St. Nicholas

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Interior page of St. Nicholas Magazine 

Edited by Mary Mapes Dodge, New York, 1874

St. Nicholas: a monthly magazine for boys and girls

Edited by Mary Mapes Dodge

1874

6" x 8.8"

Kerlan Collection, Children's Literature Research Collection

University of Minnesota Libraries

Monthly children's magazines flourished in the economically expansive decades following the American Civil War. Foremost among these was St. Nicholas, which launched in 1873 under the editorship of Mary Mapes Dodge, famed author of Hans Brinker. Dedicated to banishing dreary moralizing from juvenile fare and to giving young Americans their first solid exposure to literature and art, Dodge recruited contributions from Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, and L. Frank Baum, among others, and from such top-drawer illustrators as Frederic Remington, Howard Pyle, and Palmer Cox. In 1899, the magazine added the St. Nicholas League, a contest-driven department to be written and illustrated by its young subscribers. The roster of future luminaries who broke into print in the League's pages is astonishing: E. B. White, Katharine Sergeant (White), Edmund Wilson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eudora Welty, and Rachel Carson, to name a few.


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