SOURCE: King, Kimball. “Local Color and the Rise of the American Magazine.” In Essays Mostly on Periodical Publishing in America: A Collection in Honor of Clarence Gohdes, edited by James Woodress, pp. 121-33. Durham: Duke University Press, 1973.

In the following essay, King discusses the post-Civil War growth of local color fiction in the pages of American magazines.

The emergence of the American magazine after the Civil War provided for many young writers access to the reading public and afforded them the opportunity and encouragement necessary for their development. Also the more established authors were in a better position to negotiate publication of separate full-length, hard-back books after their works had found an audience in the journals. Yet authors paid a price for magazine publication: compromises were extracted from those who chose this route to literary fame. The taste and expectations of the average magazine reader and the editor's...