THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 793
Fair Puck, and also a Chicago post-office entry for thirty-six numbers, but its nature was not changed. There was merely a summer's variation in the subject-matter. The scenes and char- acters for the illustrated jokes and sketches were taken from the Fair. A frequent trick of the caricaturists and cartoonists for the World's Fair Puck was to make the exposition statutory appear animated. Incidentally, through receiving visitors at a temporary Puck Building at the Fair, the publishers pushed their circulation.
A weekly printed for the most part from plates prepared by a syndicate of New York men interested in Life, was issued in Chicago beginning in 1890. Figaro was its name. A sketch of "Figaro en Masque" a satanic figure in pen and ink, a pho- tograph of some Chicago society leader, and a border in brilliant red ink combine to awaken interest in the cover of each of the numbers to be found in a file at the Newberry Library. In the contents the plate matter from Life was supplemented with original material concerning the drama, society, and local affairs in Chicago, as satirically seen through a monocle like Life's. After the first year the general jokes from New York were dropped out. By 1893 the many functions for visiting princes afforded more society news than there had been in Chicago before, and although a few tales were published in the paper, it became distinctly a society weekly. After several changes in management, with the issue of December 21, 1893, Figaro van- ished from the periodical stage in Chicago.
Titles with Columbian Exposition connotation were given to two ephemeral weeklies of the literary class. One called Columbia, a Saturday paper listed in the newspaper directories as "literary," lasted for a year or so in 1890 and 1891. The Columbian, catalogued as a periodical devoted to fiction, lived as brief a time in 1892 and 1893.
A creditable quarterly designated the Queen Isabella Journal, and intended to be but ephemeral, was published in 1893 by the Queen Isabella Association to promote the interests of women at the World's Fair.
The creation of several art magazines for general readers
