North American Review

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

First issue of the North American Review with signature of its editor William Tudor (1779-1830).

Founded in Boston in 1815, The North American Review (NAR) was the first literary magazine in the United States, and was published continually until 1940, when publication was suspended due to World War II. Publication subsequently resumed in 1964 at Cornell College (Iowa). Since 1968 the University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls) has been home to the publication. Nineteenth-century archives are freely available via Cornell University's Making of America.

Until the founding of the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, the Review was the foremost publication in New England and probably the entire United States. For all its lasting impact on American literature and institutions, however, the Review had no more than 3,000 subscribers in its heyday.

The Review's first editor, William Tudor (1779-1830), and other founders had been members of Boston's Anthology Club, and launched The North American Review to foster a genuine American culture. In its first few years it was published poetry, fiction, and miscellaneous essays on a bi-monthly schedule, but in 1818 it became a quarterly with more focused contents intent on improving society and on elevating culture. The Review promoted the improvement of public education and administration, with reforms in secondary schools, sound professional training of doctors and lawyers, rehabilitation of prisoners at the state penitentiary, and government by educated experts.

Its editors and contributors included such literary and political New Englanders as John Adams, George Bancroft, Nathaniel Bowditch, William Cullen Bryant, Lewis Cass, Edward T. Channing, Caleb Cushing, Richard Henry Dana, Alexander Hill Everett, Edward Everett, Jared Sparks, George Ticknor, Gulian C. Verplanck, Daniel Webster.

Later editors included Charles Eliot Norton, James Russell Lowell, and Henry Adams. Although the Review did not often publish fiction, it did serialize The Ambassadors by Henry James. The current editors are Grant Tracey and Vince Gotera.