Wednesday, September 2, 2009

A Chronicle of Magazine Covers (3) 1810-1820

The comprehensive reference for this decade is A History and Bibiography of American Magazines 1810-1820 by Neal L. Edgar. Scarecow Press, Metuchen, N.J. 1975. 379 pages chock-full of great and unique information. Edgar documents 223 new magazines and 34 holdovers for a total of 257. After 1820, the number gets unmanageably large.

Wrappers in this era have a very characteristic look, most adapting the design of a frame surrounding the text. It is obvious that quite a bit of "borrowing " went on. American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review is my favorite, providing an engraving the building it was published in on the front wrapper.

American Journal Of Science (Silliman's Journal) is America's longest continuously published magazine.






As you can surmise, I've seen and collected a few magazines in my time!

Here's some more wrappers from this decade:
The venerable and long-standing North American Review
The earliest Kentucky publication I own.
A couple of early Ohio titles.
Two from the new publishing center of Baltimore. Another important title published here is the commonly seen Niles Weekly Register.
My nominees for the two best inside engravings:
Fulton's Steamboat from Archives of Useful Knowledge
and an early cross-dresser!
I have dozens of other volumes from this decade, but you should have a pretty idea of what was going on a the time from the above examples. See you soon in the next decade!

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