University of Mississippi

 

 

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The Golden Age 

Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America

, edited by Kenneth M. Price and 

Susan Belasco Smith in 1995, is a collection of essays compiled to “reveal the ways in which 

literary analysis can be enriched when it encompasses social history, publishing contexts, the 

literary marketplace, and the relationships between authors and editors.”

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 Although only one 

chapter is devoted specifically to children’s magazines, the introduction, “Periodical Literature in 

Social and Historical Context,” provides a useful overview of periodicals from the 1830s until 

1900.

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 During this time publications “soared” compared to the early years of 1741 to 1794 when 

sixty percent did not survive their first year.

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Factors spurring rapid development in the nineteenth century were improved mail 

distribution from the Postal Act of 1794 (100 magazines were in circulation by 1825), an 

increasingly literate population from the establishment of schools, economic growth allowing 

leisure time for entertainment, and the 1825 opening of the Erie Canal connecting the northeast 

to the west politically and economically.

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Periodicals’ major role in communicating, informing, and entertaining was reflected in 

circulation with the year 1840 and its 1,500 periodicals called the “golden age of periodicals.” 

By 1870, 4,295 weekly magazines had a combined circulation of 10.5 million, “a staggering 

figure” considering the fact that the United States population was only 30 million.

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