As a magazine editor, as an author of articles, essays, pamphlets, poems, books, and sermons, and as a minister of the gospel, William Carey Richards made significant contributions to the cultural development of the United States during the nineteenth century. More particularly, he helped develop the literary magazine movement in the South with the Orion and the Southern Literary Gazette, and he provided an early educational magazine for children, the Schoolfellow.

Richards was born in London on 24 November 1818, the son of William Richards, a Baptist minister, and Anne Gardener Richards. He was named in part after William Carey, one of the first Baptist missionaries from England to go to India. The family immigrated to the United States in 1831, and Richards's father became minister of a church in Hudson, New York. Within a few years the family relocated in Penfield, Georgia, where Richards's father served as a trustee of...