University of Mississippi

Publishing and Marketing Changes 

Although the first children’s magazine in 1789 only produced three issues, it inspired 

others. Between 1802 and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, at least 75 children’s 

periodicals were introduced. Most of them were unsuccessful and fewer than one in five 

managed to continue publication for at least 10 years, and only about one in three was able to 

sustain itself for three years.45 Magazines had to wait for high speed presses and improved 

transportation in the nineteenth century to reach larger audiences.  

Political journalist and historian Theodore H. White considered the 1890s as “the time 

when all the elements merged to place the magazine in a position of dominance in this nation.”

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These elements included the completion of the national railroad from coast to coast along with 

the high speed rotary press and the photoengraving process for reproducing inexpensive 

photographic to break up blocks of type on the printed page. Despite the great expense, 

magazines carried as much illustration as they could afford.

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The principal stages of magazine development in nineteenth century according to Kelly: 

The earliest efforts featured cheap printing, illustrations with coarse woodcuts, and anonymous 

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authors. In the 1840s appearances improved, the tone lightened and there were fewer stories 

about death. More than a dozen magazines were founded to publicize the cause of public 

education and provide supplementary material for reading, geography, and science. Finally, 

religious conversion was changed to social conversion.

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“The child was still saved—but for this world, not the next—and the agency of his social 

conversion was no longer a denominational creed but the code of the Christian gentleman.”

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Besides the obvious financial factor as an impetus for producing children’s periodical 

publications, publishers and editors stress delivering an important message, encouraging literacy, 

and building self-esteem for young readers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  

“We try to teach without being preachy,” 

Sports Illustrated for Kids 

managing

 

editor 

Craig Neff said.

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 This is a relatively recent goal and a major change from the dreary moralizers 

of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.