John Foster Kirk, editor of Lippincott's Magazine for sixteen years, was a man who did not influence his times so much as he enjoyed a tranquil and privileged position in them. Far removed from modern magazine hustle and promotion, Kirk was a scholarly editor who represented a literary stratum of society which had the leisure to consider the humanities and arts long before the explosion of pop culture. The post-Civil War nineteenth century had its share of strife, scandal, and social problems, but Kirk's life and journalistic work seem removed from all disturbance. The magazine he edited was dominated by a refined interest in the classical rather than the commonplace, in romance rather than impoverished reality.

By all reports Kirk was a scholar and a gentleman. Research yields little negative criticism of either the man or his work; everywhere Kirk is praised for his thorough scholarship, his intelligence...