a critical verdict. Doubtless this is due chiefly to his lack of any high literary talent; but there may be something significant also in his eagerness to please the widest possible audience and his willingness to sacrifice something in order to accomplish this. He was known as “The Great Apostle to the Multitude of Intelligent Americans Who Have Missed a College Education.” And at his death in 1881 the New York Evening Post said that no literary man in America was so accurately fitted for the precise work of developing a great popular magazine. The Century added: “He was in all respects in the closest sympathy with the people, and his literary success never drew him away from them.” These tributes mark at once his merits and his defects. Within less than forty years his literary works have been virtually forgotten.

Scribner's Magazine, June 1881

Today nearly all American magazines have become journalized, in the sense of treating topics of immediate interest, whether economic, social, political, commercial, or literary. As early as 1881, the Century, in one of its confidential editorial talks, was saying: “Journalistic alertness, an entire modernness, and wide-awakeness in subject and manner, are the indispensable conditions of life and prosperity in the struggle for existence in which periodical publications are ever involved.” Yet this does not imply the absence of literary motives and literary qualities. The “entire modernness” of Kipling is indisputable; and he too has felt to some extent the journalistic influence; but he is none the less an artist. Some magazine writing doubtless has to be prepared in haste. This was true of articles made necessary by the entry of America into the European War, in April, 1917; but haste is not regarded as a virtue and, except in magazines of a decidedly low order, is not encouraged. Moreover, those writers of unquestioned standing who are given the cold shoulder by editors are lacking in lightness of touch and generally in humor. There are few barriers for authors who possess these two qualities in addition to genuine literary merit. Nor does the average periodical aim at mere entertainment. It must interest the reader, but it may also benefit him. It may even, to some extent, improve his taste. And there are gradations of taste by which the callow reader may ascend from one periodical to another. Some editors are men of unquestioned culture; and they are willing to experiment somewhat with specimens of what promises to be a new order of literature.

Atlantic Monthly, August 1859

More than half of our successful American editors have been innocent of a college degree; but this can hardly be said to be in every case a misfortune, since it would be difficult to show that a college education is indispensable to either authorship or editorship. One of the most intellectual of English poets, Browning, obtained his culture chiefly outside a university; and, among our Americans, Whittier, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Whitman and O. Henry owe something to their sturdy individuality to an escape from the conventionalizing influence of the college. They were not men cut out on a pattern; and in literature this is of the highest importance. Magazines generally encourage individuality–even though they frown upon too much boldness. Within reasonable limits, therefore, periodicals may be said to have fostered the growth of permanent literature.

Previously: Part 7: No Distinction in Quality Between Books and the Best Periodicals

I deal in a lot of old magazine back issues and from time to time find myself distracted paging through them. When the material provides a peek into the pop culture of yesteryear plus is old enough itself to be in the public domain, I’m going to do my best to transcribe it here, on the VintageMeld.

“Periodicals and Permanent Literature” struck me as an article extolling the virtues of magazine collecting in an age long before they were seriously collected. Published in one helping by the North American Review, I’ve split it into 8 serialized parts for the VintageMeld, each of which I hope both takes you back in time and presents you with a desire to hunt down some of the old issues for yourself.