NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. VOLUME XXXVI. DECEMBER, 1867, TO MAY, 1868. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 327 to 335 PEARL STREET, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1868. A12491 HARPER'S MAGAZINE.-VOLUME XXXVI. E IGHTEEN YEARS AGO the Publishers of this Magazine announced that it would be their aim "to seek to combine entertainment with instruction, and to enforce, through channels which attract rather than repel attention and favor, the best and most important lessons of morality and of practical life." They promised also "to spare neither labor nor expense in any department of the work," trusting thereby to give to the Magazine "a popular circulation unequaled by that of any similar periodical ever published in the world." After the lapse of eighteen years the same Publishers renew these assurances with increased confidence. What was then an untried experiment has become an accomplished fact. The Magazine, conducted under their constant care and supervision, soon reached, and has ever maintained, "a circulation unequaled by that of any similar periodical ever published in the world." This circulation has not been lessened by the subsequent establishment among us of other periodicals of somewhat similar scope. With these the Conductors of Harper's Magazine have no rivalry except a generous emulation as to who shall furnish the periodical most suited to the wants of cultivated American readers. With the results of this kindly emulation the Publishers of Harper's Magazine are fully satisfied: at no period more fully than at the present. Harper's Magazine has now more readers than at any former time. It is read by certainly not less than a million of persons each month. Not to speak of its American contemporaries, its regular monthly circulation exceeds that of any ten of the leading British periodicals of a somewhat similar character. While due space has been devoted to imaginative literature- whether embodied in continued tales of Bulwer, Collins, Dickens, Lever, Mulock, Reade, Thackeray, and other leading British novelists of the day, or in stories and poems by American writers-it has been the constant aim of the Conductors to give a permanent value to the Magazine by articles upon history and biography; voyages, travels, and adventure; popular science, art, and industry; moral, social, and political economy, and the practical duties of life. The leading object has been to produce a Magazine which should set forth the aspects of the time. For this the Editors, each in his appropriate sphere, have wrought. One in the "Monthly Record of Current Events" has endeavored to narrate the leading incidents in the history of the times; another in the "Easy Chair" to comment upon topics of current interest; another in the "Drawer" to present the anecdotes, reminiscences, and facetiæ, which, quite as really as more formal things, indicate the character of our actual life; while others have striven, either in careful analyses or in more brief “Literary Notices," to give the substance and scope of the more notable books, which indicate the direction of the literary activity of the age. That the effort in this direction has not been misapplied is evinced by the fact that the Publishers are in continual receipt of orders from public and private libraries for complete sets of the Magazine from its commencement. As an Illustrated Magazine Harper's Monthly has confessedly no rival upon either continent. Its purpose from the outset has been to call into requisition the pencil of the artist wherever it could in any way aid or supplement the pen of the writer. How far this purpose has been accomplished, the illustrations-more than ten thousand in number-which have been furnished will show. In reviewing the Two Hundred and Sixteen Numbers of the Magazine already published, each containing more matter than an ordinary volume, the Conductors feel warranted in the conviction that the increased experience and ever-widening facilities which years have brought them have not been misapplied. They believe that no previous volume of the Magazine exceeds in the value or interest of its contents this which is now brought to a close. While thanking the Press and the Public for the generous encouragement by which they have for so many years been cheered, the Conductors-whether Publishers or Editors-renew their assurance that nothing on their part which can be achieved by earnest labor or free expenditure shall be wanting to hold for Harper's Magazine the high position which it early secured, and has so long successfully maintained. Franklin Square, New York, May 1, 1868. |