The Atlantic Monthly

Categories: United States magazines | Literary magazines | Cultural magazines

Image:Battle Hymn of the Republic.jpg
February 1862 edition of The Atlantic Monthly, with The Battle Hymn of the Republic on the front page.

The Atlantic Monthly (also known as The Atlantic) is an American literary/cultural magazine founded in Boston in 1857 by a group of writers that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and James Russell Lowell (who would become its first editor). Originally a monthly publication, the magazine, subscribed to by 425,000 readers, now publishes ten times a year and features articles in the fields of political science and foreign affairs, as well as book reviews.

The Atlantic Monthly was the first to publish Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" (on February 1, 1862), and William Parker's the Freedman's Story (in February and March, 1866). In August 1963, the magazine published Martin Luther King, Jr.'s defense of Civil disobedience in "Letter from Birmingham Jail". The magazine was a point of connection between Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson--having read an article in the Atlantic by Higginson, Dickinson asked him to become her mentor. It has also published many of the works of Mark Twain, including one that managed to escape publication until 2001.

The magazine has also published speculative articles that inspired the development of whole new technologies. The classic example is the publication of Vannevar Bush's essay "As We May Think" in July 1945, which inspired Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart to develop hypertext technology.

The Atlantic has always been known as a distinctively New England literary magazine (as opposed to Harper's and later The New Yorker, both from New York), and by its third year was published by the famous Boston publishing house of Ticknor and Fields (later to become part of Houghton Mifflin). The magazine was purchased by its then editor, Ellery Sedgwick, during World War I, but remained in Boston.

On September 27, 1999, a deal to transfer ownership, once again, this time from Mort Zuckerman to David Bradley, owner of the beltway news focused National Journal Group, was publicly announced. Bradley visited the offices of his new property and promised no major changes were instore, including, a move to Washington D.C..[1]

The magazine's publishers announced in April, 2005, that the editorial offices would leave their long-time home at 77 North Washington St., Boston to join the company's advertising and circulation divisions in Washington, D.C.; the announced reason for the move was the high cost of Boston real estate.[2] Later, in August, Bradley told the New York Observer, cost cutting from the move would amount to a minor $200,000-$300,000 and those savings would be swallowed by severance related spending. The reason, then, was to create a hub in Washington where the top minds from all of Bradley's publications could collaborate among each other. Few of the Boston staff agreed to relocate, allowing Bradley to embark on an open search for a new editorial staff.[3]

Also in 2005 The Atlantic announced that it would cease including short stories in its regular issues, but rather in a single annual special edition.

The magazine has one of the longest-running cryptic crosswords, compiled by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon.

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Editors

James Russell Lowell, 1857-1861
James Thomas Fields, 1861-1871
William Dean Howells, 1871-1881
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1881-1890
Horace Elisha Scudder, 1890-1898
Walter Hines Page, 1898-1899
Bliss Perry, 1899-1909
Ellery Sedgwick, 1909-1938
Edward A. Weeks, 1938-1966
Robert Manning, 1966-1980
William Whitworth, 1980-1999
Michael Kelly, 1999-2002
Cullen Murphy, 2002-

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Notes

  1. ^  "No jobs at risk, Atlantic's new owner says", Boston Globe, September 29, 1999
  2. ^  "Atlantic, 148-year institution, leaving city magazine of Twain, James, Howells heads to capital, Boston Globe, April 15, 2005
  3. ^  "Atlantic owner scours country for cinder-editor", New York Observer, August 29-September 5, 2005
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External links

fr:The Atlantic Monthly