Although Richard Watson Gilder said that he would prefer to be remembered as a poet, his chief claim to fame, even during his own lifetime, came through his long tenure as managing editor and then editor of the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine. Founded in 1870 as Scribner's Monthly, the magazine, which was renamed the Century after a change in management in 1881, ranked along with Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly as one of the late-nineteenth century's most esteemed general periodicals. Each issue of the Century, running to 140 or more pages, contained a mix of artistic features, serialized biography, essays on current issues, verse, and fiction. Considered by Hamlin Garland to be second only to William Dean Howells among editors in literary judgment, Gilder became through his position on the Century one of the most influential names in American letters. Gilder's most sympathetic biographer, Herbert Smith, has remarked that the 1880s...