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[168] Dana, Willis, Longfellow, and Bancroft among the contributors. Of somewhat longer continuance and greater importance was The Democratic review, already mentioned as having absorbed The Boston quarterly review. In 1850, at the very close of the period, Harper's magazine was established in New York, and at once took high rank. Godey's lady's Book, long the most popular of a class of magazines that has flourished in Philadelphia, was founded by Louis A. Godey in 1830, though not until after Mrs. Sarah J. Hale assumed the editorship in 1837 did it attain its greatest vogue. The success of the Lady's Book was largely due to its coloured fashion plates and a quantity of light and sentimental poetry and fiction, but its financial success enabled it to make seductive offers to distinguished writers, and it secured occasional contributions from Poe, Longfellow, Holmes, and others. A later Philadelphia magazine was Graham's, established in 1841 by the union of The Casket, which had formerly been owned by George R. Graham and Charles J. Peterson, and Burton's gentleman's magazine, a monthly now remembered chiefly because Poe was for a time associate editor. Poe retained for something over a year a similar position on the new Graham's magazine, and among his successors was the Rev. Rufus W. Griswold. The magazine achieved great popularity, and is said for a time to have brought its owner large financial returns. According to a somewhat dubious tradition its decline began when Graham published a harshly unfavourable review of Uncle Tom's cabin. Among the contributors to Graham's in its best days were Cooper, Longfellow, Lowell, Hawthorne, and Simms. Most of the Southern magazines were still conducted in a spirit of patriotism and local literary pride, rather than as paying business ventures. The most famous of these, The Southern literary Messenger, was founded at Richmond in 1834. It was at first a semi-monthly, but soon changed to a monthly, though its appearance seems to have been at times somewhat irregular. Poe began to contribute to the Messenger in 1835, and later in the same year became editor. His tales and poems, and particularly his reviews, which were more independent in tone than had been common in America,
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