Harper's Sixth

Harper's Magazine, oldest U.S. national monthly, last week got its sixth editor in 91 years. He was Frederick Lewis Allen, a Harper's assistant editor for nine years, associate editor for ten, author of two excellent books of contemporary history (Only Yesterday, Since Yesterday).

Virtually raised on famed U. S. monthlies, lean, 51-year-old Editor Allen, once a Harvard English instructor, got his publishing start in 1914 as assistant to the Atlantic Monthly's Editor Ellery Sedgwick, edited Century, has himself contributed to most of the slick-paper magazines. Says he of his new job: "It doesn't dismay me at all to be working for a magazine that is 91 years old, and looks superficially as though it were built to an old pattern."

Harper's Great Tradition, which Editor Allen means to carry on, is recording consequential contemporary history. Founded in June 1850, with 7,000 circulation, in six months Harper's rose to 50,000, before the Civil War went to 200,000, to become the first truly national U.S. magazine. (First Harper's Editor Henry J. Raymond in his spare time co-founded the New York Times.) Famed for its copious illustrations, it published the greatest contemporary English fiction (Dickens, Thackeray, et al.), plugged U.S. short stories, wrote about science, business, religion, politics, the West. Less literary than its later competitors (Century, Atlantic Monthly), it became a gold mine for historians.

The '90s marked Harper's peak. In 1925, with circulation down to 75,000, it changed format, dropped illustrations, printed less fiction, more articles dealing with ideas, trends, U.S. mores. Now its circulation is 106,800 and Editor Allen sees no reason "why a magazine with the general purposes and standards of Harper's shouldn't have a circulation of 15,000 or 300,000, depending on how interesting it is."

Nazi authorities in Holland warned the Dutch press: "Unless there is an end to the practice of publishing a whole page of pictures of dogs on the main news pages when Hitler meets Mussolini or Horthy, or when the German Army has made sensational advances on the Eastern Front, severe action will be taken. We are just tired of this sort of thing. ..."

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