SOURCE: Wood, James Playsted. “Innovation and Expansion in Coverage,” “Magazines as a Weapon against Political Corruption,” and “Emergence of the National Magazine.” In Magazines in the United States: Their Social and Economic Influence, pp. 75-89, 90-98, 99-104. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1949.

In the following excerpt, Wood concentrates on changes in American magazine publishing between 1850 and the 1870s as national concepts of audience, literature, and social responsibility began to coalesce in the United States.

Innovation and Expansion in Coverage

The editors and publishers of early general magazines might look with awe and considerable envy on products of the periodical press today. Successors to Poe, Willis, Taylor, and the other “magazinists” of the 1840's have greatly developed the art of writing articles and stories particularly adapted to magazine publication. Magazine editing as it was developed by such later editors as Henry Mills Alden, Gertrude Battles Lane, Ellery Sedgwick...