Review of Grahams Magazine Essay -- Literature History

Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine (Graham’s) is a monthly published literary periodical although it allots other fields including engravings, fashion, and music to a small portion. This magazine deals with variety of literary fields from short stories, poetry, and essays handle various tastes from belles-lettres to sentimental literature. During those periods, the contributors to the magazine, in addition to numerous writers who exist only in tarnishing paper, are included such canonical writers as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, among others. Through its inclusiveness in genres and wide range of literary works, Graham’s gained a broad readership, and simultaneously the magazine contributed to forging white American idealism by keeping silence on political or social issues at that time and reinforcing the already establish social system. This magazine’s silence for the contemporary issues is evident from its non-existent, editorial statement. One can hardly find explicit editorial position during 1843-44 for mainly two reasons. The owner and chief editor George R. Graham did not have his specific taste for literature or editorial position; his first concern was apparently a cultural business not culture itself. In his article â€Å"A Brief History of Graham Magazine,† Frank Luther Mott mentions that this magazine was the result of the combination of the Casket: Flowers of Literature, Wit and Sentiment and Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. He continues to contend that when Graham purchased the two magazines and merged as Graham Magazine, he just followed the merits from each magazine, which would promote the readership (364). On the other hand, Grah... ...ally have when opening a printed magazine. That is mainly because of the textual modes, microfilm or digitalized texts. When author’s works display in the screen in a small portion at a time, it produces another ahistorical text. This time one needs not draw one work from an anthology. Instead, the reader has to read the text confined by modern technology, which again alienates the text from the cultural or social atmosphere in the period when the magazine actually published. Works Cited Casper, Scott E., et al. A History of the Book in America. Vol. 3. The Industrial Book 1840-1880. Chapel Hill: UP of North Carolina, 2007. Print. â€Å"Editor’s Table.† Graham’s American Monthly Magazine 26.6 (1844): 296. Google Books. Web. 25 Sept. 2010. Mott, Frank Luther. â€Å"A Brief History of Graham’s Magazine.† Studies in Philosophy 25.3 (1928): 362-74. Web. 9 Oct. 2010.