Lewis Gaylord Clark (5 October 1808-3 November 1873), editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, an important New York monthly from 1834 to 1861, was born in Otisco, New York, the twin brother of Willis Gaylord Clark, poet and editor. Namesake of the maternal uncle (editor of The Genessee Farmer and Albany Cultivator) who gave the twins their impulse toward journalism, Willis left home for Philadelphia in 1829. There he demonstrated the literary ambition and application he had shown as a newsboy, when he borrowed and read all the books in the private library of one of his customers, William Henry Seward, later governor of New York. Willis worked on the Columbian Star, a religious and literary magazine and, in 1834, became editor of the Philadelphia Daily Inquirer. He was well on his way to fulfilling great expectations in his adopted city, when his brother, Lewis, set out to conquer literary New York in 1832.

In nineteenth-century...