Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/333

"The Ladies' Home Journal" 315 literary journals, the brief careers of which are duly chronicled in local histories, but they can hardly claim space in a more general survey. The one exception is The Overland Monthly, which began publication at San Francisco in 1868, with Bret Harte as the first editor. An earlier chapter of this history' remarks on the number of creditable literary periodicals that were developed in the Ohio Valley while difficulties of com- munication isolated communities in which there were many persons of intellectual interests. By 1850 the Alleghanies were no longer a serious hindrance to intercourse with Eastern cities, and the magazines of Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois had lost their chief reason for existence. Soon after the discovery of gold the Pacific slope offered another example of an isolated community with a civilization of its own. The Overland was not the first attempt at a literary magazine in San Francisco ; and though it had considerable real merit it owes its fame chiefly to Bret Harte. With the completion of the trans-continental railroads the culture of the West was free to merge in that of the nation. The Overland ceased publication in 1875. A successor, bearing the same name and established in 1883, is still, however, one of the best of the frankly provincial literary periodicals. Among the magazines of a more recent generation is The Ladies' Home Journal, a periodical of a sort which has always flourished in Philadelphia. This had a small beginning in 1883, and entered on its period of rapid growth with the accession of Edward W. Bok to the editorship in 1889. Bok adopted some of the methods of personal journalism, and thousands of readers who could have named no other magazine editor knew of him, and rejoiced that his career was in outline that of the traditional industrious apprentice. Even more than its predecessor, Godey's Lady's Book, The Ladies' Home Journal is devoted to household arts, but it has always laid emphasis on the stories, essays, and poems that it published. Many of these make a specious sentimental appeal, but from time to time the Journal has contained noteworthy contributions from men of the rank of Kipling and Howells. Many of the million readers which it long boasted firmly believed it to be a literary magazine, and its influence on popular taste must have been considerable. The most significant group of later popular magazines had ' See Book II, Chap. xx.