The Modern British Periodical

Australia and New Zealand.

There has not been any lack of literary venture in the great Southern colonies, but among the many magazines issued in the 19th century only one or two can lay claim to any real merit. But it must be remembered that the learned societies print Journals or Transactions which in a small community supply the need. The Sydney University Magazine (1855 and 1878-79), continued as The Sydney University Re view, was of some importance and of literary value. The best magazine now is probably The Bulletin, in which many noted Australian writers have first made their mark. Apart from The Bulletin there are two monthlies, Life and Stead's Review. The former is popular and illustrated, while the latter is a copy of the well-known Review of Reviews. The Lone Hand (1907) and the New Triad, New South Wales, take the lead among popular serials. A journal of outstanding merit, The Economic Record, the organ of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand, cannot be included among literary reviews.

The periodical made its appearance in America later than in England. After the struggle with Great Britain was over, the Americans with the enthusiasm of a young nation exerted them selves to the utmost to lay the foundation of a national literature. One of the items in their programme was the periodical, which they took special care to encourage. From the very beginning it seemed to them an essential vehicle of culture. The postal authorities with a generosity uncommon in modern days, stimu lated its circulation by the grant of liberal terms for postage.

In imitation of The Gentleman's Magazine, Benjamin Frank lin founded The General Magazine (I741) at Philadelphia, but its life was short. Several attempts to bring out new periodicals were made during the next thirty years, but none seemed to grasp what the public wanted. The Pennsylvania Magazine (1775-76), perhaps the most notable, was the joint work of Robert Aitken and Thomas Paine.

The most important magazines of the i8th century were The American Museum (1787); The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine (179o) ; The Monthly Anthology (1803), an interesting Bostonian experiment, in which the study of Belles Lettres predominated ; established by Phineas Adams, it was taken over a few months later by the Anthology Club of which Ticknor, Everett, William Tudor and Bigelow were members; The Salmagundi (1807) for which Washington Irving wrote; The Literary Magazine (18o3–o7), whose editor was Charles Brock den Brown, and the Port Folio (1809) issued in 18or as a weekly newspaper, and then in 1809 transformed into a monthly. This

last named exercised a considerable influence over the literary life of the period by its disinterested devotion to pure literature. Its editor, Joseph Dennie, received the nickname of "The American Addison." A peculiar feature of the 18th and early 19th centuries in America was the desire of every town of any size to have its own magazine run by its own small literary coterie. Each group wished to express its own opinion and to direct the literary taste of its fellow townsmen. An interesting and creditable example of these provincial attempts was The Medley (1803) issued in Lexington, Kentucky. The premier place in periodical literature belongs to The North American Review (1815). It is the only one that survived through the troublous days that followed its inception. Its list of contributors contained among others the names of Edward T. Channing, Richard Henry Dana, John Adams, George Ticknor, Daniel Webster and George Bancroft. Its first editor, William Tudor, gave as the reason for establishing it "a desire to emancipate America from undue subservience to England in literary matters." After a period of comparative dullness and prosy writing, it emerged to new life in 1864 under the joint editorship of Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton.

Holmes, Lowell and Emerson.

A few years later the North American Review was followed by The United States Literary Gazette (1825-27) to which Longfellow made many contributions; by the New England Magazine (1831-35), famous as the medium selected by Oliver Wendell Holmes for the chapters of his Autocrat of the Breakfast Table; by Lowell's Pioneer (1843), a short-lived publication not without interest, since it contained tales by Poe and Hawthorne, and by The Dial (184o 44) published quarterly by a group of New England transcen dentalists with Emerson as its second and unwilling editor. "I wish it to live," he wrote in his diary, "but I do not wish to be its life. Neither do I like to put it into the hands of the Humanity and Reform men, because they trample on letters and poetry; nor in the hands of scholars, for they are dead and dry." It was not a financial success and ended with an existence of four years.

Among other periodicals of high standing were the Knicker bocker Magazine (1833), an early and successful popular magazine published in New York (after a succession of well known editors, Lewis Gaylord Clark assumed control of the magazine until it ceased to appear in 1859) ; the Boston Quarterly Review (1838), merged five years afterwards with the Democratic Review, and the Southern Literary Messenger (1834).