Kentucky has failed to produce and maintain a respectable literary
magazine for any considerable length of time. Many magazines have been
born in Kentucky with high hopes, and a few of them have braved the
storms for a number of years, but all of them have gone the way of all
the earth after a pathetic struggle for existence.
The reasons for this lie not far afield: the leading magazines and
periodicals of the east through the immensity of their circulation
secure that large patronage necessary to maintain a publication
conducted on a generous basis, ensuring variety and excellence.
Experience has long since demonstrated even to the bravest of the
inland publishers that the point of distribution is the controlling
factor in success. The means of transportation which have so
miraculously improved, have annihilated distance and along with it to
no small extent the Western and Southern periodical of literary
flavor. The opulent publications are enabled through their very
prosperity to command contributors not to be approached by a
periodical circumscribed in means and constituency. Again, the
Kentucky magazines have all along made the fatal mistake of truckling
to dead prejudices and sectionalism. The material and the moulders
have long been with us, but the wide popular support, which after all
is the first essential, has failed to materialise, and it may be
regretfully apprehended that it now lies as far away as ever.
The first magazine issued in Kentucky or the West was _The Medley, or
Monthly Miscellany, for the year 1803_, which was edited and published
by Daniel Bradford, son of old John Bradford, the editor of _The
Kentucky Gazette_. _The Medley_ lived through the year of 1803, but in
January, 1804, Editor Bradford announced that he was compelled, from
lack of appreciation, to abandon its publication. The twelve parts were
bound for those of the subscribers who cared to have them made into a
single volume, and probably not more than two copies are extant to-day.
_The Medley's_ literary merit was not impressive, and its death can only
be deplored because it happened to be the first Western magazine.
_The Almoner_, a religious periodical, the first issue of which was
dated from Lexington, April, 1814, and which died a twelvemonth later,
was published by Thomas T. Skillman, the pioneer printer. Its account
of the preacher, John Poage Campbell, and his many theological works,
is about all one finds of interest in it.
William Gibbes Hunt, a Harvard man, who later took a degree from
Transylvania University, established _The Western Review_ at
Lexington, in August, 1819, and this was the first literary magazine
in the West worthy the name. Hunt was a man of fine tastes, and he had
a proper conception of what a magazine should be. He worked hard for
two years, but in July, 1821,--the number for which month is notable
as having contained the first draft of General William O. Butler's
famous poem, _The Boatman's Horn_, which is there entitled _The Boat
Horn_,--Hunt rehearsed the pathetic tale of the lack of support and
appreciation for a Western magazine, and, without any expressed
regret, entitled it his valedictory. He had survived twice as long as
any of his predecessors, and he probably felt that he had done fairly
well, as he undoubtedly had. The four bound volumes of _The Western
Review_ may be read to-day with more than an historical interest. Hunt
returned to his home in New England; and the only other thing of his
that is preserved is _An Address on the Principles of Masonry_
(Lexington, 1821), and a very excellent oration it is, too.
There were brave men after Hunt, however. _The Literary Pamphleteer_ was
born and died at Paris, Kentucky, in 1823; and in the following year
Thomas T. Skillman established _The Western Luminary_ at Lexington. This
was a semi-religious journal, but its publication was shortly suspended.
_The Microscope_ seems to have been the first magazine published at
Louisville, it being founded in 1824, but its life was ephemeral. Under
a half a dozen different names, with many lapses between the miles, _The
Transylvanian_, which Professor Thomas Johnson Matthews, of Transylvania
University, established at Lexington in 1829, has survived until the
present time. It is now the literary magazine of Transylvania
University. Mr. James Lane Allen, Mr. Frank Waller Allen, and one or two
other well-known Kentucky writers saw their earliest essays and stories
first published in _The Transylvanian_. John Clark's _Lexington Literary
Journal_, a twice-a-week affair, was founded in 1833; and the
_Louisville Literary News-Letter_, edited by Edmund Flagg and issued by
George D. Prentice, lived in the Kentucky metropolis from December,
1838, to November, 1840.
Far and away the most famous literary periodical ever published in
Kentucky, was _The Western Messenger_, founded at Cincinnati in 1835,
and removed to Louisville in April, 1836. James Freeman Clarke
(1810-1888), the noted Boston Unitarian preacher and author, was editor,
publisher, and agent of _The Messenger_ while it was at Louisville; and
he solicited subscriptions throughout Kentucky. Ralph Waldo Emerson
first appeared as a poet in his friend Clarke's magazine. His _Goodby
Proud World_, _The Rhodora_, _The Humble Bee_, and several of his other
now noted poems, were printed for the first time in _The Messenger_.
Clarke also published papers from the hands of Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, and nearly all of the
writers now grouped as the New England school. He printed a poem of John
Keats, which had never been previously published, the manuscript of
which was furnished by George Keats, brother of the poet, who lived at
Louisville for many years. Clarke later wrote an interesting sketch of
George Keats for his magazine. During parts of the four years he
published _The Messenger_ at Louisville he had as assistant editors
Christopher P. Cranch and Samuel Osgood, now well-known names in
American letters. Clarke returned to Boston in 1840, and _The Messenger_
returned to Cincinnati, where it was suspended in April, 1841. "The
periodical was an exotic," wrote William Henry Venable, "a Boston flower
blooming in the Ohio Valley;" and this is the one-line history of it.
Its like was never seen before, never since, and will never be seen
again in the West.
Thirteen years after _The Western Messenger_ left Louisville, _The
Western Literary Magazine_, a monthly publication, was begun; and
three years later, or in 1856, _The Louisville Review_, another
monthly, was established. But the war clouds of civil strife were
gradually gathering, and the endless pen scratching of the Kentucky
magazinist was lost in the cannon's roar. Newspapers were the only
things Kentuckians had time to peruse.
Since the war Kentucky periodicals have been, almost without exception,
rather tame affairs. They have all been most mushroomish. A few of them
may be singled out, such as _The Southern Bivouac_, which was conducted
at Louisville for several years by General Basil W. Duke and Richard W.
Knott; _The Illustrated Kentuckian_, founded at Lexington, in 1892; _The
Southern Magazine_, of Louisville, published papers by Mr. Allen,
stories by Mr. John Fox, Jr., and several other now well-known writers;
and Charles J. O'Malley's _Midland Review_ ran for some time. These are
the comparatively recent Kentucky periodicals which have bloomed in a
day and wilted with the earliest winter. _The Register_, official organ
of the State Historical Society, is still being issued three times a
year. It is unique among Kentucky magazines in that it is the only one
that has had adequate financial support, which, however, comes to it in
the form of a State appropriation. For the last twenty-five years _The
Courier-Journal_, of Louisville, has devoted space in its Saturday
edition to reviews of new books; and in recent years _The Evening Post_,
also of Louisville, has maintained a similar department.