Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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[316] its phenomenal development in New York during the last de cade of the nineteenth century and the earlier years of the twentieth. The most conspicuous members of this group, with the dates of their establishment were: The cosmopolitan (1886, founded in Rochester but removed to New York in 1887), Munsey's (1891), McClure's (1893), Everybody's (1899), The American (1906), Hampton's (1908). All of these were profusely illustrated, mostly with half-tone engravings; all of them were supported chiefly by the advertising pages—the improvement of the half-tone process and the development of advertising being the two things that made them economically possible. All of them were planned as business enterprises, rather than as mediums for the literary expression of certain communities or groups of authors. All of them sold for some years, as a result of competition, at the surprisingly low rate of ten cents a copy or one dollar a year. All of them attained large circulations, estimated in several instances as nearly three-fourths of a million copies of each issue.

Of those mentioned, McClure's may be taken as a type, and as most interesting to the student of literature, though it was not the earliest in the field, it did not attain the greatest circulation, and in recent years it has suffered a more serious decline than some of its rivals. S. S. McClure, the projector and editor, had established a syndicate which bought the work of prominent authors and sold the rights of publication to newspapers. He was thus able to pay sums which obtained manuscripts from the more distinguished writers of the day, English and American. Among those who contributed, often of their very best work, to the early volumes of the magazine were Stevenson, Kipling, Thomas Hardy, Andrew Lang, Conan Doyle, William Dean Howells, Joel Chandler Harris, F. Marion Crawford, Edward Everett Hale, George W. Cable, and others of similar rank. It is not, however, great names or even meritorious articles bought and inserted at random which give character to a literary periodical. In its best days McClure's was in no sense a rival of the Atlantic, Harper's, the Century, or Scribner's, though at times these could hardly boast more impressive lists of contributors. It did not even equal in popularity some of the other magazines of its own class. Its greatest success was due, not to the work of the well-known writers named