Art For The Middle Classes

Art for the Middle Classes
CYNTHIA LEE PAT TERSON

AMERICA’S ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINES OF THE 1840S
UNIVERSIT Y PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI / JACKSON

www.upress.state.ms.us
Funding for the color illustrations provided by the

University of South Florida Polytechnic.
The University Press of Mississippi is a member

of the Association of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2010 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2010

∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Patterson, Cynthia Lee.
Art for the middle classes : America’s illustrated
magazines of the 1840s / Cynthia Lee Patterson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-60473-736-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-
1-60473-737-0 (ebook) 1. Magazine illustration—United
States—19th century. 2. Art and the middle class—
United States—History—19th century. 3. Periodicals—
Publishing—United States—History—19th century.
4. Middle class—Books and reading—United States—
History—19th century. I. Title. II. Title: America’s
illustrated magazines of the 1840s.
NC975.P38 2010
741.6’52097309034—dc22 2010008412
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Contents
vii LIST OF FIGURES
ix LIST OF COLOR PLATES
xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
3 1. Introduction
THE PHILADELPHIA PIC TORIALS AND AMERICAN VISUAL
CULTURE IN THE 1840S
18 2. “From the Burin of an American Artist”

ARTISTIC PRODUC TION IN THE 1830S AND 1840S
37 3. “Superior Embellishments”
INNOVATIONS TO THE GRAPHIC ARTS IN THE PHILADELPHIA PIC TORIALS
55 4. “The Fluttering Host of Many-Colored Competitors”

REGIONAL IMITATORS IN THE NORTHEAST, WEST, AND SOUTH
87 5. “Illustration of a Picture”
AMERICAN AUTHORS AND THE MAGAZINE EMBELLISHMENTS
119 6. “Engravings from Original Pictures”

COMPE TING FOR AUDIENCES AND ORIGINAL ART
142 7. “A Mezzotint in Every Number”

BAT TLING FOR EMBELLISHERS, BAT TLING OVER ART
160 8. Conclusion
THE ASCENDANCY OF NEW YORK, AND MARKE T STRATIFICATION
169 NOTES
203 INDEX
This page intentionally left blank
Figures
1.1 Editor of the Lady’s Book, frontispiece, Godey’s, February 1850 5

1.2 Sarah J. Hale, frontispiece, Godey’s, December 1850 6
1.3 Editor of Graham’s Magazine, frontispiece, Graham’s, July 1850 7
1.4 Graham’s Magazine 1846, title cover 8
1.5 Edith, frontispiece, Peterson’s Ladies’ National Magazine,
July 1849 10
2.1 Thomas Sully 33
3.1 Morton McMichael 39
3.2 Miss Eliza Leslie, frontispiece, Godey’s, January 1846 40
3.3 T. S. Arthur, frontispiece, Godey’s, January 1844 42
3.4 The Rustic Maid, frontispiece, Miss Leslie’s, May 1843 47
3.5 The City Belle, frontispiece, Miss Leslie’s, May 1843 48
4.1 Title cover, Boston Miscellany, April 1842 60
4.2 Title cover, The Eclectic Magazine, August 1845 67
4.3 The Culture and Preparation of Tea, frontispiece, Ladies’ Companion,
August 1843 72
4.4 Doctor Sian Seng; Or, a Chinaman in Paris, Graham’s, March 1849,
page 174 73
4.5 Storming of Palace Hill at the Battle of Monterey, frontispiece,
Columbian, January 1847 78
4.6 The Penobscot Belle, frontispiece, Ladies’ Repository, January 1849 83
4.7 The Young Vermont Mathematician, frontispiece, Ladies’ Repository,
April 1849 85
5.1 The Mother, frontispiece, Graham’s, July 1843 97
5.2 The Snake in the Grass, frontispiece, Sartain’s, October 1849 101
5.3 The Bud and the Blossom, frontispiece, Graham’s, August 1842 106
5.4 Steps to Ruin, I, frontispiece, The Union, November 1847 111
5.5 The Novel Reader, frontispiece, The Union, November 1847 113
5.6 Taking the Advantage, frontispiece, The Union, August 1847 115
6.1 The Rose and the Lily, frontispiece, Godey’s, September 1845 132
6.2 The Child and Lute, frontispiece, Graham’s, January 1845 133
6.3 Heroic Women of America/The Rescue, frontispiece, Godey’s,
January 1847 135
vii
viii F IG U R ES
6.4 Fort MacKenzie, frontispiece, Graham’s, November 1847 138

6.5 Domestic Life among the Indians, frontispiece, Godey’s, June 1845 139
7.1 The Sportsman, frontispiece, Graham’s, October 1847 143
7.2 Mountain Airs and City Graces, fashion plate, Godey’s,
October 1850 145
7.3 Godey’s 1848 Lady’s Book, title cover, Godey’s, January 1848 147
7.4 It Is I, frontispiece, Peterson’s, June 1849 149
7.5 The Lost Glove, frontispiece, The Union, April 1848 153
8.1 Taking the Queue, frontispiece, Godey’s, August 1849 161
8.2 The Burial of De Soto on the Mississippi, frontispiece, Sartain’s,
October 1851 165
Color Plates
Plate 1 Croome’s Vase, frontispiece, Godey’s, January 1844

Plate 2 Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature & Art, title cover, July 1850
Plate 3 Fashion plate, Graham’s, November 1841
Plate 4 The Pets, frontispiece, Miss Leslie’s, March 1843
Plate 5 Grandpapa’s Pet, frontispiece, Miss Leslie’s, April 1843
Plate 6 Belisarius, frontispiece, Miss Leslie’s, August 1843
Plate 7 Thirty-one Coloured Embossed Medallion Seals, frontispiece, Godey’s,
December 1843
Plate 8 Lace and Birds, frontispiece, Graham’s, January 1842
ix
Acknowledgments
Financial support for this project was provided by a number of sources. The
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) funded the proj-
ect in its early stages. My thanks to Linda Shopes at PHMC, and to Jonathan
Stayer, Linda Reis, and G. Jerry Ellis at the Pennsylvania State Archives for
valuable guidance selecting collections and for providing digital images.
A summerlong fellowship through the Smithsonian Institutions allowed
me to access collections at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), the National
Museum of American History (NMAH), and the Archives of American Art.
I want to thank Wendy Wick Reaves at NPG, for her continued support as I
revised the book manuscript. Priscilla Wood (now retired as head librarian of
the Costume Collection Library at NMAH), carved out precious space in her
already cramped office for me to catalog the contents of many of the periodi-
cals in this study. Also thanks to Joan Boudreau in Graphic Arts at NMAH.
William Truettner read the case study of Thomas Sully and pronounced my
argument “convincing,” for which I was grateful. A special thanks belongs
to Helena Wright, Head Curator of Graphic Arts at NMAH, who provided
invaluable guidance during my research, and read and commented on the
book manuscript.
A crucial monthlong fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society (AAS)
allowed me to catalogue periodicals from Boston, New York, Cincinnati, and
the South, and bolstered my argument about the market supremacy of the
Philadelphia pictorials in the 1840s. A special thanks to Georgia B. Barnhill,
Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts, and director of the Center for
Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC), for encouraging my work at AAS,
and most especially for reading and providing feedback on the manuscript.
Georgia also introduced me to Katharine Martinez, John Sartain scholar and
the Herman and Joan Suit Librarian of the Fine Arts Library at Harvard Uni-
versity, who also provided much-appreciated feedback.
Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library provided two separate month-
long residential research fellowships—the first while this project was in early
stages, the latter as the book manuscript neared completion. I was grateful
to make the acquaintance of Eleanor McD. Thompson before she retired. Her
systematic card cataloguing of the work of artists and engravers held in the
xi
xii AC KNOWL E DGME NTS
Winterthur collections spurred me to create my own digital databases of the

artwork in these magazines. Jeanne Solensky in manuscripts and Dorothy
Higgins in rare books, cheerfully assisted, while Gary Kulik introduced me to
other scholars and archivists, chief among them James Green at the Library
Company of Philadelphia, where I later spent several weeks over two sum-
mers adding to my databases. Thanks also to Helena Richardson and Emily
Guthrie for their prompt assistance retrieving materials during my second
stay at Winterthur, and to Rosemary Krill for organizing the lively Thursday
roundtable lunches.
The University of South Florida Polytechnic provided two summer research
fellowships that permitted my return to northern archives. A special thanks
belongs to Judith Ponticell, Associate Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at
USF Polytechnic, for her understanding that an interdisciplinary project of
this nature takes time to bring to completion. Thanks also to Mark Green-
berg, director of the Florida Studies Center at the University of South Florida
Tampa campus library, who provided permissions to reproduce engravings
from bound periodicals housed in the USF Library Special Collections.
My early writing-group partner and dear friend, Wendy Burns-Ardolino,
continued to be my primary cheerleader, long after her first book was pub-
lished. Other writing partners who provided much-needed feedback at vari-
ous stages include Chris Sutch, Katy Razzano, Elena Cardenas, Katja Her-
ing, and Stephanie Mayer Heydt. Likewise, my mentor, Barbara Melosh,
continued her encouragement, even after leaving the profession to become
a Lutheran minister. My daughters Hailey and Caitlin managed to grow from
exasperating teenagers into successful college students and productive citi-
zens, in spite of my distracted parenting during the process of researching
and writing this book.
My mother, Alda E. Nan, believed absolutely that this book project would
come to fruition, even when I remained less hopeful. Although she did not
live to see the book published, her pride in my work sustained me when I
wanted to give up. I wrote this book imagining her as my audience, and I
dedicate this book to her memory.
1
Introduction
THE PHILADELPHIA PIC TORIALS AND
AMERICAN VISUAL CULTURE IN THE 1840S
In January 1844, publisher Louis A. Godey offered to his “fair patrons” of

The Lady’s Book a frontispiece engraving of a flower garland–draped vase sur-
rounded by books and a decorative fan prepared by the artist, William Croome
(see plate 1). Godey used his editorial column that month to remind his “kind
and constant readers” of the tremendous expense of providing them with
the “numerous beautiful engravings” and the work of the “first writers in
America.” Importantly, Godey greets Croome as an artist familiar to both the
publisher and his readers: “Our talented friend, Mr. Croome, has furnished
an embellishment for the present number of the Lady’s Book, which affords
an additional evidence of his exquisite taste and skill in design.” Godey con-
tinues his praise of Croome by noting that the artist’s depictions of historical
subjects are as adept as his “beautiful creations of Flora.” Godey concludes,
“We are gratified that our magazine should afford a field for the display of his
brilliant and versatile talent” (The Lady’s Book, January 1844, 56).
The following holiday season, for his January 1845 issue, Louis A. Godey
offered another Croome design, an exquisite hand-colored frontispiece
engraving entitled Bowl of Fruit. In his “Editor’s Book Table” column at the
end of this issue, he explains: “By the aid of our accomplished friend Croome,
we are enabled to treat our friends to a dessert of fruit, served up in a cut-
glass fruit-basket in a style suitable to the season. . . . It gives us great pleasure
to present so rich a dessert, and in doing it, we hail our friends, far and near,
with the old-fashioned but heartfelt wish of a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A
HAPPY NEW YEAR” (“Editor’s Table,” January 1845, 48).
3
4 P HI LADE L P HIA PIC TORIAL S A N D AM E R IC A N V ISUA L CULT UR E, 1840S
Godey’s 1844 and 1845 New Year’s greetings to his subscribers offer a win-
dow into an important venue for the circulation of original American art in
the middle decades of the nineteenth century: the illustrated monthly maga-
zines.1 A parsing of Godey’s greetings introduces the major themes underlying
this study. First, Godey’s description of Croome’s engravings indicates that
Godey has commissioned them exclusively for publication in his magazine.
Unlike earlier illustrated magazines that frequently featured secondhand
plates reproducing the work of Continental artists, Godey’s featured engrav-
ings of original American artwork, created exclusively for the magazine.
In referring to artist William Croome as his “talented” and “accomplished”
friend, Godey therefore hints at his own assumption of the role of patron and
promoter of American art.
Second, Godey refers to his readers as his “over thirty thousand friends,”
establishing both the size of his subscription list in the mid-1840s, and
Godey’s established editorial persona—one that assumes cozy familiarity
with his readers. This strategy of constructing a familiar editorial persona
would prove critical to Godey’s success in staving off the increased competi-
tion his magazine encountered from other illustrated American monthlies
in the 1840s, a decade in which Philadelphia surpassed all other cities in
monthly magazine circulation.2
Third, in describing the “richness” of the dessert, Godey references not
only the artistic beauty and lifelike verisimilitude of the fruit, but the implicit
value of this engraved and colored plate as a desirable home decoration. In
offering the plate as a Christmas “treat” for his “friends,” Godey’s comments
here underscore another major theme in this study—the importance of these
magazines in establishing American periodical art engravings as desirable
and affordable middle-class commodities in the 1840s.3
By 1845, Godey’s Lady’s Book had become one of the leading illustrated
monthly magazines of the era. Louis Godey (see fig. 1.1) established his Phila-
delphia magazine in 1830, and had acquired his most important asset, edi-
tor Sarah Josepha Hale (see fig 1.2), in 1837 with the purchase of her Ladies’
Magazine, a Boston contemporary.4 During the 1830s, Godey steadily intro-
duced improvements to both the quality of paper, type, and printing ink, and
to the literary content of the magazine. For the decade of the 1830s, Godey’s
Lady’ Book remained relatively unchallenged as America’s leading illustrated
monthly magazine, featuring the latest innovations to the graphic arts, as his
presentation of the Christmas present engraving, Croome’s Vase, indicates. By
decade’s end, however, Godey faced challengers.
FIGURE 1.1 Editor of the Lady’s Book, frontispiece, Godey’s, February 1850.
FIGURE 1.2 Sarah J. Hale, frontispiece, Godey’s, December 1850. Painted by W. B. Chambers and
Engraved expressly for Godey’s Lady’s Book by W. G. Armstrong.
FIGURE 1.3 Editor of Graham’s Magazine, frontispiece, Graham’s, July 1850. Painted by T. B. Read,
engraved by W. G. Armstrong. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
FIGURE 1.4 Graham’s Magazine 1846, title cover. Engraved Expressly for Graham’s Magazine by
J[ames] W. Steel, from a Model by J[ohn] McPherson.
PHILA D E LPHIA PIC TOR IA LS A N D AM E R I C AN V I S UAL C U LT U R E, 1840S 9
In 1839, twenty-six-year-old George R. Graham (see fig. 1.3), newly admit-

ted to the bar, abandoned the law profession to buy a struggling Philadelphia
monthly magazine, the Casket. Within a year, he also purchased Burton’s Gen-
tleman’s Magazine, combining the two into one publication he titled Graham’s
Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine (the Casket and Gentleman’s United). While
Graham changed the title several times over the years as he sought to appeal
to varying audiences, he nonetheless developed the magazine into the lead-
ing literary monthly of the 1840s. According to Frank Luther Mott, the great
historian of this literature, Graham’s became “one of the three or four most
important magazines in the United States.” In fact, in Mott’s words, “in the
five years 1841–1845 [Graham’s] displayed a brilliance which has seldom been
matched in American magazine history” (I, 344).5 Like Louis Godey, George
Graham also sought to feature innovative and uniquely “American” embel-
lishments, as in this cover from 1846, done up in a style to resemble bank
note engraving (see fig. 1.4).
Three years later, in 1842, Charles J. Peterson, a partner of Graham’s in
another publishing venture, the Saturday Evening Post, plotted with Graham
to publish a competitor to Godey’s popular three-dollar women’s magazine.
Peterson and Graham also engaged the writing and editorial services of a
well-known woman writer, Ann S. Stephens, who had aided the latter in edit-
ing Graham’s. Like Graham, Peterson would pitch his magazine to varying
audiences over the decade of the 1840s, though initial publication presented
the magazine as written by women, for women.
Although the new magazine featured fewer pages than Godey’s (thirty-
six to Godey’s usual forty-eight to seventy-two), Peterson prided himself in
featuring a minimum of three engravings in each issue to Godey’s two, and
in offering reduced price incentives: a dollar twenty-five a year for a club of
eight subscribing simultaneously (Mott, II, 307).6 As Peterson boasted in the
April 1843 issue, “In four numbers we have published eighteen pictorial embel-
lishments. Not even the three dollar Magazines have equalled this” (“Editor’s
Table,” 128). Peterson favored the costlier mezzotint engravings over line
engravings, particularly later in the decade to illustrate the serial novels his
magazine especially promoted.7 However, like Godey, he endeavored to offer
novel fashion plates as well, like the colored lithograph of Edith—which per-
formed triple duty as frontispiece and fashion plate for July 1849, and as an
illustration for a continuing series “Hints for Equestrians” (see fig. 1.5).
In January 1843 a small but attractive monthly entitled Miss Leslie’s Maga-
zine: Home Book of Fashion, Literature and Domestic Economy entered the Phila-
delphia magazine fray, financed by the “ample means” of publisher Morton
FIGURE 1.5 Edith, frontispiece, Peterson’s Ladies’ National Magazine, July 1849, Wagner & McGuigan,
Lithographers.
McMichael, and edited by popular recipe book and gift book editor, Eliza Les-
lie.8 Miss Leslie was sister to the painter Charles Leslie, and related by marriage
to the Carey publishing firm of Philadelphia (publishers of The Gift, the oft-
praised annual edited by Leslie). With a commitment to push magazine embel-
lishment to new artistic heights, McMichael and Leslie directly challenged the
artistic pretensions of competitors Godey’s, Graham’s, and Peterson’s.
Late in the decade, John Sartain, already the leading mezzotinter of his
era, also threw his hat into the magazine publishing ring, assuming ownership
of The Union Magazine in 1848. Sartain had engraved for Godey’s, Graham’s,
Peterson’s, and Miss Leslie’s (as well as other venues) before buying the Union,
relocating it from New York to Philadelphia, and renaming it Sartain’s Union
Magazine of Literature and Art. Like Graham’s, the Union targeted an audi-
ence of both men and women from its inception. Like Godey’s, Peterson’s, and
particularly Miss Leslie’s, John Sartain sought to make the “embellishments”
in his magazine represent the finest in original American artwork, as this
chromolithographed title page indicates (see Plate 2). Additionally, following
both Godey and Graham, Sartain frequently commissioned short stories and
sketches to illustrate the engravings, rather than the other way around.
These five monthly magazines—Godey’s, Graham’s, Peterson’s, Miss Leslie’s
and the Union—referred to in this study collectively as “the Philadelphia Pic-
torials,” helped place Philadelphia at the artistic and publishing center of the
nation in the 1840s.9 Boston and Cincinnati launched New England and west-
ern regional magazines to challenge Philadelphia’s supremacy, though most
were short-lived. The southern cities of Richmond, Charleston, Savannah,
and New Orleans also hosted literary magazines, but apparently lacked both
the printing technologies and the financial backing necessary to include the
expensive illustrations, at least in this decade. By decade’s end Charles Peter-
son would write nervously, about the Harper Brothers Publishing House of
New York, “What will they be at next?” (“Editor’s Table,” The Ladies’ National
Magazine, January 1848, 52). For the decade of the 1840s, however, Phila-
delphia reigned supreme in the publishing industry, and the city’s monthly
magazines brought particular “distinction” to Philadelphia’s periodical press
(Mott, I, 378). These magazines served up to middle-class audiences a steady
diet of fiction, poetry, travel literature, essays, and embellishments.
The full-page embellishments in particular, printed separately on spe-
cially designed paper and tipped in to the magazines, often at the front or
back, were clearly designed for pulling out and framing (Mott, I, 580). The
1840s saw advances in the technologies of reproduction that led to a prolif-
eration of images in monthly magazines that had previously relied primarily
on printed text. Although some of the illustrated periodicals—Godey’s for

instance—came to be known for the hand-colored fashion plates,10 Peterson’s,
Graham’s, and the Union, in keeping with their wide range of topics and mul-
tiple intended audiences, also displayed engraved portraits, historical and
religious scenes, landscapes and wildlife, rural and urban scenes, images of
Native Americans, and other innovative embellishments. During its one year
with Eliza Leslie at the helm, Miss Leslie’s specifically featured a series of nov-
elty embellishments, touting them as “American firsts.”
These magazines were extremely popular and widely circulated in their
era. The Union achieved a circulation of 25,000 in its heyday, and Graham’s
boasted a circulation of 40,000 in 1842—at a time when the U.S. population
hovered around 17,000,000.11 By 1850, Godey advertised a print run in excess
of 70,000, at a time when the American Art-Union membership was only
16,500.12 Several scholars have pointed to the importance of the embellish-
ments in contributing to the success of these magazines.13 Yet surprisingly
little scholarly work has been done specifically on these magazines, and even
less work explicitly targeting the embellishments.14 The wide circulation of
these magazines argues for their importance to the circulation and democra-
tization of American art. Yet nineteenth-century American art history survey
texts and monographs have largely overlooked the importance of these mate-
rials to the history of American art.15
This project redresses this scholarly neglect by focusing specifically on the
engraved matter in these magazines, and the ways in which these embellish-
ments functioned as cultural artifacts in the literary and artistic marketplace
of the 1840s. The Philadelphia pictorials reached a widespread market of
readers and viewers who lacked access to the print shops, art galleries, and
public exhibitions available to citizens in the larger seaboard cities. My pri-
mary claim in this study is that the large readership and widespread distribu-
tion of these magazines argues for their centrality to a comprehensive narra-
tive of nineteenth-century American art. These magazines made a significant
contribution to the production, distribution, and consumption of American
art by placing engraved copies of original American artwork in the hands of
an eager middle-class reading/viewing public. Further, both the textual and
artistic contributions to these magazines remunerated the authors, editors,
artists, and engravers associated with these magazines adequately enough
that they too could entertain middle-class aspirations.
With the digital availability of Harper’s Weekly, Godey’s (through Acces-
sible Archives), and the Library of Congress American Memory collection, and
the Making of America collections at Cornell and the University of Michigan,
American periodicals from the 1850s and 1860s (and the full-page embel-
lishments contained therein) are now much more widely available to schol-
ars. Moreover, with ProQuest’s 2000 release of the American Periodical Series
Online (APS Online), scholars can now search through these digital databases
for textual materials from the magazines covered in this study (save a few
magazines discussed in this book that were never scanned or digitized).
Two challenges remain for scholars interested in these magazines—the
first an issue of access, and the second an issue of reproductive technolo-
gies. Access to the commercial databases is limited to those institutions (and
the scholars fortunate enough to be employed at these institutions) that can
afford the steep subscription and/or purchase prices for these products. This
restriction severely limits access to commercially produced digital archives.
The reproduction issue presents equal challenges: unfortunately, for visual
culture scholars and art historians, ProQuest, the largest of the commercial
databases, digitized materials not from original print copies of the magazines
and newspapers (which would likely have proved a logistical nightmare) but
from formats utilized for the original microfilm APS series. The full-page
engravings appear just as murky in the ProQuest online database as they were
in the earlier microfilm format. That leaves scholars interested in the visual
material in these magazines where they started—forced to consult print cop-
ies of these magazines in limited archives across the country. I suspect that
poor microfilm quality, coupled with limited access to print archival holdings
of full runs of these magazines, has deterred many scholars from a sustained
treatment of the visual images in these magazines. The limited access to high-
quality visual reproductions of the embellishments in these magazines argues
further for the importance of this project in recuperating their place in the
history of American art and culture.
Most magazines prior to this era tended to target an audience primarily
either of men or of women. In fact, most magazines published prior to the
1840s featured work written by men, for men. Louis Godey departed from
this trend in assuming the helm of the Lady’s Book in 1830, and for over forty
years directed his energies and his magazine to meeting the needs of his “fair
readers” (Mott I, 580-94). In Graham’s, Peterson’s, Miss Leslie’s, and the Union
we have examples of periodicals that not only published work by both male
and female authors, but targeted an audience of both men and women as
well.16 This study adds to our understanding of nineteenth-century reading
practices by focusing on magazines that addressed both male and female
readers.17 Because most historians and literary critics tend to homogenize the
artwork in discussions of these magazines, I attempt in this study to tease out
subtle differences between them. To do so, I focus on the strategies employed

by editors and publishers to target their imagined audience(s) through their
selection and promotion of the magazines’ embellishments and embellishers.
This project thus also serves as a case study for periodical publishers’ promo-
tional practices in the mid-nineteenth century.
In addition to targeting mostly male readers, most magazines published
prior to the 1840s featured reprints lifted from other, often European
sources, and rarely attributed authorship.18 The Philadelphia pictorials not
only boasted “entirely original” contents, but also prominently published the
names of contributing authors, artists, and engravers. While Godey’s prided
itself on being “for the ladies,” and mostly “by the ladies,” Graham’s, Peterson’s,
and the Union featured a fairly equal division of male and female authors.
Godey’s, Peterson’s, Miss Leslie’s, and the Union all featured women editors,
although both the artistic and publishing functions of these magazines were
controlled exclusively by men.19
The generous pay to contributors instituted by George Graham and Louis
Godey prompted other magazines to follow suit, and in the 1840s magazine
writing and embellishing became, for the first time, a way to earn a modest
but respectable living. Union editor Caroline Kirkland, for example, relied on
her writing and editing for the magazine to support herself and four chil-
dren after the sudden death of her husband.20 In addition to Kirkland, Eliza-
beth Oakes Smith and Frances S. Osgood, among others, also wrote out of
financial necessity as well as literary ambition. While some recent scholarly
work has been done on some of these writers and editors, and the canonical
writers certainly have received their due, no previous study has attempted
to focus primarily on the artistic matter and to treat these magazines in
relationship to one another in the literary and artistic marketplace of the
1840s.21 In particular, this study looks more carefully at the economics of
production and distribution—examining how publishers managed to stay
in business in an era before widespread reliance on paid advertising, and at
how contributors (authors, editors, artists, and engravers) negotiated with
publishers to earn a living.22
The early decades of the nineteenth century witnessed an explosion in tex-
tual and visual materials, as improved technologies of reproduction, coupled
with increased literacy and improved methods of distribution (canals, rail-
roads, turnpikes), permitted more widespread dissemination of print and
visual media. The American reading public in the major cities faced a cor-
nucopia of available reading material, including occasional pamphlets, daily
and weekly newspapers, monthly magazines, gift books, annuals, serialized
novels, and books.23 Additionally, with the rise of the American Art-Union
and other art organizations, mass-reproduced engravings of both the work of
European masters and original American artists became widely available to
the urban citizenry.24 In major metropolitan areas like New York, Boston, and
Philadelphia, American audiences faced a dizzying display of visual culture,
in newly opened museums, on billboards, in storefront displays, banners,
daguerreotype studios, street signs, and even on banknotes.25
Yet these magazines were the first to target a national reading audience
of moderate means, and to penetrate widely to markets outside the eastern
seaboard cities, bringing “original” American art into the hands of ordinary
citizens.26 In towns too small to support art galleries and print shops, mid-
dle-class readers who could not afford the more expensive annuals and gift
books could nonetheless sample the latest in American art via the pullout
embellishments in the monthly magazines.27 While evidence of the reading
and viewing habits of ordinary citizens is notoriously difficult to uncover,
we can analyze the intended audiences of these magazines by examining the
editorial matter. We can also examine the manuscript evidence of the artists,
engravers, authors, and editors of these magazines to determine how the pro-
ducers of these cultural products also positioned themselves as consumers of
these cultural goods.
This study is organized both chronologically and thematically. To sketch
a more detailed picture of the economics of production of the embellish-
ments for these magazines, I consulted the previously underutilized corre-
spondences of some of the artists, engravers, authors, editors, and publishers
working primarily in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston in this era (chapter
2). This material proves particularly useful in establishing a sense of the eco-
nomics of artistic production in the mid- to late 1830s and running through
the mid-1840s. Focusing on 1843, a pivotal year in Philadelphia publishing, I
demonstrate the link between innovations in engraving and printing tech-
nologies, showcased by the Franklin Institute, and publishers’ efforts to pro-
mote both the beauty and utility of their art engravings as affordable mid-
dle-class commodities (chapter 3). Chapter 4 examines a handful of regional
imitators published in Boston, New York, and Cincinnati. While most of the
artists, engravers, and publishers were men, well-known American authors,
both men and women, also contributed to the periodicals. Chapter 5 exam-
ines the relationship between the textual material submitted by American
writers to “illustrate” the engravings, and the engravings themselves.
The large national readership attained by the Philadelphia pictorials,
particularly Godey’s and Graham’s, set these magazines apart from some of
their regional imitators. Chapters 6 and 7 examine the heated competition

between Godey’s, Graham’s, Sartain’s, and, to a lesser extent, Peterson’s, in the
mid- to late 1840s. Key issues driving this competition for artists, engrav-
ers, and audiences included: “What is art, and, specifically, what is American
art?” and “Who should control what circulates in the magazines under the
banner of ‘American art’?” Chapter 6 frames this competition around audi-
ence address and the competition for original artwork from Philadelphia’s
best-known painters. Chapter 7 extends this analysis to competition for the
services of the leading engravers, and to a discussion of the magazines’ art
columns as important sites for examining the battle between publishers over
defining and evaluating American art at the end of the 1840s.
Any study that attempts treating over a decade’s worth of content for sev-
eral monthly magazines risks flattening out the often shifting and competing
voices both within an individual periodical and between these periodicals.
Reading back and forth through monthly issues of these magazines is like
looking through a constantly shifting kaleidoscope. Calculating an average
of 60 pages of text and 3 full-page engravings per month (using Peterson’s
36 pages at the low end, and the Union’s 100+ pages at the upper), this study
covers well over 200,000 pages of text and over 2,000 full-page engravings. I
catalogued the contents in a fully searchable database, and read or skimmed
approximately one-quarter of the reading matter (concentrating on the edi-
torial matter and engraving illustrations), and examined nearly all of the
visual material (in some cases full-page engravings had been removed from
the bound volumes I examined).
Thus, although this study is fairly comprehensive it is also necessarily
selective, and focuses primarily on these periodicals as cultural and artistic
artifacts. Any number of historically accurate narratives could be generated
from a study of these magazines and their producers. Most of the previous
work done on these magazines only sampled the engraved material, while
I have tried to analyze the entire scope of this artwork over the sweep of
a decade. A strictly literary study of these magazines might also overlook
the materiality of these cultural products. The volumes in my own collection
range from unbound single issues to bound half-year volumes (consisting of
six consecutive monthly issues, either January to June or July to December),
to one-year double-volume editions finely bound and embossed with the
owner’s name on the cover. In the first issue of a six-month volume, publish-
ers provided an “Index” to the preceding volume. This “Index” and a “Preface”
generally precedes the printed material in bound volumes and serves as a
table of contents.
The Philadelphia pictorials offered a wide array of reading and visual mat-
ter. Expensive bindings and personalized bookplates indicate that some own-
ers treasured this reading material as cherished possessions that served not
only as continuing entertainment and enlightenment but also as markers of
social status. In a young country increasingly concerned with defining itself
in opposition to its English and Continental predecessors, the Philadelphia
pictorials offer one site for studying the emergence of a distinctly American
literature and art. To understand the importance of the artwork to the finan-
cial success of these magazines, it is necessary first to understand the eco-
nomics of artistic production of these images, and that will be the focus of the
next chapter.
2
“ From the Burin of
an American Artist”
ARTISTIC PRODUC TION IN THE 1830S AND 1840S
In his “Editor’s Table” for the March 1839 issue of his magazine, Louis A.
Godey promises to offer his fair readers, besides the monthly color fashion
plate, “a beautiful engraving on steel,” either a portrait, landscape, or his-
torical subject. Then, in a special column entitled “OUR PLATES” published
two months later in the May issue, he promises that these steel engravings
will be “always from the burin of an American artist.” Additionally, he notes
his plans to provide two extra steel plates each year, of either an American
landscape, or “some celebrated literary character,” observing that this will
bring the total to “TWENTY SIX Engravings on Steel in a year, besides Wood
Cuts of the finest kind, Embroidery and Music.” Godey also uses this column
as an opportunity to remind his readers of the costs incurred to bring them
these plates, and urges them to pay their subscriptions. In return, he prom-
ises them “several original pictures from our own collection” to be engraved
on steel in the year ahead. In August 1839, Godey boldly informs his readers
that he employs twenty “lady colourists” year-round at a cost of three thou-
sand dollars, just to color his fashion plates. In the same column devoted to
“PLATES OF FASHION,” he also sniffs disparagingly at the uncolored wood
fashion plates offered by a “contemporary,” and announces he will demon-
strate the difference by offering two fashion plates in the September issue,
one colored and one uncolored, so that his readers can compare.
By the opening of the decade of the 1840s, Louis Godey’s magazine was
the leading illustrated monthly of the era.1 As noted in the previous chap-
ter, Godey had launched his magazine a decade earlier, eventually buying
18
A RT IST IC PR OD U C T I O N I N T H E 1830S A N D 1840S 19
out a smaller Boston rival, the Ladies’ Magazine, and absorbing editor Sarah
Josepha Hale into the purchase. Hale, widowed in 1822 with five children to
support, had launched her Ladies’ Magazine in 1828, two years before Godey.
No fan of the fashion plates that Godey knew his readers prized, Hale main-
tained a steadfast commitment to the literary matter in the magazine, using
her editorial pen tirelessly to promote women’s education. With her eyes
firmly on the literary matter, Godey could indulge his interest in American
art. Godey’s interest in obtaining the best in American art for his magazine’s
embellishments helped to promote the work of a growing number of fledgling
American artists and engravers.
As Wendy Wick Reaves points out, art historians have tended to neglect
or denigrate “pictorial material of this type” because it was traditionally held
to be “commercial art, a popular art, and frequently a derivative art” (Reaves
speaks specifically here of portrait prints). However, Reaves continues, “these
pictures must not be overlooked as legitimate works of art” because they
were “considered as such in their own time.”2 The artists, engravers, design-
ers, and publishers of the Philadelphia pictorials understood the embellish-
ments prepared for the magazines as uniquely “American art” forms, and
this chapter and subsequent ones treat them as such. The consumers of
these images also treated them as art. As Lawrence Levine and Alan Wal-
lach have argued, before the Civil War American consumers failed to make
the distinctions between “high” and “low” art that would be institutional-
ized in the twentieth century.3 In the 1840s, for the first time in our nation’s
history, American artists produced and distributed, via the embellishments
offered in the Philadelphia pictorials, art intended for a widespread middle-
brow audience. These magazines thus serve as a fruitful site for studying the
production, promotion, and consumption of cultural artifacts that served as
markers of class affiliation as well.
In this and subsequent chapters, I make several interrelated claims. First,
I argue that the periodicals served as an important vehicle for the widespread
distribution of American art—in conjunction with, yet surpassing in impor-
tance, the Art-Unions, the gift books, the annuals, illustrated books, exhibi-
tions, and art and print galleries, just to name the most obvious corollary dis-
tribution sites. I also assert that the periodicals encouraged the production
of a uniquely American art—by commissioning original art works directly for
the magazines. Because the artists and engravers contributing to these peri-
odicals aspired to middle-class comfort, they frequently adapted their artistic
skills to a variety of genres and media—concerned less with critical reception
of their work than with simply making a moderate living. With this in mind,
20 ARTI S TI C PRODUC T ION IN T HE 1830S A N D 1840S
I offer at the end of this chapter a brief rereading of the work of Thomas Sully
that accounts for his contributions to the periodicals. Finally, I argue that
the periodicals, as a site of cultural production and consumption, operated
on a cultural register between “fine art” and “commercial art” as these terms
become defined by the subsequent art historical literature. Publishers cast
the magazine embellishments as costly but affordable commodities, thereby
encouraging consumption of art by and for an emerging middle class. Middle-
class magazine readers could own artwork, albeit mass-produced engraved
prints, created expressly for their consumption. In making American art
widely available through the pullout art engravings, the producers and con-
sumers of these magazines helped democratize and commodify American art
in the process.
Louis Godey clearly understood the appeal for his audiences of owning
original artwork—he himself was an avid collector of American paintings. As
noted earlier, he marshaled the editorial spaces in his magazine specifically
to herald the original American art featured in Godey’s. However, Godey was
not the only publisher to make such claims. George Graham also promised
as much in February 1844, during the mid-decade “golden years” of Graham’s
Magazine:
The leading embellishment in the January Number was from an original

picture, painted expressly for us by Thomas Sully, Esq., and in the pres-
ent number we give an original from Rothermel, a young Philadelphia
artist who is rapidly rising in his profession. We have now in the hands
of engravers several original pictures, by Chapman, Sully, Leutze, Con-
aroe [sic], Croome, and other well-known artists; and, if these elegant
prints are properly appreciated, we shall adopt at once the plan of having
all our pictures painted expressly for this Magazine. In the meanwhile,
gentlemen critics, please remember that ours is a magazine of art as well
as literature—that we are furthering the interests of a large number of
artists as well as writers—and judge us accordingly. (Graham’s, February
1844, 96)
By “properly appreciated,” George Graham alludes to the problem inherent

in making a promise of this nature: in the absence of significant advertis-
ing revenues, publishers relied on maintaining and increasing a large sub-
scription base to pay for the costly embellishments. Earlier in the column
quoted from above, entitled “Our Portrait Gallery,” Graham promises that
“every writer of note” would be pictured in the magazine, and defends “light
magazines” of this kind against their critics. He writes, “It has become fash-
ionable among a certain set—a very small one—to sneer at the ‘light maga-
zines,’ as if the literature of a young and growing nation must be heavy to be
good, or would be popular if it were.” He admits that like many, he would like
to see “a high-toned magazine with fifty thousand readers . . . and without
the aid of pictures,” but opines, “the man who expects it now is a quarter of a
century ahead of his time.”
In so stating, Graham not only betrays his own ambivalence about the
pictorial matter in the magazines, but also obviously addresses critics who
panned the pictorials both for their light literary content and for their reli-
ance on “embellishments” to sell subscriptions. “Embellishment,” after all,
implies something frivolous, extraneous to, and in counterpoint to the seri-
ous literary matter of a magazine. Here Graham echoes a mistrust of “pic-
tures” reminiscent of an earlier Republican dismissal of art as superfluous
and associated with aristocratic pretensions.4 However, Graham’s acknowl-
edgment of the importance of the artwork also signals a shift in cultural atti-
tudes; by pointing out the service his magazine performs in promoting the
work of fledgling American artists, he assumes his readers (and critics) agree
that art is “useful” as a method of promulgating American values. In refusing
the older Republican model of embellishments as frivolous, he also stakes
out the turf he hopes his magazine will occupy: offering “exquisite original
engravings from drawings by our own painters” and reading matter from a
“host of young writers” targeting “a young people panting for a literature of
their own.”
THE ECONOMICS OF ARTISTIC PRODUC TION

IN THE 1830S AND 1840S
As several scholars of periodical literature have noted, echoing the publishers

and editors themselves, illustrations were expensive. However, as Mott notes,
“all the really prosperous magazines printed many plates” (I, 519–21).5 Pay-
ments to engravers generally did not include separate fees to the artists who
prepared the original designs upon which the engravings were based.6 Some
publishers, like Godey, bought original paintings for their private collections,
then loaned them out to engravers to prepare plates for their publications.
In some cases, engravers also prepared original designs at the request of the
publishers. In other cases, copyists worked from original paintings to pro-
duce watercolor reductions of originals. More frequently, publishers engaged
an artist for the design, an engraver to prepare the plates, and frequently, the
additional services of a printer to prepare the full-page embellishment, which
would then be inserted into the book or periodical.
Accordingly, the illustrations were so costly that sometimes publishers
paid more for the plates than for the written content. Sartain reported spend-
ing $34,592.75 on the magazine in 1849, of which $7,174 went to the literary
department, including editorial salaries, indicating an additional $27,000
likely went to the artwork.7 By 1851, Louis Godey could boast that he spent an
astonishing $100,000 annually on the combined literary and pictorial matter
for his magazine.
In spite of all the money spent by publishers on embellishments, it was
nonetheless challenging to earn a reliable living as an individual artist or
engraver in the 1830s and early 1840s. Ironically, artists who helped establish
magazine embellishments as affordable middle-class cultural commodities
often struggled to afford the fruits accruing to their own labor. Manuscript
evidence for these transactions, although slight, reveals a range of strategies
artists employed to secure a living. Many artists working alone experimented
with a variety of artistic genres to earn a modest income—coach and sign
painting; theatrical backdrops; panoramas and dioramas; silhouette, min-
iature, and portrait painting; engraving; and daguerreotype portraiture—
thereby blurring the lines between their “serious” and “commercial” art.8
Archival evidence specific to these five magazines is modest. Graham,
Peterson, Godey, and Sartain left behind no complete collection of the finan-
cial records and correspondence for their magazine ventures. Most of the
correspondence between artists and publishers can be found either in the
Archives of American Art (collected in Washington, D.C.), or in the publishing
records for Carey & Hart in Philadelphia. Thus, this chapter will first sketch an
outline of a typical artistic career at mid-century, using two Pennsylvania art-
ists as brief examples. Then the chapter will shift focus to artists and engrav-
ers who worked for the Philadelphia pictorials as well as for the annuals, gift
books, single print venues, and illustrated books at mid-century. Finally, the
chapter will zero in on specific negotiations between artists and engravers
and the Philadelphia pictorial publishers, and offer a rereading of the career
of Thomas Sully.
John Houston Mifflin provides one example of a painter working in the
late 1830s and early 1840s who tried his hand in a range of artistic genres. He
worked at portrait painting in the late 1820s, making regular tours of south-
ern cities (Augusta, Georgia, Charleston, South Carolina, Tallahassee, Flor-
ida) in the early to mid-1830s.9 Supported emotionally and financially by his
uncle, Lloyd Mifflin, he ventured into daguerreotype portraits in the summer

of 1840. A letter to his uncle dated December 18, 1841, encloses $200, a por-
tion of which he directs his uncle to use to pay a bill for “plates sent me,” sug-
gesting that most of his profits derived from daguerreotype portraits. In the
letter, he complains of the stinginess of Milledgeville, Georgia, residents for
preferring daguerreotypes to painted portraits. Nonetheless, he appears to
be making a living from the daguerreotype business. He adds, “I don’t mean,
I am sorry to confess, in being a great artist, but at last am independent,
that is, an unindebted man.” Mifflin’s confident independence did not last
for long: with his marriage in April 1844, he worries to his uncle about “want
of business,” and by mid-1845 he has turned to a new endeavor, manufactur-
ing and selling printer’s ink. Along the way, he also invested in a scheme to
erect a “cocoonery” to raise silk, but that effort proved fraught with obstacles.
Although he served on the “Board of Control” for the Artists Fund Society in
the mid-1840s, by the end of the decade he appears to have abandoned art as
a profession, though his son, named Lloyd for his uncle, would go on to be a
well-respected Pennsylvania poet and painter.10
James Reid Lambdin was a fellow Pennsylvanian with a similar tale. His
journals tell the story of a rather peripatetic career that began with Lambdin
teaching himself how to engrave on wood blocks in 1821, at the age of 14.
While working in a bookstore owned by his brother and a partner, Lamb-
din spent his leisure time studying the interior paintings of the theatre next
door, while his mother urged him to become a coach painter. At the advice of
Thomas Sully, he next studied drawing with James Miles in Philadelphia for
six months and shortly afterward Sully agreed to paint Lambdin for half of
his regular fee so that Lambdin could see how a portrait sitting progressed.
Carrying letters of introduction to Isaac Lea and Edward L. Carey, Lambdin
was soon befriended and began borrowing from Carey “books on Art not to
be found elsewhere.” By the mid-1820s he too, like Mifflin, found himself an
itinerant portrait painter, traveling to “the west” of Pittsburgh and Wheeling,
West Virginia. At this time he reported receiving $25 for a color portrait and
$5 for a miniature portrait done in India ink, the latter supplying him the bulk
of his commissions. By the late 1820s he was drawing on stone as well, and
reported that his 1828 lithograph of one of Raphael’s Madonna’s “was the first
attempt at Lithography in this city” (Pittsburgh). As a result of his marriage
on September 8, 1828, Lambdin desired to pursue a steadier means of income
and purchased from Rembrandt Peale “a collection of objects of Natural His-
tory” to start a museum in Pittsburgh much like Peale’s father’s museum in
Philadelphia. When the museum proved costlier to run than anticipated,
Lambdin relocated to Philadelphia in 1837 and continued to struggle as a por-

trait painter, though he became a well-respected member of the Philadelphia
art community.11
Mifflin and Lambdin were not alone as painters who experimented with
other artistic genres. Portrait painter John Neagle, son-in-law to Thomas
Sully, prepared a “Prospectus” in 1831 for a series of engravings of “medical
professors,” proposing to charge $4.50 for India ink copies; $2.50 for “early
prints” and $2.00 for regular prints.12 Apparently, the effort did not prove
successful enough to lure Neagle away from the portrait painting business; as
Sully’s son-in-law, he could usually rely on a steady stream of customers when
Sully found himself overbooked for work.
These painters tried engraving, lithography, and daguerreotype; but some
artists who earned the bulk of their income from engraving also painted,
and others who painted also worked as copyists. Thomas B. Welch appren-
ticed himself to James Barton Longacre to learn both stipple and mezzo-
tint engraving, turning to portrait painting in 1841.13 Welch returned to
engraving in the second half of the decade, however, forming a partnership
with fellow engraver Adam B. Walter. The two executed plates primarily
for Godey’s (more on this in chapter 7). According to graphic art historians,
Cephas Childs, Peter Maverick, John Cheney, Steven Gimber, and James
Smillie, among others, earned the bulk of their income from engraving, yet
tried their hands at painting as well.14 To this list we could also add John
Sartain.15 Henry Inman collaborated with Cephas Child in his lithography
firm, and Asher B. Durand, better known as a painter, began his career as
an apprentice to an engraver.16 Artist James McMurtrie also doubled as a
copyist, although apparently not always a good one. Defending the difficulty
encountered by the engraver Ritchie in working from McMurtrie’s copy of
Huntington’s Mercy’s Dream, Daniel Huntington surmises “the genius of
McMurtrie is of too original—fiery and impulsive a nature to succeed well in
the shackles of a copyist.”17
Not all artists experienced the same difficulties encountered by McMurt-
rie moving from one artistic role to the other. Many moved fluidly from one
medium to another, earning professional fees for work accomplished along
the way. In a letter to Ferdinand Dreer, James Lambdin discussed how he
worked in painting his portrait of Daniel Webster: “it was commissioned
from a Daguerreotype taken in Boston, and finished during Mr. Webster’s
visit to the city in October . . . and has been copied twice by myself. . . .”18 So
in the early life cycle of this image, the artist worked first from daguerreo-
type, then from live sittings; once the original painting was completed, the
artist copied two more paintings from the original. Thomas Sully also created
paintings from daguerreotypes and from engravings; John Sartain engraved
mezzotints from daguerreotypes and painted as well, exhibiting a number of
canvas paintings (in addition to engravings) at the 1837 Artists’ Fund Society
annual exhibition.19
Moving from one medium to the other sometimes presented challenges,
and both artists and engravers explained to would-be patrons the pains they
would need to take to provide an acceptable artistic rendering of the work in
progress. In preparing a mezzotint of Dr. Hale, done from daguerreotypes,
Sartain wrote to N. Cleaveland, evidently Hale’s friend in charge of commis-
sioning the portrait print: “Dear Sir/Enclosed are impressions of Dr. Hale’s
portrait, taken since the last alterations. Will you have the kindness to for-
ward them to the family and communicate to me their further remarks when
you receive them. The first daguerreotype (the one engraved from) is not only
quite white all over the face, but has an earnestness of expression amounting
to anxiety, and a very sharp piercing expression in the eye. This is not liked in
the engraving, and the only way I know is to lean in the corrections to the last
daguerreotype sent, because that is the reverse of the other in the particulars
I have named.”20
Experienced engravers clearly considered themselves more than mere
draftsmen, and did not hesitate to increase their fee for particularly chal-
lenging work. In a reply to a query from Rawdon, Clark & Co. (New York
engravers), Asher Durand stipulated that he would charge $200 for engraving
a portrait, $250 if the portrait included a hand. Evidently, they wished him
to paint the picture as well, but Durand declined, stating, “I should not be
able soon to paint the picture myself. I should therefore wish it furnished—
the engraving, however, I would undertake immediately on rec’t of order.”21
Occasionally even Sartain turned down work he found too disagreeable.
Asher Durand approached Sartain about preparing a mezzotint, and found
his request rejected, on much the same grounds as Durand had rejected the
request of Rawdon, Clark: “In this morning received your letter of the 31st
of May respecting a steel plate and mezzotinto ground. I should be happy in
accommodating you were it not that I cannot without considerable inconve-
nience. The process of laying a ground is so tedious & disagreeable that I am
unwilling to do it myself, and the only person in my house capable of doing
it has also to print my plates when finished, and consequently has his hands
so full that my work is frequently at a standstill for want of grounds.”22 Thus,
although artists struggled to secure adequate income and frequently worked
in several different media to earn a living, they also understood the relative
value of their labor, and negotiated artistic undertakings in an effort to be

adequately compensated for their efforts.
NEGOTIATIONS BE T WEEN ARTISTS,

ENGRAVERS, AND PUBLISHERS
The art of engraving had gradually received increased attention and respect
in the Philadelphia arts community at least from the time of John Sartain’s
arrival to the United States in 1832. Five years later, The Artists’ Fund Soci-
ety published a catalogue of their third annual exhibition in 1837, allotting a
separate notice for engravings. By the time of his 1840 address to the Artists’
Fund Society exhibition, art patron George W. Bethune could speak confi-
dently of the importance of engraving in “reaching the mass of our people
who control the national sentiment.” In his address he declared engraving
“the true child of Painting,” and even went one step further to opine, “A good
engraving of a good picture, in its effect on the mind, is incomparably supe-
rior to a painting of ordinary merit.”23 The establishment of the Art Union of
Philadelphia in 1840 specifically promoted the “Arts of Design,” so that, by
mid-decade, engraved works received regular public approbation.
Artists who worked almost solely as painters expressed a range of atti-
tudes toward the engravers and engravings of their work. In the late 1830s
and early 1840s, manuscript evidence suggests that some painters under-
stood little about engraving as an art, although, like Washington Allston,
they did acknowledge it as such. In a letter responding to a proposal from
James McMurtrie to have Cousins engrave Allston’s Mother and Child, Allston
replies: “I have seen some of Cousins’ engravings (or, I suppose I should say,
mezzotints, for I believe some artists make this distinction) and feel satisfied
that he will make a fine print from the picture.” He requests only that his full
name be attached to the print, and makes no mention of receiving remunera-
tion from the deal.24 Like other artists, Allston apparently viewed the engrav-
ing as a method for attracting potential customers for canvas sales—while he
requested his full name be attached to the engraving, he entrusted its artistic
merits to Cousins.25
Painters sometimes found themselves forced to learn more about the art
of design when approached by publishers and engravers seeking to distrib-
ute prints of their work. Daniel Huntington became a quick study when the
popularity of his painting Mercy’s Dreams resulted in a request from the Art-
Union of Philadelphia to make an engraving from the picture. Responding
to a letter from Edward Carey, who had purchased Mercy’s Dream, he writes:
“I hasten to say that I have full confidence that all will be done as well as
though I had the entire control of the matter myself.—In fact I have so little
knowledge of these methods of engraving adopted in this case and of relative
merits of engravers that I should be quite at a loss what advice to give.—I am
very glad to leave the whole conduct of the matter entirely in the hands of
those who have it in charge and feel assured they will do all in their power to
render the work as perfect as possible.”26
Less than two months later, however, Huntington found himself forced
to offer an opinion on how negotiations should proceed in the engraving of
Mercy’s Dream. First, he alludes to the previous state of business negotiations
between painters and engravers: “Indeed it is quite unusual in this country
for the painters to be advised with when their pictures are engraved—several
of my paintings have been engraved—published editions sold without my
ever hearing of it—till months afterwards.”27 For Huntington, this was just
the beginning of his education into the complex negotiations between art-
ists, engravers, and publishers. He would continue for another two decades to
shepherd Mercy’s Dream through art reproductions based on his own versions
of the paintings as well as copies produced by others for reproduction.28
Artists and engravers shepherding their work through reproduction and
publication did not always fare as well as Huntington. James B. Longacre’s
long struggle to publish the National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Ameri-
cans illustrates how business between painters and engravers initiated on a
handshake could go terribly awry. Longacre had already successfully com-
pleted the engravings for the 1820 Biography of the Signers of the Declaration
of Independence when he proposed to complete a series of engravings of dis-
tinguished Americans. Longacre formed temporary partnerships along the
way with the painters whose work he relied on for the engravings. Surviving
letters from Longacre to the artist Chester Harding reveal that Longacre’s
memory of his deal with Harding differed from Harding’s recollection, and
this led to bad feelings on both sides.29 Longacre apparently learned from his
mistakes: three years later, in negotiating with Asher Durand to provide an
engraving for his series, Longacre apparently paid Durand $200 upon receipt
of his engraving, assuming rights to any profits from the venture.30 By the
time fellow engraver John C. Buttre arranged for the engraving and publica-
tion of Prayer in Camp in 1865, a detailed “Memorandum of agreement,” such
as the one Buttre drew up with J. B. Polk, was undoubtedly the norm.31
In this struggle for power and money between painters and engravers, the
painter might express his opinion (as Harding and Huntington clearly did),
and yet ultimately be at the mercy of the engraver or publisher. If, like Hun-
tington, the painter wished to protect his reputation by insuring that the best
copy possible were executed from his originals, he frequently needed to curry
the favor of the engraver or publisher, even if this meant additional work
on his part. William Sidney Mount, responding to a request from Edward
Carey to produce a copy of his picture “Undutiful Boys” replies: “It will not
be possible for me to copy the picture “undutiful Boys” at present, hence I
hardly know what to say upon the subject. It is a favorite picture of mine and
I should like to see an engraving of it, from the original, but I can not say I
like the plan of following a pencil sketch or any off hand sketch in oil colours
however well done.”
On the one hand, Mount does not want to comply with Carey’s request to
produce a copy of the picture because it would mean putting aside whatever
work Mount had in front of him. On the other hand, he also does not want to
see the picture engraved from some second-rate copy made by someone else.
He offers his view, an echo of Huntington’s: “In my opinion the engraver in
all cases should draw from the original, for his own reputation, and not two
or three removes from the picture.”32 Mount suggests a couple of more palat-
able alternatives, both involving a substitute to the picture Carey seeks. First,
Mount suggests Carey send the engraver John Cheney (living near New York)
to copy another Mount picture entitled Courtship, owned by John Glover of
Fairfield, Connecticut. Or, better yet, Mount suggests, “Why not own my For-
tune Teller, make me an offer in Money—it would open rich for The Gift—a
good story can be written for it.” Mount directs Carey to the location where
that picture is being stored and suggests that Carey “call and see it.”33 Mount
undoubtedly hoped that once Carey viewed the painting, he would want to
add it to his extensive collection, or else compensate Mount to have it copied
and engraved for The Gift.
ENGRAVERS FOR THE PHILADELPHIA PIC TORIALS
The three examples detailed above—Huntington, Longacre, and Mount—

treat business relationships between painters, engravers, and publishers
working in three different print venues: Art-Union print distribution; mul-
tivolume print series; and gift annuals, respectively. What about painters
and engravers working on the monthly magazines? What do we know about
their negotiations with editors and publishers? Again, manuscript evidence
is scarce, but we can piece together some idea of these negotiations from a
few examples.
Mott identifies engravers working for the Philadelphia pictorials and men-
tions briefly the monthly sums several magazines claim to have paid for their
embellishments. According to Mott, Graham’s often spent $2,000 per issue
on illustrations: the cost of executing a single engraving, $200; and the cost
for paper and printing, $500 (I, 521). When John Sartain finally realized that
his business partner, William Sloanaker, had ruined his magazine, he detailed
several claims against Sloanaker for outstanding fees he had not been paid.
In one example, he claimed to be owed $100 for an engraving of the Wash-
ington Monument.34 In another document detailing his contributions to the
magazine, Sartain claimed: “Besides this I may be said to have put in from
$150 to $180 per month for forty two out of the forty four months the work
was published, being the difference between my uniform rate of charges for
engraving & repair of plates, and those I made against the Union Magazine.”35
Therefore, presumably, Sartain generally charged $250 to $280 per engraved
plate for the monthlies.
John G. Chapman, an artist who contributed designs to the annuals and
periodicals, offers an example of an artist working as a magazine embellish-
ment designer, and earning far less than an engraver for his annual and peri-
odical work. Receipts for Chapman at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
indicate that the Harper Brothers paid Chapman thirty-five dollars for Illus-
trations of Rienzi and forty dollars for A Year in Spain in 1836.36 In 1839 he
negotiated with Edward Carey for a “vignette design” for a Carey publication,
likely The Gift. He explains that a work Carey expressed interest in, which
Chapman refers to as the “nibble,” was actually a snippet from a larger picture
that had been engraved previously in mezzotint, then adapted to vignette
form for a bank note die. He explains, “The vignette designs I have usually
made have been oil on panel with the figures about twice the size desired for
the engraving,” adding “In looking over my memoranda I find I have several
sketches that will, I dare say, suit your purpose.”37
Having opened a door with Carey, he is emboldened the following year to
spell out in advance his fees for designs Carey is interested in: “the prices of
the sketches, thirty dollars for the ‘Boy’ and $45 for the Shipwreck.” Chap-
man explains that he has sent both along for Carey’s inspection because he is
uncertain which Carey would prefer—and, undoubtedly, he hopes that Carey
will take both rather than pay to send one or the other back to him. Naming
his fee in advance, he perhaps hoped to collect as soon as Carey had accepted
one or both of the designs. He may have feared having to wait until Carey
released the volume to be paid for his work; other Carey contributors seem to
have been inconvenienced by this practice.38
By 1843 Chapman could be said to be a seasoned veteran in negotiating
with publishers for the sale of his designs. In a series of letters to Rufus Gris-
wold, then editing Graham’s Magazine, we see Chapman wielding his newly
earned business acumen in negotiations for periodical work. In a letter dated
April 14, 1843, Chapman urges Griswold to send “as much of the matter you
desire to be illustrated soon, as my engagements are such, that unless I can
finish these plates immediately I shall be placed to very great inconveniences
as I shall be compelled to place other work on my desk.” Chapman also states,
“Four designs are now on the steel,” suggesting that he is serving as both
designer and engraving supervisor for the work Griswold has commissioned.39
His next lengthy exchange with Griswold reveals his indignation to learn of
George Graham’s “qualified acceptation” of the pictures he has submitted—
Graham apparently authorized the New York engravers Rawdon, Wright &
Co. to alter his pictures for the magazine. Chapman fumes:
I am somewhat at a loss to understand, precisely, your meaning . . . If I

mistake not, you ordered that designs be furnished by me for Graham’s
Magazine. They have been done, and I can recognize no right or capacity
in Messrs Rawdon, Wright & Co. to alter or correct them: nor was I aware
such were the terms upon which I undertook to do them or I should
have, most certainly, declined the favour./ . . . If the name of a designer
or painter is to go on a plate the Engraver has no right to alter or vary
from his model; and if some of them would look a little more to their own
sins they would be all the better for it, and so would it be for those whose
pictures they libel as well as their publishers and the public.—It is rather
reversing the order of things to place the designer under the engraver’s
order and I, for one, feel rather disposed to have objections to any such
innovations./I presume from your letter we have not already understood
one another in this matter . . . I am very unwilling that Mr. Graham
should pay me for what he does not want, and I will receive back any of
the three he chooses. Such or suit he can pay for and the sooner the mat-
ter is settled, the greater I shall be obliged, and hereafter all difficulty can
be avoided by mutually understanding that I am unwilling to undertake
any thing, in the completion of which I cannot be trusted and of the
acceptation of which, after its corruption, there is to be a question.40
This extended passage establishes the tensions that could develop between
designers, engravers, magazine editors, and publishers over the question of
the artistic merits of the plates. It is one thing to observe George Graham
bragging editorially to his readers about his efforts to support American
art and artists, and quite another to glimpse the behind-the-scenes drama
of how these negotiations actually played themselves out from the artist’s
perspective. Artists and designers like Chapman might find their interests
at odds with those of the publishers with whom they needed to negotiate for
payment (and, by extension, for survival). Relationships between artists and
periodical publishers supporting the arts could sour quickly, and this was, no
doubt, all the more problematic in an era before routine copyright protection
for original artwork.
THE INFLUENCE OF PERIODICALS ON ARTISTS:

THOMAS SULLY, A CASE STUDY
As the bulk of this chapter has tried to demonstrate, many Philadelphia art-
ists pursued fairly fluid career paths. Artists experimented as engravers and
vice versa, and a number of Philadelphia artists relied on at least a portion
of their income from other artistic endeavors, including work for gift books,
annuals, illustrated books, and periodicals. But what about the impact of the
periodicals on the careers of so-called “serious” artists—painters whom art
historians have considered canonical and whose work has long been the pur-
view of art historical study? While I will examine the periodical work of a
number of Philadelphia painters in greater depth in chapter 6, here I would
like to treat some of Thomas Sully’s magazine work as a case study, and sug-
gest a new way to read Sully’s career that accounts for his interaction, as an
artist, with periodicals.
The general view of Sully’s earlier biographers, all trained as art histori-
ans, is that Sully was a serious artist and the leading portrait painter of his
day in his mature years, generally cited as from the mid-1820s to the mid-
1840s (see fig. 2.1). These scholars distinguish between the “talent” displayed
by Sully at making common portraits, as opposed to the “genius” displayed
by painters working in the more prestigious medium of historic portraits.
Although his biographers do not go as far as art historian Jules Prown, who
dismissed Sully’s female portraits as “prettified images of boneless figures,”
they do, nonetheless, disparage Sully’s forays into imaginative work, what
art historians refer to as “fancy pictures.” And, unfortunately, their work,

although dated, was, until recently, the only serious book-length treatments
given to Sully.41 Steven E. Bronson labels Sully a “portrait painter, history
painter, Victorian genre painter” but argues that Sully “thought of himself
as a portrait painter.”42 In an earlier study, biographer David M. Robb Jr. had
argued: “There can be no doubt that Sully’s execution of fancy pictures was
not central to his image of himself as an artist; he almost never mentioned
fancy pictures in his Hints to Young Painters, where he concentrates almost
exclusively on portraits.”43
The tendency of art historians to disparage “fancy pictures” runs deep and
relates, no doubt, to the hierarchy of painting styles articulated by Sir Joshua
Reynolds and reinforced in the early nineteenth century by the review of the
1827 National Academy of Design exhibit long credited to Daniel Fanshaw.44
In this ranking system, “the Epic, the Dramatic, and the Historic” rank first in
order of artistic merit, with “the historical or poetic portrait” ranking second;
“the Historical Landscape,” third, and so on, common portraits ranking sixth
among the “lower ranks.” Bronson discusses the influence of Henry Fuselli
on Sully (Sully studied with Fuselli on his first trip to Europe), and notes that
Fuselli embraced the “Romantic tradition” that elevated “dramatic” paintings
over “historic paintings.”
Bronson speculates that this might explain Sully’s forays into a more dra-
matic style, although Bronson seems to credit the popularity of the daguerre-
otype for the decrease in Sully’s commissions for portraits after 1840.
Another Sully biographer, Monroe H. Fabian, attributes the increased num-
ber of “fancy pictures” in Sully’s later years to “Sully’s decline in physical and
artistic soundness.”45 Robb, Fabian, and Bronson all agree in disparaging the
fancy pictures. Fabian derides the “overly sweet children” and the two dozen
pictures of “pleasant peasants.”46 Bronson describes Sully’s fancy pictures as
“saccharin scenes of idealized, youthful peasants,” and dismisses them along
with “similarly unambitious pieces.”47
None of these studies attempts to trace the influence of Sully’s periodi-
cal work on his painting. Moreover, they similarly overlook references to his
fancy pictures in his Journal and Register of Paintings. If we consider evidence
from these sources, we get a much richer picture of Sully’s artistic life, one
less tainted with the whiff of elitism still clinging to the interpretations of his
biographers. Additionally, in probing the influence of the periodical press on
the artwork of Thomas Sully, we see clearly that the monthly magazine served
not merely as artifacts reflective of larger cultural change, but themselves
influenced the artists contributing to their pages.
FIGURE 2.1 Thomas Sully, self-portrait, engraved by John Sartain in 1856 for Mr. Ferdinand J. Dreer,
printed in The Life and Works of Thomas Sully (1783–1872), by Edward Biddle and Mantle Fielding
(Wickersham Press, 1921). Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
First, let us examine Bronson’s assertion that Sully “thought of himself”

as a portrait painter. While Sully did leave behind an unusually rich bank
of manuscript materials for scholars to consider, they should be read with-
out preconceived notions that either valorize one art form over another or
attempt a causal link between Sully’s notes and Sully’s self-image. An equal
amount of evidence exists to suggest that Sully thought about “imaginative
work” throughout his career. In an early entry in his “Hints for Pictures,”
dated February 9, 1812, Sully writes a “Memorandum of subjects to paint.” Of
the seventeen possible subjects listed, only one refers succinctly to a portrait
of a specific human being, and that is a “Statue of the President of the United
States, leaning on a Roman Facaes, an emblem of strength of union.” While
three others mention scenic details that could be added to a portrait, not
one mentions a specific subject by name, and the remaining thirteen men-
tion romantic subjects fitting for imaginative works or “fancy pictures.”48
It includes not a single reference by name to a specific human subject Sully
hoped to paint.49
Countering this, we have ample evidence of Sully’s interaction with artists
and publishers working with periodical literature, and with his transforma-
tion of what were originally begun as portraits into fancy pictures. Therefore,
I think we need to be very careful of accepting Robb’s assertion that Sully’s
fancy pictures “were almost entirely executed by assistants” (for which he
provides not a shred of evidence),50 or of Bronson’s attempts to argue (using
Elizabeth Cook as a Country Girl as evidence) that Sully’s fancy pictures were
“never intended as [a] portrait[s].”51 Sully’s relationship to periodical publica-
tions complicates our understanding of his fancy pictures.
Robb argues that “Sully’s idealized portraits of women are based on a
facial type very similar to that used by painter Washington Allston during
the 1820s and 1830s.”52 While there is clear evidence of Sully’s relationship
with Allston, Sully’s longstanding interest in the fancy pictures preferred for
magazine distribution does more to explain his depiction of the female face
than any specific influence of Allston.
Indeed, Sully contributed work intended for mass circulation as early
as the 1820s. Cephas Childs included an engraving of Sully’s The Swedish
Lutheran Church in his 1827 work Views of Philadelphia. Engravings of Sully’s
work appeared as magazine illustrations as early as 1830.53 He had also done
work for the Carey annual, the Atlantic Souvenir. In his Journals he records,
on December 9, 1827: “H. Carey politely presented me with a copy of the last
New-Year’s Gift and a portfolio of prints of the same.”54 Sully was gregari-
ous, and the Philadelphia art and literary communities small enough, that he
quickly befriended engravers, editors, and publishers.55 Sully’s work appeared

in a variety of venues over the years, including gift books, annuals, and the
illustrated magazines.
John Cheney was the leading engraver of female heads for The Gift in its
heyday, and his engravings of Sully’s paintings nearly always appear as either
the frontispiece to the annual, or the title page, and sometimes both.56 We
know from the catalogue of Cheney’s engraved work that many of what would
become his “female heads” originated in portrait paintings.57 In addition, we
know from Sully’s Journals that he sometimes turned rejected portraits into
fancy pictures.58 Based on this evidence, it seems very likely that a more fluid
relationship existed between Sully’s portrait work and his fancy pictures for
the periodicals.
We also know that periodical publishers contacted Sully directly for paint-
ings to be engraved for the illustrated monthlies. George Graham took an
aggressive stance in support of American artists when he assumed owner-
ship of two dying magazines in 1839, merging them into Graham’s Lady’s
and Gentleman’s Magazine. In his September 1842 Editor’s Table he reviewed
an advance copy of The Gift for 1843, praising the work of Sully and oth-
ers. He promoted Sully especially in February 1844, boasting to his readers
“The leading embellishment in the January Number was from an original
pictures, painted expressly for us by Thomas Sully, Esq.” Further, he prom-
ised his readers, “We have now in the hands of engravers several original pic-
tures, by Chapman, Sully, Leutze, Conaroe, Croome and other well-known
artists . . . painted expressly for this Magazine.”59 Louis Godey also pursued
original work by Sully; in fact, securing the original work of Sully and other
American artists became a point of competition for publishers, especially
toward the mid- to late 1840s.
We also know from the manuscript evidence that fancy pictures could be
lucrative. Sully valued “Carey’s fancy piece, pendant to F. Kemble” at $100, and
the copy of it Lady reading in bed at $125. He valued Musidora, a fancy piece
begun in 1813, at $200. He sold another fancy piece of “a Mermaid on a wave”
to Carey for $300, and valued “A family of Mother & 2 children fancy” at $500.
Fancy pictures of Sleeping Girl, Strawberry Girl, Peasant Girl, and Girl & Bird
were all valued at $300 each, as were “Spanish gitar [sic] & mantilla.” Sully
generally valued his fancy pictures between $150 and $300, and they seem to
have sold readily.60 Evidence from the exhibition catalogues from the 1840s
indicates that Sully aggressively marketed his fancy pictures in these venues.
Consequently, fancy pictures increasingly found an audience with art
patrons. The painter Thomas B. Read wrote to his brother-in-law, Cyrus
Garrett, “I find I that I can make vastly more money painting fancy pictures
than at portraits.”61 Amateur artist and art patron Joseph Sill remarks favor-
ably in his journal about fancy pictures by Sully (The Farewell) and Emanuel
Leutze (The Return) that he viewed at the 1841 Artists’ Fund Society exhibi-
tion.62 It seems rather likely that Sully increasingly switched from portrait
painting to fancy pictures in the 1830s and 1840s not solely because portrait
orders fell off, but because he found it more lucrative (and perhaps more sat-
isfying). Clearly fancy pictures found an appreciative audience with some art
patrons like Sill, thanks, in part, to the promulgation of American artwork in
the periodical publications of the day.63
As we have seen here briefly, although long treated as a “serious” American
artist, Thomas Sully also painted pictures intended for distribution to a wide
middle-class audience via embellishments commissioned for the periodical
press. His work, and the work of the other artists and engravers discussed in
this chapter, elides the distinction between “serious” and “commercial” art
instituted by later art historians. In producing art for magazines that catered
to an emerging middle-class audience, these artists and engravers helped
democratize American art—both by producing new art uniquely focused on
American themes, and by circulating American art beyond the purview of the
cultural elite. Additionally, in seeking a ready market for their wares in the
monthly magazines, these artists and engravers aspired to attain the same
comforts and status as their eager middle-class magazine-reading audiences.
3
“Superior Embellishments”
INNOVATIONS TO THE GRAPHIC ARTS
IN THE PHILADELPHIA PIC TORIALS
In January 1843, an upstart little monthly entitled Miss Leslie’s Magazine:

Home Book of Fashion, Literature and Domestic Economy entered the Phila-
delphia magazine fray with a bold new claim to its readership: “. . . we have
caused our fashion plates for the present month to be arranged in a novel and
ingenious manner, such as has not before been attempted in this country; nor,
as far as we know, in any other, except in costly books of which the edition is
very limited” (Miss Leslie’s, January 1843, 1, emphasis added). The editor, Eliza
Leslie, a sister to the painter Charles Leslie, had already established her liter-
ary reputation as editor of the popular Carey & Hart annual The Gift, and as
a writer of recipe books and advice manuals for ladies and children.1 She and
her magazine publisher, Morton McMichael,2 used their inaugural editorial
column to establish their magazine’s claims to artistic innovation: “We confi-
dently assert that no magazine published either at home or abroad, has ever
presented to its patrons fashion plates in which so much regard has been paid
to grace, beauty and elegance, as in these of ours. Indeed, apart from their
value as guides in costume, they are superior embellishments. Which would
do credit to the pages of any periodical” (Miss Leslie’s, January 1843, 1).
In making a claim for their magazine’s “superior embellishments,” Leslie
and McMichael announced their intention to compete head-to-head with
the other established Philadelphia pictorial monthly magazines, including,
most notably, Godey’s Lady’s Book and Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Maga-
zine.3 However, Leslie and McMichael were not alone in issuing a challenge to
Godey’s and Graham’s: also arriving on the Philadelphia magazine scene was
Peterson’s Magazine, launched by Charles Peterson as a cheaper alternative
37
38 I NN OVAT IONS TO GR APH IC A RTS IN T HE PHILA D E LPHIA PIC TOR IA LS
to Godey’s. Peterson hoped his $2.00/year subscription fee would undercut

Godey’s and Graham’s $3.00/year fee and thereby attract readers of more mod-
est means.
This chapter will focus on the technological innovations featured by Miss
Leslie’s in 1843 that ignited fierce competition between the Philadelphia
illustrated magazines. As noted in the introduction, prior to the 1840s few
magazines featured pictorial embellishments, and those that did typically
bought and recycled used European plates. During the 1830s, Louis Godey
had made steady improvements to his fashion plates. By the end of the
decade both he and his nearest competitor, William Burton (editor and pub-
lisher of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, which George Graham bought out to
form Graham’s) began featuring in each six-month volume a few steel plates,
including mezzotints engraved by John Sartain. However, until Miss Leslie’s
emerged on the scene, no illustrated magazine attempted to secure a large
subscription base largely on the strength of its pictorial matter, or to offer a
serious challenge to Godey’s in this department. In this chapter, I argue that
the 1843 arrival of Miss Leslie’s on the Philadelphia magazine scene fueled
fierce competition between the established illustrated monthlies that con-
tributed to the production, distribution, and commodification of uniquely
American artwork.
At a time before widespread reliance on advertising, publishers relied
almost solely on subscription and single-copy sales to keep magazines sol-
vent. Not surprisingly, many monthlies failed within their inaugural year.
Godey’s, entering its twelfth year of publication, was clearly the best estab-
lished of Philadelphia’s illustrated monthlies. Graham’s, Peterson’s, and Miss
Leslie’s, all rising to prominence between 1841 and 1843, hoped to take advan-
tage of the rapidly increasing demand for illustrated American newspapers
and magazines.
As the decade of the 1840s opened, the entire cycle of production, distri-
bution, and consumption of American magazines relied on an array of tech-
nological improvements: in the printing press; in the quality of paper, ink,
and binding; in transportation (improved roadways, canals, railroads); and,
in the case of the artwork in the pictorials, in innovative reproductive imag-
ing technologies.4 Godey’s and Graham’s already featured a variety of engrav-
ing processes that had been used for several centuries: mezzotint engraving,
line engravings, woodcuts, and the more recently developed lithography.
However, beginning in 1843, with the challenges offered by Miss Leslie’s and
Peterson’s, the periodicals began to display innovative engraving and printing
technologies as well.
IN N OVAT ION S TO G R A PHIC A RTS IN T H E P H I L AD E L P H I A P I C TO R I AL S 39
FIGURE 3.1 Morton McMichael. Courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Eliza Leslie and her publisher, Morton McMichael, engaged the best artists,
engravers, and printers in Philadelphia to produce embellishments for her
fledgling magazine. Both Leslie and McMichael had worked for Louis Godey,
and Godey developed a business partnership with McMichael shortly after
relocating to new offices in “Publisher’s Hall” at 101 Chestnut St. McMichael’s
father had been a gardener, but McMichael was educated at the University
of Pennsylvania and admitted to the bar in 1827 (see fig. 3.1). He was elected
FIGURE 3.2 Miss E. Leslie. frontispiece, Godey’s, January 1846.
alderman and later sheriff. However, he formed early friendships with liter-
ary men, and he and Godey started a family newspaper, the Saturday News, as
early as 1837. He would become better known in later years as the publisher of
the North American and United States Gazette (a paper with long-established
roots in Philadelphia) and as mayor of Philadelphia from 1866 to 1869.5
Eliza Leslie was the eldest of five children, and her father claimed friend-
ship with Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson. Upon his death, Eliza and her
mother opened a boarding house to support the family. Both her sister Ann
and her brother Charles became painters, Charles studying with Thomas Sully
before relocating for most of his life to England. It was Sully who painted this
portrait of her, engraved subsequently by various hands (see fig. 3.2). Her
sister Patty was the wife of Henry C. Carey, of the Philadelphia publishing
dynasty. Through her connection with the Careys, “Miss Leslie,” as she was
called, in 1827 began publishing cookbooks, domestic advice manuals, and
collected tales for children. Her sketch Mrs. Washington Potts, published in
Godey’s in 1832, made her a household name, and she had served as an assis-
tant editor at Godey’s, as had McMichael. Perhaps seeking more editorial inde-
pendence, and certainly with a desire to promote uniquely American art and
innovation, she was fifty-five years old when she partnered with McMichael
and journalist T. S. Arthur to launch the magazine which would be short-lived
under her moniker.6
At first glance, Arthur, Leslie, and McMichael seem an unlikely trio to
launch a new magazine to challenge the established Godey’s and Graham’s.
Even the title of the new periodical—Miss Leslie’s Magazine; Home Book of
Fashion, Literature and Domestic Economy—fails to highlight the artistic
innovations for which it would become known. On top of that, the primary
editors, Arthur and Leslie, appear to have brought vastly different personal
backgrounds to the magazine. Eliza Leslie never married or had children, and
her primary experience with domestic economy apparently derived from the
earlier boarding house experiences with her mother that began in 1803, when
she was sixteen.7 In an early autobiographical sketch, written in epistolary
style as a letter to her friend, Alice B. Neal (and frequently used as a source
for subsequent biographical sketches), Leslie reports having collected the
recipes for her first cookbook (published in 1827) from classes she took at
Mrs. Goodfellow’s cooking school in Philadelphia.8 After her mother’s death
in 1824, Leslie lived from time to time with her brother Thomas and his wife
at West Point, where he was an army engineer, but correspondence from 1824
on indicates that she primarily boarded at the United States Hotel in Phila-
delphia, where her meals were provided.9 Quite ironically, Leslie made a name
FIGURE 3.3 T. S. Arthur, frontispiece, Godey’s, January 1844. J. Tooley, Del., W. G.
Armstrong, SC. Courtesy of the University of South Florida Libraries Special and
Digital Collections Department.
for herself from the publication of cookbooks, juvenile advice manuals, and
sketches of domestic customs and manners, while never managing her own
household as wife and mother.
Timothy Shay Arthur hailed from much humbler origins. Born to a miller
and farm laborer, and lacking regular education due to illness, Arthur tried
and failed at a number of professions before directing his energies to writing.
By 1843 he had accumulated experience editing two different publications:
the Baltimore Athenaeum and Young Men’s Paper, a weekly; and The Baltimore
Literary Monument, a monthly. Arthur prospered enough to marry, and relo-
cated his family from Baltimore to Philadelphia in 1841, recognizing that the
city proclaimed the “Athens of America” would be the best place to earn a
living to support his growing family. His didactic domestic fiction apparently
balanced Leslie’s practical tips on domestic economy (see fig. 3.3).10
As publisher, McMichael appears to have served primarily as public
promoter and financier for the magazine. McMichael and Godey had been
friends since boyhood,11 and in 1841 Godey had puffed McMichael’s earlier
foray into periodical publication, The People’s Library, a Magazine of Choice and
Entertaining Literature, by offering his readers bundled subscriptions to both
Godey’s and The People’s Library. Godey assured his readers that McMichael
had “ample means at his command” to deliver a quality product.12 Evidently,
McMichael’s “ample means” emboldened him to woo Eliza Leslie away from
her role as one of Godey’s assistant editors, because both turned their pri-
mary literary efforts to launching Miss Leslie’s Magazine less than eighteen
months later.
As lawyer, sheriff, and alderman, McMichael displayed oratorical skills
that would later serve him well in his magazine’s “publisher’s table.” In an
address on public education delivered before the Philadelphia Lyceum in 1839,
McMichael first publicly argued for America’s supremacy in the mechanical
arts. He analyzed the succeeding epochs in the evolution of art and edu-
cation, from the Egyptians to that time. McMichael argued that until the
present age in America, no country had mastered the ingredients he found
necessary to achieve the pinnacle of civilization: widespread public educa-
tion; improvements in the “mechanical arts”; and art that contributes to the
“moral education” of its people. America alone, he proclaimed, achieved all
three.13 McMichael used his magazine to promote America’s primacy in the
mechanical arts.
In his “Publisher’s Table” for the magazine in February 1843, McMichael put
his oratorical skills to use promoting his magazine as both “useful” and “deco-
rative.” He argues that while Arthur and Leslie make “distinct and separate”
contributions to the magazine, under their “joint direction” the magazine will
be both “pleasant and practical,” and will shun the “mawkish sentimentality”
and “hacknied” prose of its competitors. He particularly touts the magazine’s
innovative embellishments, remarking, “Imitation may be practiced by any
body, but how few are there who possess the skill to originate.” He prom-
ises his readers only “that which is novel and attractive,” pointing out that
the first “decoration” for the present issue was “raised from a die which took
the premium at the recent exhibitions of the Franklin Institute.” He also dis-
cusses how difficult to master is this new technology of raising an impression
from a die (a method of printing similar to the raised impression on coins),
and opines, “few publishers would have ventured to give [the embellishment],
even if they had the sagacity to perceive its practicability . . .” (“Publisher’s
Table,” February 1843, 76).
The magazine lasted just twelve months with McMichael as publisher and
Leslie as editor (Arthur took it over in January 1844), but it featured a series
of firsts to magazine embellishment that capitalized on the latest innova-
tions in the graphic arts. In addition to the raised impression from a die
highlighted in the previous paragraph, the magazine also featured a host of
other firsts: colored mezzotint; lithotint; steel engraving using colored inks;
embossed engravings, die-cut fashion plates layered one on top of the other;
and the art of medal ruling.
The staple of the illustrated magazines had long been woodcuts and line
engravings. Newspapers and book illustrations tended to utilize woodcuts,
due to the cheapness and greater ease of production of this method. The old-
est form of embellishment, woodcuts relied on a relief process whereby a
wooden block is carved to leave a flat, raised surface that is then inked and
pressed onto paper. However, woodcuts could not deliver the same artistic
sophistication as newer methods and, although used by the Philadelphia pic-
torials, they were not favored. Line and stipple engraving on steel, according
to art historian Wendy Wick Reaves, had become the “respected medium for
reproduction” by the 1840s,14 and the annuals and illustrated monthly maga-
zines (including the Philadelphia pictorials) touted “steel engravings” as the
principal method used to furnish readers the popular “fashion plates.”15
Most twenty-first-century readers, if they know anything about these
magazines, know vaguely about the fashion plates. Louis Godey boasted that
he kept 150 young ladies in work hand coloring his famous fashion plates
(Mott, I, 591). As was true of the other engraving techniques featured in the
Philadelphia pictorials, 1843 proved to be a watershed year for the ubiquitous
fashion plates. The principal improvements involved three distinct strategies,
the first of which Godey’s and Graham’s had engaged in prior to 1843 as well.
First, the magazines shed their reliance on recycled French and English fash-
ion plates, hiring engravers to prepare original plates—though, of course,
based on the fashion trends in Europe.16 Both Godey’s and Graham’s used this
technique before 1843. Godey added a second innovation to his magazine in
1843: engaging illustrators to show feminine figures free of the “tight-lacing”
associated with the European styles, thereby creating “Americanized” fash-
ions.17 Finally, Miss Leslie’s used the fashion plates to create new novelty
embellishments for its readers, again relying on both printing innovations
and an emerging cult of the celebrity.18
Godey started boasting of “entirely original contents” and improved paper
quality as early as January 1840, although at that time, his fashion plates
appear to be printed from woodcuts and on the same paper as the textual
material.19 By April 1840, touting a circulation of 17,500 subscribers, Godey’s
offered hand-colored fashion plates printed on higher quality paper. In the
“Editors’ Table” for April he noted “We have advanced with a steady step, and
now compare with the best French or English periodicals that are devoted
exclusively to this subject—which, as every body knows, the Lady’s Book
is not.”20 Thus, Godey reminds his readers both that his magazine is more
than just a guide to fashions, and that his American fashion plates now com-
pete with their European counterparts. By December 1840 he grouses that
“exchange papers” fail to distinguish between borrowed and original plates:
“Exchange papers in noticing the embellishments in the various magazines
should make a distinction between those engraved expressly for a work and
second hand plates. We give two engravings in each number from steel plates
engraved expressly for the Book” (“Editors’ Table,” 285).
Godey used these American-engraved fashion plates as an early form of
product placement, advertising his magazine and instructing readers how
and where to read it. His hand-colored fashion plates for both January and
February 1841 feature conspicuously placed bound volumes of the magazine.
The January number reveals a parlor scene with a mother surrounded by her
children, one daughter playing a piano with a bound volume clearly titled
“Ladies Book” resting on the piano top. Wanting to assure his readers that his
magazine should serve more than ornamental purposes, his February plate
shows four female figures, one of who appears to be reading to her compan-
ions out of a bound volume of the Ladies Book. An April 1841 fashion plate tar-
gets readers who may have subscribed too recently to collect a year’s worth of
the magazine for binding—this plate shows a reader leafing through a single-
copy number of Godey’s. Not to be outdone, George Graham offered similar
fashion plates in September and November 1841, adding a male fashion fig-
ure. In the November issue the magazine is shown propped up against the tall
hat of the gentleman caller in the parlor scene (see plate 3). Thus both pub-
lishers schooled their captive readers to connect reading of their magazines
with other genteel parlor activities—in the case of Graham’s, parlor reading
done in mixed-gender audiences.
The entrance of Peterson’s Magazine and Miss Leslie’s Magazine challenged
Godey’s and Graham’s. Peterson entered the fray copycat style, as a less expen-
sive knockoff of Godey’s, making sure his fashion plates noted that they were
“engraved expressly” for his magazine. Meanwhile, as noted above, Miss Les-
lie’s stressed “novelty” and “innovation,” putting the established Godey’s and
fellow newcomer Peterson’s to shame. In January the magazine introduced
die-cut techniques into the monthlies by featuring two fashion plates layered
on top of each other, with an oval hole cut out of the face of the top plate
so that the face of the bottom figure serves both, an innovation repeated in
the May issue. As noted earlier, this strategy, she claimed, had never been
attempted in a magazine. It was generally reserved for expensive gift books
and children’s paper dolls and books. She explains to her readers: “we have
caused our fashion plates for the present month to be arranged in a novel
and ingenious manner . . . The two figures . . . are so placed that one face is
made to serve for both of them.” She further boasts of these innovations:
“Our plates of the fashions, it will be observed, are not mere mechanical cop-
ies from indifferent French engravings, but they are original pictures drawn
and executed by artists of the first eminence.” In stressing the originality and
uniqueness of her embellishments, she encourages her readers to consider
them as precious commodities that her magazine offers for their consump-
tion. She used the same strategy with The Rustic Maid and The City Belle in the
May number, as seen in figures 3.4 and 3.5.
Meanwhile, at Godey’s, the fashion plates were being revamped to reflect
the interests of American clothing reformers, moving away from the “tight-
lacing” deemed detrimental to the health of the magazine’s young read-
ers. A special note to the readers, “OUR FASHION PLATES,” explains: “The
publisher has, at great expense, engaged an artist of taste and celebrity, to
reform the foreign fashions, so far as health and delicacy require; and we shall
try the experiment of exhibiting the mode in accordance with that system
of improvements in the moral character of woman which our own ‘Book’ is
pledged to sustain. We are happy to say, that ladies of the highest influence in
the religious as well as literary world are engaged with us in this plan.”21
FIGURE 3.4 The Rustic Maid, frontispiece, Miss Leslie’s, May 1843. Courtesy of the Winterthur Library:
Printed Book and Periodical Collection.
FIGURE 3.5 The City Belle, frontispiece, Miss Leslie’s, May 1843. Courtesy of the Winterthur Library:
Printed Book and Periodical Collection.
However, Miss Leslie’s novelty peek-a-boo fashion plates really fueled com-
petition. She followed with two “celebrity” embellishments: an embossed
portrait (a technique resembling bas relief sculpture in print) of the Indian
chief Red Jacket in the February 1843 issue; and an embossed “portrait of
Princess Esterhazy in the latest and most recherché style of evening dress” in
the March number. Peterson’s tried to fight back in August, offering a fashion
plate printed in blue ink. Peterson’s blue-inked plate appeared along with a
second specially prepared gift plate, a hand-colored floral entitled Peony and
Butterfly that Godey editorially groused had been a concept prepared first for
his magazine.22 In offering both the blue-inked fashion plate and the colored
floral, Peterson crowed: “We call particular attention to the peony and but-
terfly in this number. This embellishment was got up under the supervision
of Mrs. Hill, a celebrated teacher of painting in water colors.” Peterson con-
tinued, “The execution of the flower will bear the closest examination, and is
equal to anything in the most expensive drawing-books; and yet this embel-
lishment is furnished to our subscribers in addition to the two other costly
illustrations which adorn the number.”23
Again, note the markers of status implied by consumption of these embel-
lishments, described as “costly,” “novel,” and “equal to anything in the most
expensive drawing-books.” Like Miss Leslie’s, Peterson adopted the strategy
of linking consumption of his innovative embellishments to aspirations of
upward mobility and genteel status. Middle-class magazine readers could
imitate the consumption patterns of the cultural and economic elite via the
purchase and display of plates from these illustrated monthlies.
However, Peterson was a month behind Miss Leslie’s in the blue ink inno-
vation for the fashion plate. In the June 1843 number, McMichael announced
conspiratorially, “Our embellishments have been costly, novel, and appropri-
ate,” and promised readers for July “a series of pictorial illustrations of an
entirely novel character.” In July, the magazine delivered, with a four-page
poem illustrated with engravings, all printed with blue ink—a month ahead
of Peterson’s.24 Godey’s retaliated in November, offering an engraving of the
plate A Runaway Match with three frames surrounding it—the first printed
with black ink, the second with blue ink, and the outside, red ink.25 However,
Miss Leslie’s had featured a similar strategy in January 1843, a nearly a year
before its competitors. Moreover, these were just the innovations to fashion
plates and steel engravings!
Miss Leslie’s choicest work for 1843 focused on what were already the most
costly and time-consuming reproduction methods: mezzotint and lithogra-
phy. The leading mezzotint engraver in Philadelphia in the 1840s, and indeed
in the entire country, was the English emigrant, John Sartain. As Sartain
scholar Katharine Martinez notes, few American engravers before 1830 had
attempted the technique of mezzotint, though artists and collectors admired
and purchased English mezzotints. Mezzotint uses a printing technique
called intaglio, the Italian word for “incised,” indicating the technique relied
on the use of a burin to incise lines on metal plates.26
Sartain spent the decade of the 1830s perfecting this technique, which
involved roughening up the metal surface (a process Sartain called “prepar-
ing the grounds”) and dampening the paper in the printing process, all of
which was costly and time consuming. To increase the number of imprints
from one plate, Sartain switched from a copper to steel plate, trained his
own printer in the technique, and arranged for the construction of a suitable
press to produce the prints.27 Because mezzotinting had long been connected
with the successful reproduction of portraits for mass distribution, Sartain
quickly befriended prominent Philadelphia portrait painters. By 1840, he was
already producing mezzotints for a variety of sources, including individual
print sales, art associations, and magazines.28
In their March 1843 issue, Leslie and McMichael pushed magazine mez-
zotint embellishment to a new height by offering their readers The Pets, a
“coloured mezzotint” engraved by Sartain from a picture by English artist
Edwin Landseer (see plate 4). Sartain had earlier engraved an identical mez-
zotint, though uncolored, for the May 1839 issue of Burton’s Gentleman’s Mag-
azine. In the March 1843 “Publisher’s Table,” McMichael described his version
of the embellishment to his readers: “The principal plate is a mezzotint by
Sartain, from one of Landseer’s finest pictures; and to give to it the highest
possible effect and finish, we have had it coloured in the richest style by the
most skilful artist, in his line, to be found in this country. No other pub-
lisher has ventured to give a coloured mezzotint; and no coloured print of any
description at all approaching this of ours, has ever before been furnished to
the subscribers of a monthly magazine.”29
The publisher’s rhetoric here clearly displays the status meant to be con-
veyed to the owner of this embellishment. By insisting that it is taken from
one of Landseer’s “finest” paintings, engraved by the best-known engraver
of the era, and finished in the “richest style” and with the “highest possible
effect and finish” by the “most skillful artist,” the publisher elevates the value
of the embellishment. Instead of mere picture, a light and superfluous addi-
tion to the serious literary matter, it becomes the magazine’s raison d’être.
Cast as a prized commodity, the embellishment distinguishes its possessor
from subscribers to other illustrated magazines.30 Indeed, the embellishments
featured in Miss Leslie’s in 1843, and soon challenged by Godey’s and Peter-
son’s, surpassed those found previously only in the expensive annuals that
generally sold for three to four times the price of an entire year’s subscription
to one of the Philadelphia pictorials.31
The following month, April 1843, Leslie offered to her readers another
first: Grandpapa’s Pet, a lithotint prepared by John H. Richards of the P.S.
Duval firm (see plate 5).32 Lithography, a technique of printing from stone,
appeared in the Philadelphia pictorials before 1843. Cephas Childs, a Philadel-
phia printer and publisher, specialized in lithography in the 1820s and 1830s,
believing it to be the print medium closest to painting, and ideal for portrait
prints.33 Childs employed the deaf-mute Alfred Newsam, and recruited from
France the young lithographer, Peter S. Duval.34 Lithography, a planographic
method of printing, works through the natural repulsion of grease and water.
Lithographers employed a greasy pen, drawing on the surface of a dry stone.35
Color could be added by hand after printing. By 1843 Duval had started his
own lithography business, specializing in colored lithographed prints. His
strategy involved painting in colors directly on the stone.36 Print historians
generally distinguish between lithotinting (tonal lithography using colors
on one stone only) and chromolithography (the successive use of multiple
stones to build up color).37 Regardless of the method used, adding colors was
aimed at achieving the effect of watercolor painting in a print medium.38
Duval prepared chromolithographed covers for Godey, while the New York
firm of James Ackerman prepared the Sartain’s Union cover featured in the
Introduction.
Miss Leslie’s devoted the front page of the April 1843 issue to a detailed
description of this “new art.” Reminding readers that the publisher prom-
ised “whatever novelties in the way of embellishments we could procure,”
the publisher assured his audience that he has “not hesitated either to incur
expense” in so doing. He identifies lithotint as “an art hitherto unknown in
the United States,” and traces its invention to a London lithographer “of rare
skill,” Mr. Hullmandel. He notes that his own engraver saw several produc-
tions by Hullmandel prepared in this manner and, working in conjunction
with Duval, experimented with achieving like results. The publisher predicts
that lithotint will “effect a revolution” in print publishing.”39 Although print
historians point out that lithotint never really caught on in the United States,
they also recognize Grandpapa’s Pet as the first lithotint produced in Amer-
ica.40 In the same issue, the publisher presented a fashion plate prepared in
“chalk-tints on stone,” also claiming it to be the first time that this technique
had been applied to a magazine embellishment.
52 IN NOVAT IONS TO GR AP HIC ARTS IN T HE PHILA D E LPHIA PIC TOR IA LS
In August 1843 Miss Leslie’s featured yet another first in magazine embel-
lishments, introducing the plate with another front-page article beginning:
“Our readers will have noticed that it is a part of the plan of our Magazine, to
present whatever is new and attractive in the graphic art.” She continued with
a description of that month’s plate, entitled Belisarius, engraved by A. Spencer
(see plate 6), identifying it as “the art of medal ruling, executed by the original
inventor of the medal ruling machine.” While print historians contest the
assertion that Asa Spencer was the first to perfect the art of medal engrav-
ing, they do acknowledge his contribution to the process.41 Medal engraving
relies on what is known as a pantographic device, which utilizes two needles
to trace the surface of a coin, medal, or small relief and transfer the image to
metal plates, preserving areas of light and shadow to reproduce the quality
of relief. An earlier version of this device, known as the physiognotrace or
silhouette machine, was used to trace a person’s profile. In introducing the
embellishment to readers, the publishers reminded those who might have
forgotten their history lessons, that Belisarius was the “great general” who
protected the emperor Justinian (Miss Leslie’s, August 1843, 33).
As the year continued, one surmises that McMichael must have overex-
tended himself on these costly engravings, for after this beautiful plate, Miss
Leslie’s embellishments noticeably fall off in quality. Graham’s, meanwhile,
never really engaged in the oneupmanship between Godey’s, Peterson’s, and
Miss Leslie’s, relying instead on tried-and-true mezzotints and a few colored
floral bouquet plates for the bulk of the magazine’s pictorial matter.
Godey indicated his ability to outlast the competition by announcing
his plans for the December issue: “The December Number will contain the
greatest novelty ever yet offered in a Magazine, THIRTY-ONE COLOURED
EMBOSSED MEDALLION SEALS, with every variety of design, and with
beautiful and appropriate Mottoes, ready for immediate use. These can-
not be had separately for less than seventy-five cents. They are offered by
the publisher as a holiday present to his fair patrons. This has never before
been attempted by a Magazine, and is only another instance of what may be
effected by good taste and an expensive outlay of capital” (see plate 7).
This graphic art, known as die-sink cameo stamps, had never before
appeared in a mass-market magazine. The earliest example previously
uncovered by a researcher of this style of engraving is from the mid-1850s.42
The Godey’s plate predates this by more than a decade and was produced
in quantity to be distributed to Godey’s readers. This innovation drew the
label cameo stamp because it utilizes a method of textured embossing (a
raised surface), usually in white relief because untouched by the colored ink
surrounding it. Thomas Beckman, an expert on this engraving style, reports

that blue ink worked best and was used most frequently in the early years of
the method.43
It is worth noting that Godey conflates the medallions’ value with both
their expense and their usefulness.44 In case readers needed direction on the
utility of these seals, the February 1844 “Editors’ Book Table” contained a
small notice to subscribers instructing them how to use them: “A little gum
Arabic dissolved in water, and applied to the back of any of the seals in [the]
December number, will cause them to adhere firmly to a letter” (104). Godey
also implies that it takes more than an “expensive outlay of capital” alone to
stay the course in the magazine business; by reminding readers of both his
good taste and the usefulness of his medallions, Godey implicitly calls into
question the taste of his competitors. Seemingly assured of vanquishing the
threat of Miss Leslie’s, Godey also claims superiority over French publishers.
He notes that although they “embrace almost every novelty in their various
works of fancy,” the French have not yet matched Godey in “offering to the
fair sex in remote places the luxuries and elegances of the larger cities,” such
as these novel embossed friendship medallions (Godey’s, THE EMBELLISH-
MENTS, November 1843, 240). At the close of 1843, Godey had managed suc-
cessfully to fend off the challenge to his magazine’s supremacy occasioned by
the entrance of Miss Leslie’s onto the publishing scene.
While Godey’s and Miss Leslie’s promoted innovations to American graphic
arts, and attached clear signifiers of taste and upward class mobility to con-
sumption of these new commodities, the publishers of these illustrated
monthly periodicals still needed to contend with market forces that circum-
scribed the limits of their innovations. Embellishments that were expensive
to produce required a large enough audience to support their continued pro-
duction. In the case of Miss Leslie’s, lack of a substantial enough subscription
base likely contributed to the discontinuation of the expensive and innova-
tive embellishments. The magazine continued, but under a new publisher (E.
Ferrett) and under the sole editorship of T. S. Arthur, who renamed it Arthur’s
Ladies Magazine of Elegant Literature and the Fine Arts.
Louis Godey eventually had the last laugh, as he bought out the failing
Arthur’s Magazine in July 1846 and merged its subscription list with his
own. McMichael’s “ample means” had not been enough to unseat Godey’s.
In addition to spurring technical and artistic innovations, however, Miss
Leslie’s helped create an economic climate in which artists, engravers, and
other graphic designers could promote the artistic value of their wares. Com-
petition between the Philadelphia illustrated periodicals would shift to new
ground in the middle to later years of the decade, and we will return to this
competition in Chapters 6 and 7. However, what about the regional imita-
tors that arose and nearly as quickly folded? How can a brief examination of
their histories shed light on how the Philadelphia magazines established and
maintained supremacy in the decade of the 1840s?
4
“ The Fluttering Host of
Many-Colored Competitors”
REGIONAL IMITATORS IN THE NORTHEAST, WEST, AND SOUTH
An August 1842 puff printed on the inside back cover of the newly launched
Boston Miscellany queried, “Why cannot Boston produce a first-rate literary
magazine as well as Philadelphia?” Clearly, by the early 1840s Philadelphia’s
illustrated monthly magazines of art and literature set the standards against
which newcomers sought to compete. This bold writer then answers his own
query: “It can, and in this instance it has.” The Boston Miscellany launched in
January 1842 with Nathan Hale Jr., son of one of Boston’s famous patriots,
as literary editor. Seeking to capitalize on the Hale reputation, and on the
desire of Boston readers to patronize a hometown publication, it looked to
have every advantage in its favor: elegant embellishments, original literary
contributions, an able editor, and supportive publishers. As the proud puffer
elaborated, the articles were “good, entertaining and useful.” Furthermore, he
continued, “The plates of fashions and pieces of music are as good as those of
any other work, and the engravings, especially in the last number, are excel-
lent.” An additional notice published just below this one advised, “Any in New
England, who may wish for a literary magazine, had better subscribe for the
Miscellany, than import one not half so good from Philadelphia.”1
Similarly, in the inaugural issue of The Columbian Lady’s and Gentleman’s
Magazine in January 1844, the editor, John Inman, brother to the painter
Henry Inman, explained in a lengthy introduction his rationale for launching
yet one more competitor to the field. Inman ventured that
the demand for literary production in this country, especially in the

periodical channel, exceeds the supply in a very large proportion, and
55
56 R E GIO NAL IMITATORS IN T H E N ORT HE A ST, W E ST, A N D SOUT H
that new supplies have only to be presented of the right quality, and in
the right way, to ensure a hearty welcome and profitable reception. . . .
From these premises it is undoubtingly inferred that there is abundant
room for another Magazine, notwithstanding the merit and success of
those already in being. . . . Another and strong motive has been the feel-
ing that New York, the first city of the Union, should be the home of a
periodical owning no superior in either merit or success.2
Cincinnati, the “Athens of the West,” proved to be the prominent western

publishing center in this decade. By 1846 some half-dozen monthlies of note
had launched, faltered, and failed. The longest-running illustrated monthly
to emerge in this decade, the Ladies’ Repository, flourished from 1841 to 1876
(Mott, I, 386–88). Published by the Methodist Book Concern, initially from
Cincinnati, then later from both Cincinnati and New York (“Editor’s Table,”
January 1846, 32), the magazine relied primarily on literary contributions
from Methodist ministers, educators, and religious sympathizers. Although
a “ladies” magazine, the editor eschewed tales of “love-sick swains and lasses,
and intoxicated dames,” offering instead articles on religion, morals, history,
education, geography, science, and book reviews.3 While launched as a maga-
zine explicitly interested in furthering “western” and Methodist interests, by
decade’s end the editor could claim to be shepherding a periodical “which cir-
culates in every part of the United States.”4
Thus, readers, editors, and publishers in Boston, New York, and Cincinnati
positioned their fledgling monthlies against the older, better-known, and
more widely circulated Philadelphia magazines. (Several southern cities also
launched literary magazines in this decade; more on these shortly). While the
publishers of these regional magazines strived to achieve the success of the
Philadelphia pictorials, they necessarily relied on what proved to be some-
times competing strategies: an appeal to sectional interests and regional pride
to boost local circulation, balanced against an insistence on promoting an
emerging national literature and art to generate subscriptions beyond their
cities of origin. None proved successful in displacing the Philadelphia pictori-
als as industry leaders in the 1840s; however, some produced embellishments
notable either for featuring regional vistas, or for introducing engraving sub-
jects “entirely new” to American audiences. This chapter will highlight several
regional challengers with notable embellishments: the Boston-based Ladies’
Repository (same name as Cincinnati magazine, but different publisher) and
Boston Miscellany; the Eclectic, the Ladies’ Companion and the Columbian (New
York); and the Ladies’ Repository (Cincinnati).
R E G ION A L IM ITATOR S IN T HE NO RT H E AS T, WE S T, AND S O U T H 57
As noted above, several southern cities—such as Richmond, Charleston,

Savannah, and New Orleans—published monthly magazines during this
era. However, while acknowledging editorially their efforts to imitate the
established northern magazines in support of an emerging American lit-
erature, none of these southern magazines attempted to compete with the
northern monthlies in featuring original American art. Richmond hosted
the Southern Literary Messenger, launched in 1834 and briefly edited by Edgar
Allan Poe in 1835–36 (Mott, I, 382). Charleston served as home to some half-
dozen monthlies that perished shortly after their births: the Southern Liter-
ary Gazette, the Southern Review, the Southern Literary Journal, the Magno-
lia, the Southern and Western Monthly Magazine, and the Southern Quarterly
Review (Mott, I, 382–83).5 Several of these periodicals bounced from one
southern city to another, changing names and ownership along the way:
the Magnolia began in Savannah as the Southern Ladies’ Book; the Southern
Quarterly Review launched in New Orleans before relocating to Charleston.
J. D. B. DeBow’s Commercial Review of the South and West emanated from the
southernmost city of New Orleans for nearly 35 years (1846–80); although it
featured a wider array of articles that the title might suggest, it was sparsely
illustrated in this era.6
Although none of the southern magazines offered art engravings to
compete with the northern monthlies, a brief examination of perhaps the
best-known literary magazine, the Southern Literary Messenger, evidences
the claim that southern periodicals sought to best their already-established
northern counterparts. Thomas Willys White had launched the Southern Lit-
erary Messenger from Richmond in 1833, employing rhetoric similar to that
of the Boston, New York, and Cincinnati magazines. As owner, publisher,
editor, and evidently printer, as well, White gambled greatly in issuing a
magazine at a time when the population of Richmond had not yet reached
twenty thousand.7 In a column presenting the fourth issue, White announced
his intentions to make his magazine the publication “where southern minds
especially, may meet in honorable collision.” However, White hastily noted
that by this he meant no “slighting or undervaluing” of the contributions he
hoped to receive from his “northern and eastern brethren.” In fact, he noted,
“We desire to emulate their own noble efforts in behalf of American litera-
ture.”8 However, with a $5.00/year subscription fee (while Philadelphia maga-
zine subscriptions ran $2.00 to $3.00/year) White struggled to attract a large
readership, either in the South or beyond.
White appears to have wanted to have it both ways: on the one hand,
he bowed to Northern magazine superiority in an effort to woo a northern
audience; on the other hand, he wished the Southern Literary Messenger to

prosper as the peculiar mouthpiece for a southern literary tradition. To secure
northern notice, if not readership, he needed to play down the regional speci-
ficity of the magazine. However, to secure a substantial southern audience,
he needed to appeal to readers’ sense of southern pride.
Some seven years after founding the magazine, White’s December 1841
“Prospectus” for the 1842 volume betrays his continued frustration: “In all
the Union, south of Washington, there are but two Literary periodicals.
Northward of that city, there are probably at least twenty-five or thirty!”
White then fumes, “Is this contrast justified by the wealth, the leisure, the
native talent, or the actual literary taste, of the southern people, compared
with those of the Northern?” In answering his own query, White alludes to at
least one factor contributing to the failure of southern magazines to attract
a large readership. White avows, “No: for in wealth, talents, and taste, we
may justly claim at least an equality with our brethren; and a domestic insti-
tution [emphasis mine] exclusively our own, beyond all doubt affords us, if
we choose, twice the leisure for reading and writing, which they employ.”
Here White implies that the south’s citizens possess wealth, talents, and
taste equal to their northern counterparts—and moreover, that the South’s
“domestic institution” (slavery) should enable the leisure necessary for edu-
cated citizens to produce and consume literature in proportions exceeding
that of the North. What White does not acknowledge is that sustained pro-
motion of its “domestic institution” in the pages of the Southern Literary
Messenger reinforced sectional differences and likely discouraged widespread
northern readership.
A second factor contributing to the struggle faced by the Southern
Literary Messenger in particular is the magazine’s steep $5.00/year sub-
scription fee, which doubtless discouraged widespread readership in the
South—where there were fewer men of means—as well as in the North,
where there was a ready selection of cheaper literary monthlies.9 Moreover,
styled primarily as a gentleman’s magazine, the Southern Literary Messenger
lacked, in this decade, the fashion plates and other fancy embellishments
that appealed to a feminine readership—and this at a time when women
were fast becoming the leading consumers of the nation’s illustrated maga-
zines.10 Price, regionalism, and lack of illustrations hampered the Southern
Literary Messenger, and other similarly styled southern literary magazines,
from significantly challenging the artistic supremacy of the Philadelphia
pictorials in this decade.
THE BOSTON MONTHLIES:

BOSTON MISCELLANY AND LADIES’ REPOSITORY
As the Boston reader whose observations led off this chapter noted, Boston
publishers attempted numerous times to launch monthly magazines to rival
their Philadelphia competitors in the 1830s and 1840s, but none achieved the
circulation necessary to remain solvent. However, two magazines did pub-
lish some noteworthy plates in the 1840s, from Boston artists and engravers,
featuring local landmarks and personages that directly appealed to a local
audience.
The Boston Miscellany appeared in January 1842, undoubtedly relying on
a renewed interest in the arts exemplified by the founding, the year before,
of the Boston Artists’ Association.11 Published by Bradbury, Soden & Co., of
Boston and New York, the magazine offered much to recommend it. A title
page presented to readers, beginning with the May 1842 issue, featured a pair
of engravings of Revolutionary War scenes depicting tales that would have
been familiar to Boston readers (see fig. 4.1). The top engraving, Gen Marion
inviting a British office to dinner, is based on a John B. White painting that
had been engraved for the Apollo Association in 1840 by Philadelphia mezzo-
tinter John Sartain. The scene depicts South Carolina revolutionary war hero
General Francis Marion, known as the “Swamp Fox,” inviting a British officer
to dinner. According to lore, the British officer was so moved by the simple
fare and the fact that American soldiers drew no wages, that he switched alle-
giances.12 The bottom engraving, Capture of Andre, 1780, references the well-
known tale of British Major John Andre’s conspiracy with American General
Benedict Arnold, and his capture at the hands of three New York militiamen.
Philadelphia artist Thomas Sully had painted the scene in 1812, and it had
inspired a host of other reproductions, including a stage play.13
In its brief fourteen months in publication, the Boston Miscellany offered
fashion plates (some colored, some not), engravings based on fancy pictures,
and three plates of local Boston landmarks. Unlike Godey’s fashion plates,
which, during the Boston Miscellany’s short publishing run, were now being
“Americanized,” this magazine’s plates bear the title “Paris Fashions” and
offer no explanatory text. The engravings of fancy pictures, although for the
most part of high quality, display little to distinguish themselves from similar
plates in other illustrated monthlies. With titles such as The Bride, The Inquiry,
The Dreamer, The Importunate, The Young Gleaners, and The Young Tutors, most
appear to have their origins in Continental, rather than American, paintings.
FIGURE 4.1 Boston Miscellany of Literature & Fashion, title cover, January 1842. Engraved by Rawdon,
Wright, Hatch & Smillie. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
Moreover, unlike the Philadelphia pictorials, the engravings are presented as

adjuncts to the literary matter: the index lists short tales and poems by title,
then in brackets following includes the statement “with an engraving.”
The plates of Boston landmarks likely appealed to local audiences, but
largely lack the iconic and nationalistic appeal of similar plates in the Phil-
adelphia pictorials. Chamber of Representatives/From the Park, depicting
the Massachusetts state house, published in the February 1842 issue, was
engraved by Joseph Andrews, a Boston engraver who had worked under Abel
Bowen, Boston’s leading engraver and lithographer.14 Bunker Hill Monument,
published in the August 1842 issue, was “engraved expressly” for the Boston
Miscellany by John A. Rolph, a New York engraver whose work frequently
appeared in the Boston periodicals. Perhaps the best executed of the three is
Boston Common, designed by Hammatt Billings, a respected Boston architect
and monument designer, and engraved again by Rolph for the December 1842
issue.15 All three plates depicted scenes likely appealing to Massachusetts resi-
dents; however, only the Bunker Hill plate alluded to events of greater signifi-
cance to a narrative of national history.
Publishers Bradley, Soden & Co. must have realized at the end of their first
year in business that the balance sheet needed reckoning. In their “Prospec-
tus” for the new volume, the publishers mention the “pressure of the times,”
the “great competition in this line . . . from periodicals long established,” and
note that the “numerous attempts . . . to locate a magazine of a purely literary
character in this quarter of the United States” had “as often failed.” Perhaps
the publishers intended this as a spur to prod subscribers not only to pay up,
but also to enlist additional subscribers. Certainly, the promise of engravings
of “New and original American subjects/Historical, Landscape and Pictur-
esque” suggests that the publishers realized that the fancy plates had done
little to distinguish the pictorial matter of the magazine. Likewise, this notice
suggests that plates of local landmarks might have limited appeal to readers
outside Boston—largely because the Philadelphia magazines already offered
readers plates of geographically dispersed American sites and scenery, includ-
ing Boston scenes.16
Tellingly, editor Nathan Hale Jr. bade farewell to readers in the December
1842 issue, claiming to be leaving the magazine in other hands “for better con-
duct and enlarged ability.” A publishers’ notice in that same issue indicated
that the editorship would be passing into the hands of Henry T. Tuckerman,
a New York writer and art critic responsible for combining the Boston Miscel-
lany with the New York magazine Arcturus (Mott, I, 720). With no further
announcement from the publishers about their intentions for the combined
magazine, it simply ceased publication two months later, after the February
1843 issue.
A much longer-running Boston monthly (1843–73), the Ladies’ Repository,
could not have been more different from the Boston Miscellany in editorial
intent, content, contributors, and readership. Whereas the Boston Miscellany
aspired to become the literary magazine of New England, the Ladies’ Reposi-
tory represented Universalist religious interests. Whereas the Boston Mis-
cellany featured fiction and poetry, the Ladies’ Repository gravitated toward
articles on religion, morals, philosophy, education, history, geography, and
science—though it did not completely eschew fiction. Whereas the Boston
Miscellany sought to engage contributions from the nation’s leading poets
and novelists (and in reality, Hale composed much of the content), the Ladies’
Repository relied on the unpaid contributions of ministers, educators (many
were college professors), and religious sympathizers. While the Boston Miscel-
lany aspired to compete with the Philadelphia pictorials, then boasting read-
erships in the tens of thousands, the Ladies’ Repository contented itself with
a modest subscription list hovering around two thousand souls in 1843.17
However, the plates did receive great care in selection and presentation,
and for that, readers had to thank the Rev. Henry A. Bacon, who served as
editor of the magazine throughout the 1840s. Moreover, the contents were
not the narrow and stodgy didacticisms one might expect from an explicitly
religious publication. In the November 1843 issue, Bacon explained, “That the
Repository has been a Universalist periodical, none can dispute . . .” (200).
However, as the Rev. E. G. Brooks explained, “We are opposed to creeds. We
regard them as wholly unauthorized and unscriptural—opposed altogether to
the free spirit of Christ and Christianity. Christ delivered no creed; Christian-
ity enforces none.”18 In addition to embracing universal salvation, Universal-
ists (and their near-brethren, Unitarians) also supported many of the leading
liberal social causes of the day: prison reform, abolition of slavery, suffrage
rights, the peace movement, educational reform, and the like.19 Moreover,
Rev. Bacon specifically voiced his belief in the transformative potential of
works of art, and his support of Boston’s art community.
From the magazine’s inception in 1843, plates appeared quarterly, in Janu-
ary, April, July, and October. Generally, these were steel engravings, although
the magazine offered the occasional mezzotint, usually a portrait. How-
ever, while the Philadelphia and New York illustrated magazines featured
portraits of “distinguished” Americans, usually authors and statesmen, the
Ladies’ Repository featured portraits of Universalist ministers and leaders. As
might be expected, religious scenes formed a staple of the pictorial material.
American landscapes also proved a favorite with the Repository, as with

many of the illustrated monthlies: following the 1840 London publication of
Nathaniel P. Willis’s American Scenery, with nearly seventy plates designed by
William H. Bartlett, most monthlies scrambled to prepare their own engrav-
ings based on Bartlett’s designs.20
In the early issues of the Repository, Bacon provided most of the text
accompanying the engravings, and additional editorial matter promoting the
Boston art scene. An engraving for the July 1843 issue, Hudson Highlands,
based on a Bartlett design, displayed the engraving talents of a local engraver,
Oliver Pelton, known also for his banknote work.21 In his accompanying
description of the plate, Bacon notes, “The engraving is from a painting by
W. H. Bartlett, who is called by N. P. Willis, ‘the draftsman of the American
scenery—the best of artists in this way.’”22 In a paragraph from the “Books,
Notices & c.” column on the following page (39), Bacon offers his observations
on the Boston art scene: “It is becoming quite fashionable in Boston to call
into the rooms of the various Artists of that city . . . Boston can boast of quite
a number of artists to whom the title of distinguished can with propriety be
applied.” Bacon mentions specifically the work of sculptor Edward Augustus
Brackett, and painter Thomas Buchanan Read, both living in Boston at the
time.23 Though admitting to be no “professed connoisseur” of the arts, Bacon
nonetheless sought to support the Boston arts community, and to frame the
magazine’s art embellishments with suitable commentary.
In addition to Hudson Highlands, the magazine featured other American
landscapes in this decade, many based on Bartlett’s designs, and most of a
local or regional interest: Boston Highlands/(From Bull Hill); Connecticut River/
Near Vernon (another Pelton plate); Boston (October 1845); and Trenton Falls
(November 1845, also by Pelton). For the October 1845 plate Boston, Bacon
provides this note (155): “The plate given in this No. is an original sketch of
Boston as seen from the Harbor, from a drawing made by the artist himself
for the express purpose.” Bacon continues, “Every one familiar with the point
of view, to whom we have shown the plate, has admired it and pronounced it
an accurate picture, and well executed.”
As noted, religious scenes and portraits of Universalist clergymen also
proved a staple of the pictorial matter. Ruth and Boaz, published in the Janu-
ary 1845 issue, is of special note since it featured the work of two Bostonian
artists: it was engraved by Oliver Pelton, from the painting by Thomas Buch-
anan Read. Bacon himself was the subject of two full-page engravings: the
first, a steel engraving published in the July 1846 issue; the second a mezzo-
tint engraved from a daguerreotype portrait for the February 1850 issue. In
the wry, self-deprecating tone characteristic of Bacon’s editorials, he writes of

the 1850 portrait: “to none, we believe, is it too handsome” (316). In supply-
ing brief biographical details, he particularly foregrounds his sixteen years of
active ministry, fourteen of which include his editorship of the magazine.
A portrait of the Rev. John Murray, published in the July 1845 issue, likely
also held special appeal for Universalists: Murray was the leading exponent
of the theology of “Complete Redemption” that distinguished Universal-
ists from their more conservative and Calvinistic Christian counterparts.24
Murray had immigrated to America in 1770, and preached his first sermon at
Thomas Potter’s chapel in Good Luck, New Jersey.25 In his “Books, Notices, &
c.” column for October 1845, Bacon writes a review of a single-print engraving
Potter’s Meeting House, available for 12 cents from the printing house of Repos-
itory publisher A. Tompkins. Bacon notes (160): “We received this engraving
with peculiar pleasure. It is more to us than any sketch of natural scenery,
for it makes us think, reverently, gratefully and hopefully, as but few pictures
can.” Moreover, Bacon’s final words indicate the use to which he encouraged
readers to put this picture: “This engraving is added to the pictorial sermons
which speak to us from the walls of our study, and which make the silence of
our solitude to be eloquent with wisdom.”
Bacon’s belief that engravings could serve as “pictorial sermons” was cer-
tainly not unique in this decade. In his 1840 address to the Artists’ Fund Soci-
ety, George W. Bethune had claimed: “A good engraving of a good picture,
in its effect on the mind, is incomparably superior to a painting of ordinary
merit.” Bethune noted in his address that those “whose means are too nar-
row to purchase original designs, can find a cheap, but delightful gratifica-
tion from the engraver’s art.” He added that engravings “have enlivened with
glimpses of Art the walls of many a humble dwelling, once poor and mean.”26
Bacon clearly believed that the magazine’s artwork served as one vehicle for
fulfilling Universalism’s mission of educational reform and moral uplift.
Considering the magazine’s religious origins, a series of belles lettres plates
offered in the early 1850s perhaps was unique in the Repository’s choice of
engravings. Featuring scenes from novels, these plates specifically challenged
the prevailing notion (advocated by Union editor Caroline Kirkland, among
others) that “novel reading” constituted a corrupting (Kirkland called it
“vicious”) influence, particularly on female readers. The Repository featured
Catherine Seyton as the plate for August 1850, and Bacon specifically encour-
aged readers (76) to consult Sir Walter Scott’s novel, The Abbot, for a fuller
delineation of his female character (pictured, as in the novel, in her disguise
as a page). In March 1851, the magazine featured The Sentry Box, painted by
expatriate artist Charles Leslie, living in London. Bacon’s textual accompani-

ment (356) refers readers to the scene from Tristram Shandy in which Uncle
Toby suffers the lures of the widow Wademan.
That Universalism embraced “the most liberal tolerance,” in Bacon’s words,
likely accounts for the publisher’s and editor’s selection and promotion of
both pictorial and reading matter. While secular illustrated monthly maga-
zines like Godey’s and the Union featured articles and engravings that railed
against the evils of novel reading, the Repository embraced a more liberal
position toward both art and literature than some of its secular counterparts.
This liberal attitude toward the arts seems to have stemmed from the Uni-
versalist belief in the “sanctity of conscience” in making ethical and moral
choices. For example, in a column on “Children of Universalists” Bacon noted,
“no true Universalist would wish to violate the conscience of a child, and force
attendance in the family pew.”27 Universalism embraced the light of reason
and intellect in spiritual matters, and viewed art and literature alike as pos-
sible vehicles for spiritual inspiration for all its adherents.
The ability of women readers to make their own moral choices appears to
have been the bedrock of the magazine’s philosophy. In his “Editor’s Table”
for the July 1849 issue, Bacon notes that Universalism, as a religion, gives
“dignity and substantiality to female character,” and that Universalist women
ought therefore better support the efforts of the Repository to honor wom-
en’s moral independence. Likewise, in an article on Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning in the July 1850 issue, Bacon takes issue with the prevailing notion
that strength of thought must be connected with masculine coarseness (40).
Moreover, at a time when her contemporaries, including Godey’s editor Sarah
Josepha Hale, deserted popular author Elizabeth Oakes Smith for taking
the lyceum stage on behalf of women’s rights, Bacon published a review of
Woman and Her Needs defending Oakes Smith against her detractors. Of the
book, Bacon writes in his editor’s table for December 1851: “Mrs. Smith gives
her thoughts on this subject, and her book abounds with strong and indig-
nant protests against the shams which are sanctified by custom and the dis-
cords which are called unions” (237). Bacon also praises Oakes Smith’s moral
courage in taking her cause to the lyceum stage while other women reformers
eschewed professing their beliefs in such public spaces.
While many Boston monthlies came and went, the Ladies’ Repository main-
tained its steady commitment to liberal Universalist ideologies years past the
Civil War. In the decade of the 1840s, the magazine offered Bostonians (and
beyond) who harbored liberal religious leanings an alternative to the illus-
trated monthlies emanating from Philadelphia. Though never achieving an
audience anywhere near that of the Philadelphia pictorials, the Repository

nonetheless managed a steady enough subscription base to sustain publica-
tion while secular Boston monthlies like the Miscellany surfaced, flourished,
and failed. The magazine supported the work of local artists and engravers
via its plates of regional landscapes and portraits of homegrown religious
leaders. Advocating sanctity of conscience for women and for children, the
Repository occupied a liberal high ground in American literary culture that its
secular Philadelphia counterparts in this decade did not attempt to challenge.
Publishing articles on the peace, temperance, suffrage, Universalist, and anti-
slavery movements, the Repository occupied an interesting, and largely unex-
plored, position in antebellum American culture. As such, it deserves more
sustained scholarly attention.28
NEW YORK MONTHLIES:

THE ECLECTIC, LADIES’ COMPANION, AND COLUMBIAN
Although Philadelphia proved to be the primary publishing center for illus-

trated monthly magazines in the 1840s, New York ran a close second and,
in terms of weeklies and mammoth dailies, surpassed the City of Brotherly
Love. Her longstanding literary monthly, the Knickerbocker (1833–65), largely
eschewed pictorial embellishments; until 1858, when monthly steel engrav-
ings began to appear, the magazine offered only the occasional, largely unre-
markable, woodcut (Mott, I, 612). However, other periodicals showcased the
talents of New York’s artists and engravers. This section will focus on three
monthlies offering higher-quality art embellishments: the Eclectic, the Ladies’
Companion, and the Columbian. In addition, brief mention will be made of the
engravings in New York’s popular illustrated weekly, the New Mirror.
Though featuring work from the same artists and engravers, these three
illustrated monthlies differed in audience and intent, and therefore, in the
subject matter of the monthly plates. The Eclectic (1844–1907) reprinted
excerpts from Europe’s leading literary newspapers and magazines, and
thus featured the work of English and Continental authors; each month fea-
tured a mezzotint portrait engraved by John Sartain. The Ladies’ Companion
(1834–44) launched as New York’s alternative to Philadelphia’s leading $3.00/
year illustrated monthlies (Godey’s and Graham’s). Godey’s Lady’s Book and
The Ladies’ Companion targeted a feminine audience, while New York’s Colum-
bian, like Philadelphia’s Graham’s, included the elaboration Lady’s and Gentle-
man’s Magazine in its extended title. The Eclectic appears to have commenced
FIGURE 4.2 The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, title cover, August 1845. Courtesy of the
American Antiquarian Society.
specifically to capitalize on the faltering of The Ladies’ Companion, which

folded that same year.
Although perhaps the longest-running of the New York illustrated month-
lies that commenced publication prior to 1850, the Eclectic largely featured
reprints from European periodicals and, in terms of literary content, merits
closer comparison with other popular miscellanies of the era rather than with
the Philadelphia pictorials. Tracing its roots back to a Philadelphia weekly
commencing publication in 1819, the Eclectic, under various titles and incar-
nations, continued publication until 1907. Eliakim and Squier Littell shep-
herded the magazine through transitions during 1843, before selling it off
in January 1844 to start the periodical that became its closest competitor
in that era, Littell’s Living Age. As the new title of the magazine proudly pro-
claimed, it was a magazine of “foreign literature” culled from Europe’s lead-
ing periodicals (see fig. 4.2). In terms of artwork, it is chiefly remembered for
200-plus mezzotint portraits of dignitaries (American, as well as Continen-
tal) contributed by John Sartain during the magazine’s heyday between 1844
and 1862 (Mott, I, 306–9).
The Eclectic’s subscription fee of $5.00 payable in advance, $6.00 upon bill-
ing, and $6.50 for bound older volumes, along with the magazine’s promise of
pictorial embellishments “embrac[ing] the whole of MODERN EUROPEAN
ART,” suggests a target audience primarily of East Coast elites with economic,
political, and social ties to the Continent. The incentive for securing new sub-
scribers was unorthodox. The Philadelphia magazines relied on promotional
schemes involving reduced subscription rates for clubs subscribing simul-
taneously, or premiums such as single engravings or bundled subscriptions
to other print material from the same bookseller. The Eclectic, on the other
hand, offered cash commissions to subscribers: $1.00 for securing one new
subscriber at the $5.00 fee; $2.00 for securing between $5.00 and $100.00 in
new subscription fees; and so on, up to $3.00 for sending in $300.00 in sub-
scription fees.29
In addition to displaying the work of European artists and mezzotint por-
traits of European nobility and literati, the Eclectic featured in this era a few
other engravings worth mentioning. The work of expatriate American painter
Charles Leslie is featured in several plates: The Gypseying [sic] Party (Febru-
ary 1844); The Widow (September 1844); and The Mother (August 1845), all
engraved by Sartain. Mezzotint portraits of Milton Dictating to His Daugh-
ters (April 1844), Tennyson (March 1848), and Wordsworth (August 1849)
stand out, as well as an engraving based on Thomas Sully’s fancy picture The
Mantilla (July 1847). Two other notable Sartain mezzotints are Dr. Johnson
Rescuing Goldsmith from his Landlady (January 1848) and A Literary Party at
Sir Joshua Reynolds (January 1849), picturing Boswell, Johnson, Reynolds,
Garrick, Burke, Paoli, Burney, Warton, and Goldsmith. Also of interest is
a series of plates depicting stages of a romantic relationship, based on the
work of two different painters: The Last Appeal (September 1848), The Pardon
Refused (April 1849), The Reconciliation (May 1849), and The Gentle Warning
(October 1849).
Like Louis Godey, the Eclectic’s publisher bragged, “the engravings are
considered, by many, worth the price of the work” (front matter, September
1844). However, with an initial subscription list of between 800 and 1,200
subscribers, the steep subscription fees, and a relentlessly European focus,
the Eclectic was never in direct competition with the Philadelphia illustrated
monthlies, touting their original contributions of American literature and art.
Nonetheless, the Eclectic did contribute to the distribution of art engravings
during its long history, and the magazine’s artwork deserves further study.
Editor and publisher William W. Snowden launched his Ladies’ Companion
in May 1834 as a New York challenger to the Philadelphia monthlies, and by
1840 claimed a subscription list surpassing that of Godey’s.30 Snowden staked
his claim to supremacy on his magazine’s success at being the first in Amer-
ica to publish an original steel engraving in every issue. The publisher first
makes this claim in his prospectus for the volume to begin May 1838 (unlike
most publishers, Snowden’s new volumes commenced in May and November,
rather than July and January). In a note entitled “TO CORRESPONDENTS
AND READERS,” he announces his intention, beginning with the next vol-
ume, to engage the engraver Archibald L. Dick (although Snowden mistakenly
calls him “James”) to prepare “an entirely new steel plate” for each issue. By
contrast, Godey first began claiming “entirely original contents” (as opposed
to “plates”) a bit later, in January 1840; in December of that same year the
publisher complained that reviewers failed to notice between magazines that
offered borrowed plates, and those, like Godey’s, that offered two original
steel engravings in each issue.
Frank Luther Mott famously referred to Snowden as a “literary adventurer
who knew more about circulation building than he did about literature,” but
as is true of many of Mott’s observations, he did not explain exactly how
Snowden built up the magazine’s circulation (Mott, I, 626). However, a close
reading of the editorial spaces of the magazine reveals that Snowden’s suc-
cess is owed to several aggressive collection strategies. Beginning in June
1838, the publisher announced that he would begin reprinting on the cover of
the magazine the names of all subscribers who discontinue or move without
paying up. In his “Editors’ Table,” Snowden reprinted excerpts from an article
published in the Hesperian noting that the “negligence of good subscribers”
is the primary force operating against the success of the establishment of
American magazines. Later on the same page (100), Snowden reminded sub-
scribers that the $3.00/year fee rises to $4.00/year if not paid by the first
of August (three months after the commencement of a new volume). In the
October 1838 “Editors’ Table,” the publisher announced that his agent, Mr.
Alexander Means, was on a “collecting tour” throughout the state of New
York and that subscribers should pay up by mail, or “when called upon,” oth-
erwise they would be billed for $4.00 rather than $3.00.
By October 1840, Snowden included this paragraph at the end of nearly
every “Editors’ Table” explaining to readers the magazine’s collection policy,
citing legal decisions in the policy’s defense:
NOTICE.—It is requisite that it should be distinctly understood that

the year of the Ladies Companion commences in May or November. All
subscriptions expire, either with the April or October number. Persons
receiving the first number of a new volume, are considered as subscribers
for the whole year, and payment will be insisted upon. It is the duty of
every subscriber to give notice at the office, personally, or by letter post-
paid, if he desire the work stopped, and not to permit it to be forwarded
to his address for several months after the year has expired. When a
person once causes his name to be registered, it is not for any definite
period—but so long as he suffers the work to come in his name, he is
answerable for the subscription, (see Judge Thompson and Judge Wil-
liams’ decisions), whether it is taken from the post office, or allowed to
remain there by the person whose name it bears. No subscription can be
transferred without the consent of the office, otherwise the person first
subscribing, is held responsible.
These three strategies—dunning delinquents on the magazine’s cover, send-

ing collection agents door to door, and spelling out clearly a subscriber’s legal
liabilities in commencing a subscription—likely contributed to his success
in maintaining adequate enough revenues to keep the magazine running for
over ten years.
At the conclusion of the magazine’s first year of publication in April
1835, Snowden reminded his readers that he had provided them engravings
“from many a scene of romantic interest.” While Snowden did offer the typi-
cal romantic fare—idealized images of shepherdesses, Indian maidens, and
ladies in peril—within a few years, the scope of the magazine’s embellish-

ments widened significantly beyond this description. In advance of the 1840
release of Willis’s American Scenery, Snowden featured Saratoga Lake, a Bar-
tlett design engraved by Dick (May 1839), and before the magazine folded, he
had published a dozen and a half American landscape plates based on Bartlett
designs.31 He also featured plates of American scenery from other well-known
New York painters—The Falls of Catskill by Thomas Cole (May 1837); I Went to
Gather Flowers by George Loring (Claude) Brown (July 1837); The Whirlwind,
also by Cole (August 1837); and Title Cover for 1837, based on a Brown paint-
ing. He also published The Wrecked Mariner, by landscape artist Thomas Birch
(June 1837), and The Indian Toilette, painted by New York artist and designer
John G. Chapman (September 1837).
In two genres of images, Snowden definitely appears to have bested his
Philadelphia competitors in the decade of the 1840s: engravings of belles
lettres and plates depicting contemporary Chinese culture.32 As the next chap-
ter will discuss, the relationship between image and text in these illustrated
magazines fluctuated throughout the 1840s, in part in response to larger
changes in the literary marketplace. However, Snowden appears to have led
the competition in the 1840s in offering to his readers art engravings depict-
ing well-known literary characters. Not to be confused with simple woodcut
illustrations that began to be used with greater frequency in book illustra-
tion beginning early in the 1840s, these expensive-to-produce, high-quality
art engravings were meant to serve as the focal point of an image/text duo:
the text usually “illustrated” the image, not the other way around. They were
also meant for pull-out and parlor display. Likewise, his China scenes nei-
ther exoticized nor caricatured the Chinese as a race and nation (as did much
visual depiction of the Chinese in this decade), but rather attempted ethno-
graphic verisimilitude.
Snowden apparently favored Scottish themes in choosing literary charac-
ters to illustrate, and seems to have assumed his readers’ familiarity with the
works in which they appeared. He featured four plates of characters based
on poems by Robert Burns, and another four plates of characters from nov-
els by Sir Walter Scott.33 Dick engraved all of the Burns plates from paint-
ings by J. M. Wright. These engravings feature very similar-looking male and
female characters, accompanied by a dog, and one suspects that Wright used
the same models for all four designs. The Scott plates, from different artists
and engravers, feature female characters: two from Scott’s novel Heart of Mid
Lothian, a third from Peveril of the Peaks, and a fourth from The Betrothed.34
That Snowden assumed that his subscribers were novel readers is apparent in
FIGURE 4.3 The Culture and Preparation of Tea, frontispiece, Ladies’ Companion, August 1843. Drawn
by T. Allom, engraved by A. L. Dick. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
his editorial presentation of the plate of Effie Deans for the July 1841 issue:
“Our engraving for this month is the portrait of one of Scott’s heroines, from
one of his most popular novels, the Heart of Mid Lothian. Few readers but will
recollect the circumstances arising from an error in her life, on which Scott
has constructed his novel, as well as her sister, the virtuous Jeanie Deans, one
of the most beautiful sketches of high principle and steady affection which
was ever delineated by any author” (103).
Like Louis Godey, Snowden listed his magazine’s embellishments sep-
arately from the fiction and poetry in each issue. Moreover, like Godey,
Snowden insisted that his magazine’s engravings be received as works of
art. In an October 1842 “Editors’ Table,” looking back over eight years of
publication, Snowden includes a special paragraph, “Our Engravings.” He
notes, “We would call the attention of our subscribers to the engravings
of the present number, as works of art, unsurpassed by any other peri-
odical of similar pretensions” (334).35 Again like Godey, in the pivotal year
1843 (discussed in ch. 3) Snowden found himself caught up in the heated
FIGURE 4.4 Doctor Sian Seng: Or, A Chinaman in Paris, page 174,
Graham’s, March 1849.
competition to obtain unique and “novel” engravings for his magazine. The
plates he secured were of so different a character from those he usually pub-
lished that he must have realized he would need to position them for his
readers in advance. In a July 1843 column, “Periodical Literature,” Snowden
opines, “the public taste has become completely nauseated with the sickly
sentimentalism.” He promises his readers “more wholesome nutriment”
that will engage the “intellectual appetite” of American readers who admire
“real science and letters” (154).
The next month (August 1843), he presented to his readers the first of four
plates illustrating contemporary Chinese culture. This plate engraved by Dick,
The Culture and Preparation of Tea (see fig. 4.3), was introduced as “the first
of its kind, that has ever appeared in any of the periodicals of our country.”36
Indeed, most images and texts depicting the Chinese in magazines of art and
literature—magazines that touted their aim to “elevate the intellectual and
moral character of the people”37—presented Chinese men visually as carica-
tures, and textually, as weak, indolent, and materialistic. This depiction of the
Chinese predominated through the end of the decade in the polite literature.
Typical of this depiction is a two-part illustrated tale published in Graham’s
for February and March 1849, “Doctor Sian Seng, or The Chinaman in Paris”
(see fig. 4.4).
By contrast, Snowden’s Chinese plates, and the accompanying textual
explications, offered the magazine’s readers a snippet of the “real science and
letters” that Snowden claimed the American reading public now craved. As
scholars have pointed out, Americans in the eastern cities proved eager to
learn about Chinese culture, from newly opened “museums” and exhibitions,
as well as from regular coverage of Chinese travel and commerce covered in
newspapers and magazines.38 The full-page article accompanying The Culture
and Preparation of Tea reads part history, part geography, part botany lesson,
and part cultural analysis. The article begins by noting the increased inter-
est in American-Chinese relationships.39 A description of the climate and soil
necessary to cultivate the plants follows. The article next gives a botanical
description of the two principal plants from which Chinese green and black
teas, respectively, are harvested. Finally, the article describes the medical
effects of tea on the human body, and the various uses to which the Chinese
and other tea drinkers put the beverage.
Snowden offered a second plate in this vein for the December 1843 issue:
Silk Culture in China. The accompanying one-page explication, like that accom-
panying the tea cultivation plate, serves as both scientific treatise and socio-
cultural analysis. Silk production was receiving quite a bit of attention in the
American print media, in part due to Treasury reports claiming that in 1835,
over twelve million dollars’ worth of silk had been imported into the United
States from France alone, making silk the single most expensive import.40 The
article accompanying the plate cites the American Institute’s efforts to pro-
mote silk production in the United States. (Similar to Philadelphia’s Franklin
Institute, the American Institute, chartered in May 1829, sponsored exhibi-
tions of the leading developments in science, agriculture and the mechani-
cal arts.41 The 1843 convention featured a separate Silk Convention, where
fledgling American growers shared strategies for increasing production and

displayed their wares.42)
In addition to praising the efforts of the American Institute to promote
domestic industry in agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and the mechani-
cal arts, Snowden’s article accompanying the silk culture plate also seeks to
overturn long-held misconceptions about the Chinese people. The author (it
is unclear whether this was Snowden or one of his assistant editors) praises
the “temperance, industry, constancy and the domestic affections” of the Chi-
nese people, in addition to admiring their skill in the design and production
of fine porcelain, ivory carvings, and silk fabrics (57). He chastises previous
geographers and historians for categorizing the Chinese as a “semi-enlight-
ened people,” and ventures a guess that when Chinese literature has been
translated, it will be found to eclipse “the most highly prized of all our Greek
and English classics” (57).
Although Snowden said his goodbyes to his subscribers in the April 1844
“Editors’ Table,” reporting that he had sold the magazine “to a company of
gentlemen, who will continue its publication,” he evidently had already
arranged for the publication of two additional plates of Chinese culture
that were published after his departure: Facade of the Great Temple, Macao
(June 1844) and Lake See-Hoo (September 1844). The article accompanying
the Great Temple plate opens by observing “the universal interest which has
been created in America . . . relative to the affairs of China,” and credits the
knowledge gained about China to the dogged efforts of the British to open
the country to trade. Likewise, the article accompanying the engraving Lake
See-Hoo reminds readers of the magazine’s efforts to “lay before our people a
faithful character of the country of China,” a country which for centuries had
been shrouded in mystery, according to the writer.
The Chinese plates proved to be the magazine’s pictorial swan song; with
no fanfare, the Ladies’ Companion slipped into oblivion a month later, fol-
lowing the October 1844 issue. In its ten-year history, the magazine, under
Snowden’s able direction, showcased the work of New York artists and engrav-
ers; published numerous plates of American scenery; established successful
collection methods that built and maintained a subscription list impressive
for its era; and bested the Philadelphia pictorials in offering art engravings of
belles lettres and plates capitalizing on the rising popularity of Chinese com-
merce and culture.
In many ways John Inman simply picked up where William Snowden left
off. The Columbian Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine made its appearance in
January 1844, and carried on the Ladies’ Companion tradition of presenting
readers with fine art embellishments based on the work of New York art-
ists and engravers.43 The magazine seems to have quite literally inherited a
couple of additional plates of Chinese culture likely originally intended for
the Ladies’ Companion: Pavilion and Gardens of a Mandarin Near Pekin.—China
(February 1845) and Raree Show, at Lin-Sin-Choo (December 1845). A. L. Dick
executed both engravings from drawings by the same artist, Thomas Allom,
whose drawings inspired the Chinese views for the Ladies’ Companion. The
editor and publisher could justly brag, however, that the Columbian, in pre-
senting these plates, “shall be in advance of its competitors,” since the Phila-
delphia pictorials offered no art engravings in this vein during this decade.”
As noted earlier, the Columbian launched as a New York competitor to the
Philadelphia pictorials, particularly Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine.
Under the editorial leadership of Inman and the publishing efforts of Israel
Post, the monthly appears to have prospered for its first three years. After
Post sold the magazine in early 1847 to Waterman Lilly Ormsby (a New York
bank note engraver and inventor of engraving machines who had engraved
plates for the magazine from its inaugural issue), the magazine began a down-
hill slide (Mott, I, 744).44 During the prime years of 1844–46, however, the
magazine featured plates based on paintings and sketches from New York art-
ists Charles Ingham, John G. Chapman, Samuel Osgood, and Henry Inman
(the editor’s brother), in addition to the ever-present fashion plates.
In the inaugural issue, the editor promised subscribers “at least twenty-
four elegant productions of the graphic art, which could not be otherwise
procured at three or four times the annual cost of the magazine.” Thus, both
editor and publisher staked the magazine’s claim to superiority, in part, on its
art engravings. When the publisher occasionally could not deliver the plates
intended, due to the failure of an engraver to meet a deadline, an editorial
apology accompanied the inferior plates offered to readers instead.45 In addi-
tion to featuring New York artists and engravers, the Columbian also featured
several genres of plates on uniquely American themes: historical plates fea-
turing famed encounters between settlers and Indians; plates honoring the
nation’s founder, George Washington; plates based on popular American nov-
els; and plates highlighting recent American exploits in the war with Mexico.
The September and November 1844 issues featured two engravings of well-
known Indian-encounter scenes by New York portrait, historical, and land-
scape painter John L. Morton. A member of the National Academy from 1831
until his death in 1871, Morton exhibited frequently at annual Academy exhi-
bitions and for the American Art-Union.46 Gen. Scott & John Brant, engraved
by Ormsby for the September issue, references an incident in the War of 1812
involving John Brant, also called Ahyouwaighs, youngest son and successor
of the famous Mohawk chief Joseph Brant. Captain Smith & Pochahontas,
engraved by H. S. Sadd for the November issue, is a particularly well-executed
mezzotint depicting the oft-engraved scene of Smith’s supposed rescue at the
pleading of Pocahontas.47
The life of George Washington served as the inspiration for some half-
dozen plates appearing in the Columbian between 1844 and 1848, the last
recycled from an earlier issue (a clear indication that the magazine took a
downward turn after Ormsby assumed proprietorship in early 1847). The
November 1844 issue featured Washington Crossing the Allegany, based on the
Daniel Huntington painting. Washington’s reception on the Bridge at Trenton in
1789 appeared as the frontispiece for the January 1845 issue, and then again
for the January 1848 issue. The Birthplace of Washington, based on a design by
John G. Chapman and engraved by the New York firm of Rawdon, Wright,
Hatch & Smillie, appeared the next month. In October 1845 the magazine
published The British surrendering their arms to Gen. Washington after their
defeat at Yorktown, Virginia, with a subtitle identifying the names of the sol-
diers depicted in the engraving. The May 1846 issue featured Washington’s
Death Bed, designed by Tompkins H. Matteson and “engraved expressly” for
the magazine by H. S. Sadd.48
In featuring scenes from popular American novels, Inman implicitly
claims for American belles lettres the same status accorded by Snowden
and his ilk to the work of Continental writers. Again, these plates featuring
scenes from popular American novels should not be confused with the simple
woodcuts that publishers increasingly began using to illustrate novels in the
early to mid-1840s. These art engravings, although illustrating and thereby
promoting American belles lettres, stood on their own as elegant art embel-
lishments.49 Where Snowden had preferred Scottish themes, Inman and Post
proved staunch promoters of American literature and art; and in the case of
the scenes from popular American novels, the magazine bested its Philadel-
phia competitors in this decade.50
James Fenimore Cooper’s novels appear to have been the favorites. The
magazine published three plates based on Cooper’s work: A Scene from the
Pioneers (January 1846), in addition to Harvey Birch’s Warning to Young Whar-
ton (February 1846) and Harvey Birch and the Skinners (January 1847), both
taken from The Spy. Washington Irving warranted one plate, A Scene from
Irving’s Sketch Book/Rip Van Winkle, published in March 1846. Of this plate,
newly enlisted assistant editor Robert A. West wrote, “as a work of art it has
never been surpassed, if equaled, in the periods of greatest rivalry in magazine
FIGURE 4.5 Storming of Palace Hill at the Battle of Monterrey, frontispiece, Columbian, January 1847.
Designed by T. H. Matteson, engraved by H. S. Sadd.
embellishments” (138). The final plate in this series, A Scene from Hope Leslie
(June 1846), elicited this response from the editor: “We are pleased that we
can present to our readers another of those superb engravings, from original
designs, which have elicited such universal and spontaneous commendations
from the conductors of the press in every section of the United States” (280).
In his editorial comments on the final plates under consideration here,
Robert A. West proclaimed them as “entirely unique in the history of maga-
zine illustration.” Indeed, the three plates featuring scenes from the war with
Mexico, released between August 1846 and January 1847, were unlike any
others that had appeared in the pages of an illustrated monthly magazine.51
Even West expresses astonishment at what the magazine accomplished in
releasing the plates, noting that when the magazine promised readers a series
of “original designs,” the editors and publisher “dreamed not then of events
of such a character or of such magnitude and importance in our national his-
tory” (September 1846, 142). The first plate, The Fall of Major Ringgold (August
1846), depicts events that transpired on May 16, 1846, a mere two and a half
months prior to the release date of the magazine (the magazine was published
on the first day of the month, according to the inaugural editorial column). A
second plate, The Charge of Captain May, appeared a month later, in Septem-
ber 1846. The final plate Storming of Palace Hill, appeared in the January 1847
issue (see fig. 4.5).
Although both Inman and West had admitted that arranging the pictorial
matter of the magazine fell largely to the publisher, Post, and although they
had both appeared indifferent from time to time with the editorial task of
describing the plates, with these scenes West waxes enthusiastic. He clearly
understood their nationalistic and patriotic appeal to readers.52 In his textual
accompaniment for the first plate, The Fall of Major Ringgold, West speculates
that the engraving “seems to us to possess more than a temporary interest,
and to be really valuable as a historical record, and as such it will by many be
preserved” (August 1846, 92). In introducing the second plate, The Charge of
Captain May, West observes that the narration of the battle scenes “has awak-
ened the patriotism of so many noble American hearts” (142). West explains
to readers the publishers’ determination to spare “no pains or expense” to
secure “the finest artistic embodiments of the more stirring scenes in the
events” (142).
The plates certainly appear to have burnished the reputations of the
designers and engraver responsible for their execution. The Charge of Cap-
tain May was designed by John L. Morton, the same painter who had con-
tributed the Pocahontas and John Brant scenes. Tompkins H. Matteson, an
up-and-coming history and genre painter, designed the other two scenes,
and all three plates were engraved by Henry S. Sadd. Likely both Morton and
Matteson worked from published accounts of the battles circulating in the
major newspapers, rather than from their own on-the-scene observations.
In addition to West’s editorial introductions, the textual material accompa-
nying each plate relies on quotes from various sources purporting to have
witnessed the events.
This conflation of news reporting with high-quality art engravings of very
recent events appears to be a transitional moment in American print media,
a bridge between the illustrated monthly magazines of art highly popular in
the 1840s, and “illustrated journalism,” which would rise to prominence in
the 1850s.53 Although scholars have noted the importance of the Mexican War
to the emergence of pictorial journalism, most elide the distinctions between
print venues—the illustrated monthly magazines of art versus daily and
weekly newspapers.54 As discussed previously, illustrated monthly magazines
routinely featured “historical” subjects and portraits of well-known states-

men and soldiers. However, these engravings typically portrayed idealized
scenes of past American exploits, rather than events unfolding in ongoing
military conflicts. Moreover, for these illustrated monthly magazines, the
engraving typically took center stage, with textual illustrations performing
an adjunct role. Newspapers, on the other hand, relied on a synergy between
eyewitness reportage and sensational, sometimes sensationalized, pictorial
illustration. Editor Robert West appears to understand the importance of
these engravings when he observes that they possess more than “temporary
interest” (typically accorded to the daily press?), but rather will contribute to
the “historical record.” Additionally, in noting the ability of these “stirring
scenes” to awaken patriotism, West inadvertently marks their significance as
political propaganda. Blending characteristics typically associated with high
art (history painting) and low (the penny press), these engravings and their
textual explications circulated to a middling audience for whom they would
have possessed tremendous patriotic appeal as markers of America’s first
“foreign” war.55
These plates also proved to be the Columbian’s artistic high-water mark.
When Israel Post sold the magazine in order to launch his new venture, The
Union Magazine of Art and Literature, he took Matteson and Sadd with him,
and the pair went on to design additional Mexican war plates for the Union in
the latter half of 1847 and 1848. Meanwhile, the Columbian languished under
the new ownership of engraver Waterman Lilly Ormsby, before passing into
yet other hands, and finally failing in 1849.
One other illustrated New York periodical, the New Mirror, bears men-
tioning, not only because, as a weekly, the magazine still managed to pub-
lish one steel plate per issue, but primarily because a large percentage of its
plates were recycled to other periodicals (a practice noted by scholars but
notoriously difficult to trace).56 A resurrection of the earlier New York Mir-
ror, initially launched by George Pope Morris and poet Samuel Woodworth
in 1823, the New Mirror recommenced publication in April 1843 (after being
abandoned at the close of 1842), this time published by Morris and edited
by Nathaniel P. Willis (Mott, I, 320–27). Although the New Mirror survived
in this incarnation for a scant eighteen months, it published over seventy
plates—one engraving per week—in addition to regular columns on the
arts.57 More than a dozen of those plates resurfaced in later ladies’ month-
lies published primarily in New York and Boston.58 Moreover, the magazine
was not above publishing plates already published elsewhere, particularly
toward the end of the weekly’s short run when, it appears, financial concerns
finally prompted Morris and Willis to redirect their primary efforts toward
the publication of a daily newspaper instead.59
THE LADIES’ REPOSITORY, CINCINNATI
One of the longest running of the “western” illustrated monthlies was the
Ladies’ Repository, issued from Cincinnati (and later New York as well) from
1841 to 1876 (Mott, I, 388). Published by the Methodist Book Concern, the
magazine’s circulation grew steadily during the 1840s, so that by January
1846, the editor, the Rev. E. Thomson, could announce that the magazine
would henceforth be published simultaneously in Cincinnati and New York
in an effort to enhance increased circulation.60 All of the magazine’s profits,
after expenses, supported Methodist relief efforts on behalf of widows and
orphans, so the publisher’s decision appears to have been a benevolent one.
In announcing the new publishing arrangements, Rev. Thomson ventured a
hope that his “eastern brethren” would be disposed to “cheer the west, to be
merciful to her defects, to encourage her success, and to aid her in creating a
literature of her own.”61
In his July 1846 “valedictory,” Rev. Thomson reflected on the magazine’s
five-year history thus far, and on the improvements instituted during the
two years it was under his control. He noted that while some of the contribu-
tors (largely Methodist clergymen and laity) had been “paid a paltry sum,”
most had written “without compensation or hope of reward.” He observed
that the magazine was likely “too religious for the secular, and too secular for
the religious, too volatile for the serious, and too serious for the volatile.” He
defended the path taken to eschew “peculiarities of the creed, or of the eccle-
siastical organization of any Church,” while simultaneously avoiding tales of
“love-sick swains and lasses, and intoxicated dames.” Thomson further noted
that under his editorship, all the literary material is now entirely “original,”
and ventures a hope that the magazine’s subscription list will reach 20,000
(an impressive projection since the same-titled magazine published by Uni-
versalist religious concerns out of Boston, reported a circulation of around
1,800 at that time).62
While Thomson increased both the magazine’s circulation and its monthly
offering (from thirty-two to forty pages), it was the Rev. B. F. Tefft, Thomson’s
replacement, whose interest in American art encouraged an improvement in
the quality of the steel plates the magazine featured. In its first year of pub-
lication (1841), plates appeared only quarterly (in January, April, July, and
October); however, beginning with the second volume (1842), plates appeared
monthly. Like many of the illustrated monthlies, early in the decade the
Ladies’ Repository featured plates of American scenery taken from the work
of William H. Bartlett. However, in keeping with its “western” focus, many of
the early landscape plates favored western scenes, such as View on the Ohio/
Near Cincinnati (January 1841); Frankfort, KY (October 1841); Columbia Bridge
(On the Susquehanna) (May 1842); Miami Canal (December 1842); and View of
St. Louis (January 1845).
Rev. Tefft instituted improvements to both the magazine’s literary con-
tents and its embellishments. In assuming editorial duties beginning with
the December 1846 issue, Rev. Tefft announces his plans for improving the
magazine’s engravings: “Our readers may also expect a decided improvement
in the embellishments of the Repository. Although those of the present and
preceding volumes were as good as could be conveniently obtained, and equal
to those found in the majority of our most popular monthlies, we have made
great exertions to obtain better ones, and have been successful in our efforts”
(380). Beginning in January 1847, he instituted a practice of concluding each
issue with “the best piece of poetry, of the suitable length, which our contrib-
utors may have furnished for the month.” While his predecessors had gravi-
tated toward articles of a strictly religious or moral nature, Tefft announces
his plans to improve the literary quality of the magazine as well: “Both sci-
ence, and art, and literature, profane and sacred, and morality, and religion,
have their share of attention,” he promised readers in February 1847. Indeed,
Tefft, himself holding a doctorate of divinity, was able to secure contributions
from other clergymen also serving as college professors and deans, and spe-
cialists in their areas (literature, history, science, religion, mathematics).63
In the December 1847 issue, Tefft again announces an ambitious plan for
the embellishments for the upcoming volume. He explains to readers that
for 1847, the magazine had been importing designs from London, and hav-
ing them engraved in New York (many by the burin of the ubiquitous A. L.
Dick). He promises for 1848 four scenes from the life of Wesley, sure to please
his Methodist readers, plus “a series of almost unrivaled embellishments
illustrative of the scenery of the west,” which he promises are “entirely new
and rare.” These engravings were based on paintings and sketches executed
by members of the Frankenstein family, artists living and working out of
Springfield, Ohio.64 Bellevue Springs (Near Niagara Falls), based on a sketch by
John P. Frankenstein, appeared in April 1848, followed by Indiana Knobs (near
New Albany) in July 1848, painted by Godfrey N. Frankenstein. A third, Bank
Lick (KY), also based on a G. N. Frankenstein sketch, did not appear until
FIGURE 4.6 The Penobscot Belle, frontispiece, Ladies’ Repository, January 1849. Courtesy of the
American Antiquarian Society.
March 1849. Prescott (from Ogdensburg Harbor, Canada) (September 1848) and
Coburg, Canada (December 1848) may also have been from members of the
Frankenstein family, although the attribution is difficult to discern.65
The magazine’s most unique engravings in this decade, however, had noth-
ing to do with the life of Wesley, nor of western scenery. In 1849, the maga-
zine published two splendid mezzotint portraits of subjects not generally
pictorialized in illustrated magazines of art and literature in this decade. The
January issue contained The Penobscot Belle, engraved by Frederick F. Halpin
from a daguerreotype portrait, exclusively for the magazine (see fig. 4.6). The
accompanying editorial, presumably written by Tefft (although unsigned),
offers the plate as the magazine’s sole “fashion plate.” The editor explains that
he has often received inquiries about why his magazine does not offer the
fashion plates typically found in other illustrated monthlies. In a two-page
satiric narrative describing this plate, Tefft denounces the attention paid by
supposedly pious Christian women to their outward dress and appearance.
He embeds within this narrative a description of a purported trip into the
wilds with a colleague acquainted with the Penobscot tribe to meet the origi-
nal of the portrait. The writer claims (whether seriously or satirically is dif-
ficult to determine) that he returned from this “singularly interesting visit”
with the daguerreotype of “the celebrated beauty” in hand, presumably a gift
from the young lady herself.
The second plate, The Young Vermont Mathematician, is a portrait of Truman
Henry Safford taken at ten years of age (see fig. 4.7). Safford, proclaimed in
the American media a child prodigy, went on to become the country’s leading
mathematician and astronomer in his era.66 The accompanying seven-page
article, submitted by the Rev. A. Stevens, provides a biographical sketch of
the young genius, as well as detailed descriptions of the mathematical prob-
lems posed to (and as easily solved by) Safford by several skeptical professors
of mathematics who had visited the boy. At the time of the article’s publica-
tion, Stevens reports that Safford had recently been admitted to Cambridge,
and though in delicate health, was making great progress in his studies.
The mezzotint portrait of Safford, and the accompanying narrative of the
child prodigy, likely proved popular with the magazine’s subscribers. His
biography contains all the narrative elements of an unfolding American suc-
cess story: an apparently quite ordinary native-born son of Vermont turns
out to be quite extraordinary. His humble birth to a farmer father and school-
teacher mother; his frail constitution; the watchful care of a doting mother
nursing him to health; his unusual intellect and precocity with mathematics;
his confounding of older interrogators; his acceptance to college at the age of
FIGURE 4.7 The Young Vermont Mathematician, frontispiece, Ladies’ Repository, April 1849. Drawn by
P. F. Mason, engraved by F. E. Jones. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
ten—these details likely resonated with the magazine’s primary audience of

rural western readers. This plate, like that of The Penobscot Belle, was unlike
anything published by other illustrated magazines of art and literature in this
decade.67
While none of the illustrated periodicals from New York, Boston, Cincin-
nati, or the South achieved the success of the Philadelphia pictorials in the
1840s, several of the magazines published in these cities, as this chapter has
attempted to demonstrate, did make contributions important to a narrative
of the production, distribution, and consumption of American art engrav-
ings in this era. Some, like the Boston Miscellany and both the Boston and
Cincinnati Ladies’ Repository, offered audiences landscape scenes with spe-
cific regional appeal, as well as portraits of dignitaries important to each
magazine’s readership. Others, like the Columbian and Ladies’ Companion, fea-
tured genres of engravings not found in the Philadelphia pictorials, as well as
engravings forwarding uniquely American historical themes, and supportive
of American artistic and literary achievement. Moreover, miscellanies like
the Eclectic warrant further scholarly attention for both their visual mate-
rial and the vast amount of reading material they provided American readers
interested in Continental affairs.
5
“Illustration of a Picture”
AMERICAN AUTHORS AND THE MAGAZINE EMBELLISHMENTS
In a letter dated April 6, 1839, Joseph H. Ingraham writes this to Philadelphia

publisher Edward Carey: “I have forwarded to you . . . the MS of the tale writ-
ten by me, at your request, to illustrate the painting by Mount, which I saw at
your residence when in Philadelphia.” Carey published, among other literary
matter, the popular annual The Gift, for which Ingraham sent along his manu-
script. Ingraham’s letter highlights the practice of mid-century publishers of
first commissioning engravings for the illustrated periodicals, then solicit-
ing popular writers to contribute literary matter to illustrate the engravings.
Ingraham continues: “I trust it will serve in some measure to illustrate your
own idea of the painting. It is, you are doubtless aware, one of the most dif-
ficult parts of authorship to write to a painting . . . and the chances are ten to
one for a failure on his part who attempts it.”1
Ingraham may have found the task of illustrating an engraving difficult,
but the difficulty did not deter a great many writers at mid-century from
attempting it. Manuscript evidence and evidence from the magazines them-
selves clearly demonstrates that the practice of soliciting both an engraving
an accompanying textual “illustration” was widespread during the 1840s.2
In fact, most of the well-known authors contributing original poetry and
short fiction to the illustrated periodicals composed at least a few of their
pieces specifically on commission to illustrate an engraving. In this chapter,
I argue that illustrating an engraving served as one nexus in a complex web
of literary sociability and exchange. As such, it should be considered along-
side corollary sites of exchange: literary salons and societies; anthologizing;
and editorial “puffing,” among others.3 For an author, agreeing to illustrate an
87
88 AME R IC AN AUT H ORS AND T H E MAG A ZIN E E M BE LLISHM E N TS
engraving frequently served to launch a new career, cement a literary friend-

ship, or forge a possible publishing alliance for future work. For an editor or
publisher, commissioning an illustration could serve to placate a reader-con-
tributor longing to see his/her name in print, assist a needy literary widow,
reward a reliable second- or third-tier writer with additional work, mollify an
old school chum low on funds, or promote a new literary sensation.4
While the bulk of this project focuses primarily on the artistic matter in
these magazines, in this chapter I want to focus primarily on the writers who
contributed textual illustrations for the engravings, fleshing out our under-
standing of how this practice functioned in a larger network of literary socia-
bility and exchange.5 This chapter begins by establishing the historical con-
text for this practice. I then examine correspondences from several writers
whose contributions of textual illustrations are particularly well documented.
Finally, I will isolate the work of several authors in a series of case studies, to
examine the relationship between these authors’ texts and the engravings
they illustrate.
“DO NOT CALL THEM ILLUSTRATIONS”
Frank Luther Mott pointed to the centrality of the engraved embellishments

to these periodicals in his extended sketch of Godey’s Lady’s Book: “—the
embellishments. Do not call them illustrations. They did not illustrate the
text; the text illustrated them” (Mott, I, 591). As this project argues through-
out, the artists and engravers contributing work for the periodicals, as well
as the publishers soliciting the artwork and the accompanying textual illus-
trations, valued these engravings as original American art, on a par with the
paintings and sculptures displayed in the galleries and annual exhibitions
found in the major cities. Publishers frequently paid more for one engraving
than for all the literary matter combined (Mott, I, 519).
Graham, Godey, and Peterson understood that the artistic quality of their
engravings could mean the success or failure of their magazines, and they
attempted to provide their readers the highest-quality original artwork pro-
duced by American artists and engravers. For example, so proud was Godey
of the mezzotint “Beauty and Innocence” engraved by H. S. Sadd for the
April 1842 issue, that beginning in December 1841 when the first proofs were
cast from the plate, he used his “Publisher’s Table” specifically to encourage
artists (not specifying engravers) to scrutinize the merits of the engraving.
Godey invited “any artist who may favour us with a call, even before the day
AM E R IC A N AUT HOR S A N D T H E MAG A Z I NE E M B E L L I S H M E NTS 89
of publication,” to view the mezzotint in his office. He predicted, “[f]ifty thou-

sand copies will not supply our demand, when that plate is published,” and he
offered “proof impressions for framing” at a cost of twenty-five cents each—
the cost of an entire monthly issue of the magazine (“Mezzotint Plates,”
Godey’s, December 1841, 297).
As this example also indicates, publishers often arranged for the engraved
matter months in advance. Godey likely saw a proof impression of Beauty and
Innocence in November 1841 (as he would have had to put the December 1841
issue to press by mid-November), which he promised to deliver his readers in
February or March of the next year—and did not actually publish until April
1842. His announcement is, of course, a promotional ploy, designed to boost
subscription sales for the volume commencing in January 1842. However,
the time and labor required to engrave plates for magazine publication likely
contributed to this practice of securing engraved matter first, literary matter
next. By 1850, Godey could explain to his readers that the promised portrait
of editor Sarah Josepha Hale would be delayed, as it required five months to
print off enough copies to meet the demand.6 Engravers frequently needed to
prepare multiple versions of the same plate in order to complete a printing
run—even plates engraved on steel could only withstand so many imprints
before the plates degraded. The general practice appears to have been to
secure in advance an engraver’s services, for a minimum six-month commit-
ment (volumes ran January to June and July to December). For example, in
his diary, James Smillie reports that Graham contracted with him to super-
vise all engraving services for the year 1844, and that his partnership with
Graham continued for two years total.7
The specific connection between an engraving and its accompanying tex-
tual illustration varied from magazine to magazine, and shifted over the
period under study. From 1839 to 1842, when original engravings (rather than
recycled European plates) were still a relative novelty, the three major edi-
tor/publishers—Godey, Graham, and Peterson—seem to have assumed that
readers would make the connection between an engraving whose title always
appeared immediately beneath, and the identically or similarly titled text
published in the same issue. It is worth noting that during these early years
most full-page engravings were “tipped in” to the front of a monthly issue and
not embedded within the issue, so that readers might not encounter the text
designed to accompany an engraving until midway through the magazine.
As Mott points out, Louis Godey often identified the accompanying literary
material as the “illustration of the plate” (Mott, I, 591). George Graham most con-
sistently identified a textual entry as the “illustration of a picture,” particularly
in 1842–43, when nearly a dozen poems and short sketches appeared with that
subtitle. Frequently the author of one of these early Graham’s illustrations is
not identified, or identified only by initials. The wording of the attribution var-
ied as well: “illustration of a picture” appears most frequently in Graham’s from
1842 to 1846, indicating clearly that the engraving both preceded the textual
illustration and took precedence over it. “See plate” or “see engraving” were
other identifiers used by editors and publishers as textual subtitles designed to
point readers to the full-page engraving the text illustrated.
Charles Peterson prided himself on providing three embellishments per
issue (to the other publishers’ two), mostly mezzotints, but until later in
the decade, rarely noted the direct relationship between the embellishment
and the textual material. However, careful inspection reveals that a mezzo-
tint nearly always matches up with a poem, tale, or sketch found in the same
issue. Peterson’s strategy shifted in February 1847, when he explicitly notes,
“this month’s mezzotint . . . was engraved expressly to illustrate Agnes Cour-
tenay.” Peterson continues, “We have found this new enterprise of illustrat-
ing a continued story exceedingly popular” (90).
When the direct relationship between an engraving and a similarly titled
poem, tale, or sketch is not indicated, we can deduce the primacy of the
engraving either by the name and reputation of the engraver, or by the length
of the accompanying textual material, or both. For example, both Graham
and Peterson used editorial space early in the decade to tout their ability to
secure the services of the highly sought-after mezzotinter John Sartain. Tex-
tual material accompanying Sartain’s engravings nearly always appears to
have been secured secondarily to the engraving, and usually takes the form
of short poems of two to four stanzas length. Manuscript evidence indicates
that publishers often waited until the last minute to secure these short poetic
illustrations, and frequently expected a quick turnaround from the writers
who agreed to provide them.8
However, the practice of commissioning a text to illustrate an engraving
was by no means universal and static. Rather, publishers and editors seem to
have adapted strategies for presenting the combined engravings and accompa-
nying text in ways that also referenced larger shifts in the literary and artistic
marketplace. For example, popular American novels and serialized magazine
tales were rarely lavishly illustrated prior to the 1840s, in large part because
the printing technologies required were too primitive and too expensive for
mass production. As previously noted, improvements in printing technolo-
gies and papers in the early 1840s opened the door to new arrangements of
text and images.
In 1843, a young illustrator burst on to the publishing scene and helped

change the way publishers approached illustrating serial novels and books.
Felix Octavius Carr (F. O. C.) Darley had served as a staff illustrator for Gra-
ham’s in 1841. In 1843 Darley published Scenes in Indian Life: A Series of Origi-
nal Designs Etched on Stone, and an enthusiastic Graham’s book review praised
the “youthful artist” for capturing “a most singular people rapidly passing
from about us, and soon to become extinct.” The reviewer added, “We have
never seen any thing more historically truthful than these sketches” (Gra-
ham’s, “Review of New Books,” September 1843, 164). That same year Darley
provided illustrations for Joseph C. Neal’s Selected Books Illustrated. Within a
year, Carey & Hart engaged Darley to illustrate a series of novels that eventu-
ally ran to eighteen volumes and stayed in print until 1880. Darley also illus-
trated popular volumes of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.9
It is likely that Darley’s success is at least partially responsible for Charles
Peterson’s 1847 decision to begin providing a mezzotint illustration for his
serialized novels. It may also be that Peterson sought to copy the success-
ful efforts of New York’s Columbian and Ladies’ Companion magazines in pro-
viding plates to illustrate belles lettres. It is also likely that Darley’s success
explains, in part, George Graham’s gradual shift in the middle of the decade
away from rhetoric that subordinates the textual illustration to the engrav-
ing to rhetoric that suggests coordination of the two. Illustrating an ongoing
tale proved profitable in the literary marketplace, and while both publishers
continued to seek high-quality engravings for their magazines, both Peterson
and Graham adapted their strategies for presenting those engravings to capi-
talize on the new popularity of illustrated tales.
When publishers did follow the popular practice of commissioning the
embellishments first, the task of illustrating an engraving frequently fell
either to editors, to novice authors, or to women authors, regardless of their
previous publishing experience. However, it should be noted that most of
the popular periodical writers, male and female, contributed at least a piece
or two as an illustration of an engraving over the course of the decade. In
fact, the range of authors contributing textual illustrations for engravings is
so broad that it would be difficult to generalize about authors’ rationales for
adapting their writing practices to this particular task. While Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s pronouncement about her periodical work—“I do it for the pay”10—
could stand in here as a rationale for most of these writers, the complete
picture, in each case, is likely more complicated than that. For some writers,
like Elizabeth Oakes Smith, financial need clearly won out over any particular
literary ambitions. For others, like Caroline Kirkland, illustrating a picture
appears to have been part of a publisher’s expectations of an editor. For yet

others, like Henry William Herbert, who did entertain literary ambition, the
task served to provide ready cash between larger, “serious” literary projects.
Editors and publishers were not above crafting an illustration for an
engraving, when necessary. Evidence from the magazines demonstrates that
editor/publisher Charles Peterson occasionally composed textual illustra-
tions. For example, Peterson wrote the illustration for Seth Cheney’s engrav-
ing The Pilot’s Boy for his October 1844 issue. Writing under his pseudonym
Jeremy Short, Peterson also wrote an amusing (and somewhat titillating)
sketch on “The Science of Kissing” to illustrate a Graham’s June 1842 engrav-
ing, The Proferred Kiss.11 Publisher Louis Godey appears to have relied on edi-
tor, Sarah Joseph Hale to secure—and fairly frequently, to provide herself—
textual illustrations for his magazine’s embellishments in the early 1840s.12
In fact, Godey “puffed” Hale’s illustrations in promoting forthcoming issues
of the magazine.13 Caroline Kirkland, editor of the Union Magazine (later Sar-
tain’s Union Magazine) also provided illustrations for the engravings in the
magazine under her charge.
Most of the popular women writers composed at least a few pieces on com-
mission to illustrate an engraving, including Caroline H. Butler, Elizabeth F.
Ellet, Emma C. Embury, Sarah Josepha Hale, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, Eliza-
beth Oakes Smith, Frances S. Osgood, and Caroline Kirkland. In addition, a
host of lesser-known women writers, with names lost now to literary history,
appear to have also regularly contributed illustrations, including Enna Duval,
Agnes Pierol, Miss Anne C. Pratt, Mary L. Lawson, Mrs. Lydia J. Pierson
(alternatively spelled Peirson), and E. M. Sidney. Sidney seems to have spe-
cialized in composing eight-line stanzas to illustrate engravings for Graham’s:
between 1844 and 1847, over a dozen two- to six-stanza poems under this
nomenclature appear as engraving illustrations.14
If Sidney wrote out of financial necessity, as did even some of the better-
known writers, it is poignant to note that her contributions cease suddenly in
mid-1847, and no further references to this writer appear in the Philadelphia
pictorials through 1852. With all the recuperative and celebratory scholarship
on nineteenth-century women writers that has appeared in the last several
decades, it is worth remembering that for every woman who was able to write
her way out of poverty in the nineteenth century, likely a half-dozen others
slipped quietly away.
Male authors contributed textual illustrations as well, often, it appears,
as part of a gentlemanly exchange between a literary protégé and his pro-
moter. Park Benjamin, longtime friend of Graham’s editor Rufus Griswold,
likely penned his illustrations at Griswold’s request. Henry T. Tuckerman

agreed to write a biographical illustration to accompany Archibald L. Dick’s
engraving of Charles Fenno Hoffman, prepared for the “Our Contributors”
column in Graham’s, October 1843.15 Epes Sargent Jr. contributed a five-page
fictional narrative to accompany J. Gimbrede’s engraving The Reprimand, for
the November 1842 issue of Graham’s, charging Griswold $25 for the text but
agreeing to take $5 less for the piece if Griswold would arrange for immediate
payment.16 As Sargent’s letter indicates, he was both doing Griswold a favor
and desperate for ready cash.
Manuscript evidence, though not overwhelming, indicates that most male
authors found the task of illustrating an engraving somewhat onerous—this
is likely why editors, male and female alike, turned to women writers to sup-
ply the bulk of the textual illustrations. Women writers likely would have
inherited this writing task more frequently anyway, simply by virtue of their
numbers; at various points in this decade, the editors and publishers—par-
ticularly of Godey’s and Peterson’s, magazines that targeted women readers—
sought also to limit their contributors to women writers. Although Graham’s
and Sartain’s Union sought a virtual balance of male and female contributors,
when the illustrator of an embellishment is identified, the writer is more fre-
quently a woman.
If this writing genre was gendered “feminine”—and there is some indica-
tion that it was—there may be several factors involved.17 Likely, some male
authors felt that the speed with which a textual illustration was expected
disrupted their notions of their own “creative genius.” Henry William Her-
bert, whose textual illustrations will be discussed later in this chapter, clearly
viewed his book-length work as more important in defining literary success.
In addition, contemporaneous reviews of these magazines, often anony-
mous, posited the entire genre of “illustrated magazines” as “feminine.” For
example, a writer in the January 1844 New Englander refers to a group of
these magazines as “our lady-literature” (96), even though the list includes
Graham’s, a magazine combined, in part, from the earlier Burton’s Gentle-
man’s Magazine. Another writer, in the “Critical Notices” of the November
1850 Southern Quarterly Review, refers to Godey’s, Graham’s, and Sartain’s as
especially in the “the service of the ladies” (535), again, despite the fact that
the last two explicitly targeted mixed-gendered audiences. In an article enti-
tled “Parlor Periodicals” published in the January 1852 Democrat’s Review, yet
another anonymous writer, again citing these three magazines, complains of
the “fecundity” of this literature, that “dilute[s]” and “emasculate[s]” Ameri-
can letters.
It would appear that this last-cited anonymous writer disdained periodi-

cal literature explicitly because he/she felt it to be a “feminine” literature—
one that in its fecundity, threatened the “masculine” spirit of American belles
lettres. Similarly, periodical writer Nathaniel P. Willis, never one to be bash-
ful about expressing his views, christened Godey’s, in particular, a “powerful
gynocracy.” In his May 26, 1843, editorial for his weekly newspaper the New
Mirror, Willis complained of the “bloodless revolution” that, in the wake of
the popularity of Godey’s, spawned a host of imitators, leaving magazine lit-
erature the domain of women (128).
Although clearly tongue in cheek, Willis’s lambasting of the illustrated
magazines (also ironic, since he made no small portion of his fortune via
his magazine writings), likely echoes the sentiment of other writers, many
male, who found themselves dependent for income on these more ephem-
eral genres of writing. Poet and playwright George Henry Boker, in letters
to Sartain’s Union Magazine co-editor John Hart, refers to a fellow writer’s
contribution to the magazine as this “weak, tender, female stuff.”18 As Henry
William Herbert’s biographer argues, Herbert considered his writing for the
magazines “hackwork,” yet found himself forced to churn it out when his lon-
ger, “serious” work did not sell.19
What this all would seem to add up to is a literary climate in which con-
tributions to the illustrated monthlies provided a steady income for many
writers, including “serious” authors, yet in which the work was considered
suspect, perhaps even “feminine.” Genres like short poetry and engraving
illustrations appear to have been particularly gendered feminine. Writers
complied with requests to provide these illustrations, but within a framework
that devalued this kind of writing.
One example of an author who provided textual illustrations even while
she devalued this work is popular poet Hannah Gould. In one documented
exchange with Sarah Josepha Hale, Gould expressed her displeasure with the
prospect of providing an illustration, but complied in order to maintain her
literary friendship with the editor. Hale approached Gould to provide a poetic
illustration for an engraving to appear in an annual Hale was editing (from
the date of the letter, likely The Opal for 1848). In response, Gould writes
to Hale seeking a detailed description of the engraving of Deborah, a biblical
scene—and it is clear from her letter that Hale had sent only the title of the
engraving, not a proof sheet of the engraving itself. Gould writes: “I will fur-
nish you a poem such as I think may suit the engraver. But I am not sure that
the scene of ‘Deborah’ will present itself so impressively to my imagination as
to enable me to give a transcript which will be clear and effective for the artist
to transfer the image to plate.”
Gould inquires of Hale whether she has “an engraving of the imagery you
desire already sketched,” indicating that Gould is hoping to see at least the
drawing or design provided by the artist to the engraver in order to have
something to work from for her textual illustration. Gould continues: “As I do
not know how long the engraver requires for his part, it is indispensable that
he and the poet have a fair, mutual understanding of the imagery, to make
a good adaptation. I’ve seen many beautiful pieces spoiled for want of this.”
While it is not completely clear from the syntax of her sentence whether
“beautiful pieces” refers to the engraving or to her illustration, it seems likely
that it is the former. Gould appears to want to avoid the public embarrass-
ment of providing an illustration that seems “ill-suited” for the engraving by
negotiating directly with the engraver about his intent for the engraving. In
this respect, her comments echo Ingraham’s about the ten-to-one likelihood
of getting it wrong.
Gould continues, in a lengthy passage indicating her own assessment of
her poetic works in the literary marketplace: “I will do the best I can for you
though I have been a great while trying to withdraw from writing poetry for
annuals, magazines, &c., finding it much more available to write for myself,
and have the fresh use of my poetry for my own works. And certainly if poetry
can be measured by the page, [it] is rather valued thus, and obtained for ‘a
dollar’ it is but right that such as can afford to furnish such as is desirable,
to take the lead, and let the other writers retire within themselves.” Gould’s
comments suggest that her literary career has progressed to the point where
she no longer needs to do textual illustrations for engravings either for the
money or for the exposure.
Yet, in nearing an end to the letter, Gould includes personal remarks—
that she is glad to hear that Hale’s loved ones are well—and praises the pub-
lisher of the gift-book for choosing Hale to be its new editor. Then Gould
closes with this compliment: “I shall be happy to receive the new volume con-
ducted by [my] able & talented friend, Mrs. Hale, and to render her the aid of
her friend./Sincerely,/H.F. Gould.”20 Gould clearly places her compliance with
Hale’s request for an illustration within a literary relationship of sociability
and exchange: she will provide Hale with the illustration she requests and, in
exchange, Hale will send her a copy of the gift book in which it will appear.
While this apparently suited Gould, for some women writers, more than liter-
ary friendship was at stake in agreeing to provide textual illustrations.
A CASE STUDY OF FOUR AUTHORS
Henry William Herbert, a pal of Godey’s and Graham’s, contributed frequently

to both magazines under both his own name and his nom de plume, Frank For-
ester, and occasionally his contribution is clearly on commission to illustrate
an engraving. An Englishman by birth, Herbert’s grandfather was the first
Earl of Carnarvon, and his father served in the House of Lords when Herbert
was a boy. Herbert emigrated to American under murky circumstances. After
meeting Godey and Graham in 1840, he wrote regularly for their magazines
and others.21 His genteel English pedigree appears to have been a draw for
the American periodical publishers who sought out his services. However,
as English nobility, Herbert seems also accustomed to a genteel lifestyle he
found difficult to support as an American magazine writer.22
Herbert seems to have been perennially short on cash. He often wrote to
Graham’s editor, Rufus Griswold, looking for work. In a letter dated August 3,
1843, Herbert is clearly responding to a proof sheet of an engraving Griswold
had sent him to request a textual illustration. Herbert writes, “The illustra-
tion I like; you shall have it in a fortnight from next Monday.”23 However, in
the same letter Herbert grouses about the title of a second engraving Gris-
wold appears to have sent in proof sheet in the same packet. Herbert com-
plains, “‘The Bride of Ceylon’ is tough work for I know nothing about Ceylon
nor have any means of finding out.” Herbert suggests changing the title of
the engraving and again pleads for additional work: “Will not Peterson [likely
Charles Peterson] have some brevities now for a ten or some Newspaper let-
ters for a V ($5)?”24
The engraving shown here, The Mother (see fig. 5.1), and Herbert’s accompa-
nying poem illustrate the complexities of analyzing and interpreting image/
text duos in these illustrated periodicals. The engraving purports to show an
idealized image of a presumably middle-class mother and child—such images
were a staple of these illustrated magazines in the 1840s.25 However, this
mezzotint by Henry S. Sadd is based on a portrait originally executed by Sir
Thomas Lawrence. In keeping with the artistic practice of the day, paintings
originally commissioned as portraits of English nobility could well turn up as
idealized fancy pictures engraved for American illustrated magazines.
Well-known newspaper columnist Nathaniel P. Willis divulged examples
of this practice to readers of his illustrated weekly, the New Mirror: “It is very
likely that we can tell our readers a secret about this and many similar pic-
tures. The shepherdesses common on paper and the common shepherdesses
on grass, differ, not only by the artist’s embellishment, but in the birth and
FIGURE 5.1 The Mother, frontispiece, Graham’s, July 1843. Painted by Sir T. Lawrence, engraved by
H. S. Sadd.
quality of those who sit for pictures” (July 1, 1843, 193). Willis further avows
that this practice of “disguised portraits” was “very fashionable” in England.
Lawrence frequently painted portraits of the English nobility, and Herbert’s
noble connections likely aided in his identification of this idealized image as,
in fact, a portrait of the Duchess of Sutherland and her child.
In submitting a sonnet to illustrate Sadd’s engraving, Herbert demon-
strated his willingness to bend his literary talents to the task of creating what
he refers to as “the old maternal sonnet.” His rhetoric indicates that the genre
would have been a familiar one to periodical authors and readers. In his letter
to Griswold accompanying his sonnet, Herbert writes:
Within you have the sonnet—such as it is. The note you can leave out or
not just as you please I am not sure at all it is the portrait of the Duch-
ess of Sutherland; but I think it is—at all events it might just as well be,
if it is not. I have tried to do something different from the old maternal
sonnet—Consisting of “Fears” & “Tears”—“Kiss” & “Bliss” & “Breast” &
“Rest” “Lips” And “Sips” — & c. But I do not know whether very success-
fully. At all events, I can do no better.26
Clearly, Herbert attempted to craft a sonnet that would deviate from

the accepted norm, “the old maternal sonnet,” perhaps because he did not
wish to have his name associated with the “weak, tender, female stuff” that
other male writers, like the aforementioned George Henry Boker, found so
emasculating. At any rate, in writing a poem that maintained the aristocratic
British ancestry of the presumed sitter’s lineage, Herbert deviated from the
universalizing, idealized poetry that generally accompanied these maternal
images.
Frances S. Osgood, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and Caroline Kirkland also left
letters illuminating the practice of writing to an engraving. These women
writers found themselves at varying stages of their literary careers when
they contributed the bulk of their textual illustrations: Osgood near the end,
Oakes Smith near the beginning, and Kirkland mid-career. For Osgood and
Oakes Smith, extreme financial necessity appears to have been the decid-
ing factor in taking on textual illustrations. Caroline Kirkland, already well
known by the mid-1840s for her novels of the western frontier (primarily A
New Home: Who’ll Follow? and Forest Life) nonetheless found herself in need
of steady income after the untimely drowning of her husband.27 Illustrating
the engravings for the magazine under her editorship, The Union Magazine,
fell to Kirkland at the publishers’ request. The remainder of this chapter will
examine a sampling of the textual illustrations these three women authors

contributed to the Philadelphia pictorials.
Like Henry William Herbert, Frances S. Osgood appears to have easily
composed verses to illustrate the pictorial matter in the periodicals, and to
have found it a quick source for ready cash. In fact, she apparently met her
husband, Samuel Stillman Osgood, in 1834 while writing poems at the Boston
Athenaeum in response to paintings hanging in exhibition.28 Of the dozens
of poems, short tales, and play fragments Frances S. Osgood published in
the Philadelphia pictorials between 1839 and 1850, some half-dozen appear
to have been written or adapted specifically as illustrations commissioned to
accompany embellishments, and most of these appeared in 1849 and 1850,
after her husband had deserted her for California.29
Her illustrations early in the decade treat conventionally sentimental
themes: “The Coquette,” a tale composed to accompany an engraving in Gra-
ham’s January 1843, warns young ladies against practicing artifice in court-
ship, while “First Affection,” a poem from Graham’s April 1843, celebrates the
flush of first love. Meanwhile, Osgood’s illustration of John Sartain’s mez-
zotint Little Red Riding hood, for the May 1843 issue of Graham’s Magazine,
blithely rewrites the original gruesome ending to the Grimm Brother’s fairy
tale, recasting the ending in the rhetorical garb of sentimentalism. Her eigh-
teen-stanza poetic illustration grants that Little Red Riding Hood met the
wolf in the woods. However, Osgood insists, “on the faith of a poet,” that the
rest of the tale [i]s but a libel, and should be repressed.” No gobbling up of the
girl and her granny! In Osgood’s retelling of the tale, Little Red-Ridinghood
[sic] personifies “Innocence,” and her “sweetness and purity” dissuade the
wolf from his “evil design.” Instead of making her his next meal, the wolf
pays Red-Ridinghood “homage/For grace so divine,” and sends her on her
way, unharmed. Little Red Riding Hood proved a popular subject for paint-
ings in the 1840s, no doubt due in part to the increased interest in childhood
and parenting promoted in the illustrated periodicals, and celebrated in the
sentimental novels of the day.30 Osgood’s poetic illustration for the engrav-
ing appears to uphold, unapologetically, conventional sentimental themes,
albeit at the expense of the original gruesome ending imagined by the broth-
ers Grimm.31
The handful of Osgood illustrations from 1849–50 appear in magazines
published just months before her death, and both the subject matter of the
engravings, and Osgood’s illustrations of them, depart from the convention-
ally sentimental themes of earlier in the decade. Osgood’s difficulty with her
marriage, the scandal surrounding her relationship with Poe, and her grief
over the loss of her infant daughter, Fanny, in 1847—these biographical

details have been well documented.32 Less well documented is the relation-
ship between her state of mind and her poetic output in the months just
before her death. Her eulogizers, Rufus Griswold and John Hart, insist in
their tributes to her that her death took both Osgood and her adoring pub-
lic by surprise.33 However, her poetic illustrations for The Union suggest that
she was well aware of her impending death, and faced it with a mélange of
thoughts that emerge in her verse.
Osgood corresponded with editor John Hart on November 11, 1849, from
her lodgings at the Union Place Hotel in New York. She writes: “I enclose the
poem which I wrote today immediately on receiving the picture—I only wish
my lines were half as fine or half as much to the purpose as those of the splen-
did engraving.” She then adds a note at the end of her letter, inquiring: “Please
say when I may send a draft for the money? & let me have another picture
soon.”34 Her tone is difficult to deduce here. On the one hand, her apology—
wishing the lines were “half as fine or half as much to the purpose”—could
simply represent Osgood’s admission of the haste under which she composed
the poem. On the other hand, she may simply be adopting the deferential
posture she assumed Hart would expect in this literary exchange.35
It is also possible that Osgood may have sent Hart a poem containing lines
previously composed for another occasion, which she hastily adapted “to the
purpose” of the engraving, a practice that appears to have been common.36 It
is difficult to state positively exactly which engraving Osgood references in
this letter to Hart. The editor published four of her illustrations in Sartain’s
Union during this time: “Snake in the Grass,” (October 1849, too early for the
letter to reference), “The Conversion of St. Paul” (January 1850), “The Melan-
choly Jacques” (February 1850), and “The Death of Las Casas” (June 1850).
However, given the quick turnaround often expected of authors illustrating
engravings, it is likely that Osgood composed the lines in question to illus-
trate The Conversion of St. Paul.
Before briefly discussing the final three poetic illustrations, however, I want
to focus on “Snake in the Grass,” one of two poems Osgood provided to illus-
trate engravings of female nudes for Sartain’s Union Magazine in 1849-50. The
engraving shows a semi-reclining young woman nude from the waist up, her
right hand languorously lifted to brush against her face (see fig. 5.2). Osgood’s
eleven-stanza poem conflates the story of Eve in the Garden of Eden with
the tale of a “deluded maiden” seduced by “Passion” masking as “true Love.”
Like some of Osgood’s other love poems, this one does attempts to cloak its
eroticism within the conventions of sentimentalism, despite the engraving’s
FIGURE 5.2 The Snake in the Grass, frontispiece, Sartain’s, October 1849. Engraved by John Sartain—
the original by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
obvious voyeuristic appeal.37 However, unlike the tone of world-weariness of

similar poems treating a woman’s vulnerability in love, this poem ends on a
triumphant note.
At this point at the end of the 1840s, images of female nudes had finally
made inroads into polite, middle-class culture, albeit under the guise of pro-
viding moral and religious instruction.38 However, their use in the pictori-
als caused quite a stir, as chapter 7 will detail. In the case of “Snake in the
Grass,” Osgood rewrites the original fall from Edenic grace: in her version the
serpent, “Spirit of Evil,” shrinks, spellbound by the maiden’s “glorious soul,”
out of the garden, leaving the maiden unharmed (much as the wolf left Red
Ridinghood unharmed). In recasting Eve as a sympathetic castoff lover, and
in rewriting her mythically ignominious end, Osgood challenged both the
masculine proprietary gaze the engraving constructs and the assumptions of
true womanhood the gendered gaze supports. Although the engraving might
lend itself to a poem closer in spirit to Osgood’s saucy salon poems, “Snake
in the Grass” instead combines an awareness of woman’s vulnerability with
an almost naïve rewriting of humankind’s familial beginnings—as if Osgood
sought to imagine what the story of woman might have been without the fall
of “mother” Eve.39
Another popular female subject, the Indian maiden, takes center stage in
the embellishment Affection of the Indians for Las-Casas, from the June 1850
issue of Sartain’s Union. The engraving shows two Indians, one male, one
female, bending over the deathbed of the Spanish explorer. The Indian queen,
Anacaona, is unclothed from the waist up. Images of semi-clad Indian maid-
ens were a staple of the illustrated monthlies, titillating middle-class readers/
viewers with accompanying tales suggestive of Indian polygamy and sexual
promiscuity.40 Osgood’s seven-stanza poem largely ignores the scene depicted
in the engraving, focusing instead on the perfidy of the Spanish settlers, who,
taking advantage of the revels of the native tribe, destroy the natives’ village,
kill the queen’s only son (pictured beside her in the engraving) and crucify the
queen herself.
It is interesting to speculate about the degree of Osgood’s identification
with the persecuted queen Anacaona. Osgood had lost her young daughter
in October 1847, and her health was rapidly declining in the early months
of 1850. Her relationship with Poe had fueled gossip and speculation from
the time they met in 1845 until his death in 1849, and scholars have fol-
lowed Osgood’s private and public responses in some detail. This poem,
written shortly before her death, suggests the continued weight of Osgood’s
emotional losses.41 In particular, the emotional energy of the poem, largely
expressing anger, is directed at the figures of the Spanish settlers, who, in the
name of the Christian religion, seek to destroy what they perceive as the sav-
age and pagan culture of Queen Anacaona and her people. To what degree did
Osgood feel herself persecuted as well for pursuing a literary lifestyle (extra-
marital relationships, the high life of New York salon culture) frowned upon
by many of her contemporaries? Osgood’s decisions to illustrate not one but
two nudes for Sartain’s Union, and to provide illustrations that betray both
anger and triumph, suggest that she was making her peace with her own life
choices as her health declined.
The line engraving for The Conversion of St. Paul, bookended by Sartain’s
earlier mezzotint Snake in the Grass (October 1849) and his later mezzotint,
Death of Las Casas (June 1850), lacks the beauty and sophistication of the
female nudes. However, the Conversion is engraved from what was originally
a monumental historical painting by Rubens, so, again, it is likely that this is
the engraving Osgood refers to in her apologetic note to Hart. The engraving
is dominated by three large, warlike figures seated on writhing horses, and
Paul’s conversion rather resembles the prototypical death scene of historical
paintings, with a muscular Paul prostrate on the ground, cradled in the arms
of an equally burly companion. Osgood’s uninspired illustration, comment-
ing on the “arrogant bigotry” of Saul, suggests that, in spite of her praise of
the engraving to Hart, she may have felt it worth little more than the effort
she gave it (Sartain’s Union, January 1850, 41). Osgood concludes of Paul that
he best serves God “who most serves man,” and it is difficult not to hear in
this line an implicit condemnation of the overly zealous believer fixated only
on his own righteousness at the expense of his fellow creatures.
The Melancholy Jacques (February 1850) is a very indifferent wood engrav-
ing, but Osgood’s forty-two-line poem, printed directly on the reverse side
of the woodcut, is haunting, suggesting a strange premonition of her own
impending fate. Published just a few months before her death, the poem
reads, in part:
A dream within a dream. I fell asleep

Holding a picture of the dreamer, Jacques,
And musing upon Life’s vicissitudes: —
I dreamed that life itself was but a dream;
This stern, dark, terrible life, with all its fears,
Its wrong and sin and suffering and despair –
That it was all, only a long night’s sleep.
(Sartain’s Union, February 1850, 160)
104 AMER I C AN AUT HORS AND T HE MAG A ZIN E E M BE LLISHM E N TS
While it can be reckless to read into the voice of a narrator the life of the poet,
it is interesting to speculate that these poetic illustrations, composed so near
the end of Osgood’s life, suggest her awareness of her impending death. That
two of her eulogizers wrote her death as “unexpected” is perhaps not surpris-
ing—both Hart and Griswold knew the value of maintaining Osgood’s autho-
rial persona as one who was naïve, childlike, and death’s untimely victim. The
reality of her life, as these illustrations suggest, was likely more complicated
than that. In ill health, separated from her husband, and driven by finan-
cial necessity, Osgood dashed off indifferent lines for quick cash. However,
she could equally craft haunting poems pondering man’s perfidy in love, his
inhumanity to his fellow man, and his anger and despair in the face of life’s
vicissitudes.
Ill health and financial necessity remain a constant refrain in the literary
correspondences of another popular female author, Elizabeth Oakes Smith
(Mrs. Seba Smith). Although she would become known later in life for her out-
spoken support of women’s rights, in the 1840s Oakes Smith struggled to feed
her family and keep a roof over their heads. Yoked in marriage to a man nearly
twice her age, Smith bore six sons to her husband, Seba, during the 1830s, while
their financial situation deteriorated. Relocating to New York in 1839, Smith
and her husband supported their family with their literary contributions.42 In
addition to their other literary work, husband and wife wrote embellishment
illustrations, for both the monthly magazines and the literary annuals.
For Carey & Hart’s 1843 annual, The Gift, Seba submitted a thirty-four-page
tale to accompany an engraving of Henry Inman’s famous painting News Boy.
Writing to Carey & Hart on March 25, 1842, Seba blames “occasional ill health
in myself and family” for submitting the tale a month after it was promised.
In the same letter he mentions that his wife will submit an illustration for the
engraving of Daniel Huntington’s painting The Florentine Girl, also intended
for The Gift: “Mrs. Smith will undoubtedly get sight of the picture of the ‘Flo-
rentine Girl’ in a day or two, and will forward an illustration to you in a few
days—at any rate within the time specified by your letter.”43
Smith’s casual reference to his wife’s work on the illustration, particularly
the rapidity with which he asserts she can execute the work, suggests that he
likely valued her literary efforts lightly in comparison to his own. At the very
least, they indicate his understanding that Carey & Hart implicitly partici-
pated in literary conventions at work at mid-century. Specifically, he assumes
that the publishers would accept from his wife, a female poet, an illustration
composed in haste, while at the same time sympathizing that Seba, as a male
writer, would need to carefully craft his lengthier (and tardier) contribution.
Smith includes a bit of self-puffery in his letter, defending the excessive

length of his tale. He writes: “I should have made this shorter than it is, but I
could not give a proper finish to it in less compass. I shall express no opinion
of its merits farther than to say that sundry little urchins to whom I have
read it have teased me to read it over and over again, and are even more loud
and decided in their praise of the story than they were of the ‘tough yarn’” [a
tale submitted to Carey for the previous Gift]. Smith continues, “I have often
thought that children and illiterate people were better tests of the popularity
of a story than learned entities.”44
Mr. Smith’s confident pronouncements contrast sharply with his wife’s
seemingly self-deprecating manner in her letters at this stage in her career.
In a missive to her new literary impresario and newly appointed Graham’s edi-
tor, Rufus Griswold, dated June 13, 1842, Oakes Smith defends her choice of a
prose illustration for an embellishment she identifies as The Sisters. The illus-
tration actually accompanied The Bud and the Blossom, an engraving of two
sisters that appeared in Graham’s in August 1842. She writes, “The illustration
for The Sisters I have made in prose, believing it would be more acceptable to
the common reader especially where the subject is trite.”45 Oakes Smith’s dis-
missal of this subject (likely the “marriage tale”) implies her weariness with
the task of having to generate one more fairly predictable rendering of that
subject for the “common reader.”46
Perhaps, however, she is referencing the “subject” of the engraving: an ide-
alized image of two sisters, one of clearly marriageable age, the other still
in her youth (see fig. 5.3). The prevailing codes of genteel female portraiture
clearly mark this engraving: a lacy ruffled dress, an elongated neck, deli-
cate curls, and an oval face with classical features—all served as markers of
domestic femininity in female portraiture.47 Engravings like this thus served
as a kind of visual shorthand for the gender ideologies so prevalent at mid-
century: true womanhood, separate spheres, and the like.48 Readers would
expect to find such an image coupled with sentimental poem or tale depicting
the girls’ beauty, piety, purity, and submissiveness—and most engravings like
this were, in fact, illustrated in this manner. For Oakes Smith to have submit-
ted a three-page prose tale instead of the brief verse that would have sufficed,
suggests one of two motives, and possibly both: she needed the additional
money Graham generally paid for prose over poetry; and she had something
to say in her illustration of the engraving that was a bit more than “trite.”
As it turns out, this is no simple “marriage tale,” and Griswold evidently
liked it well enough to run the tale as the opening-page featured story for the
August 1842 issue of the magazine. (This was not yet an established practice
FIGURE 5.3 The Bud and the Blossom, frontispiece, Graham’s, August 1842. Engraved by
Welch & Walter from a drawing by W. C. Ross, A.R.A.
in the pictorials; textual illustrations for engravings were still often buried
somewhere within an issue.) Although the tale’s title, “The Bud and the Blos-
som,” is trite enough, the subtitle hints that the tale will not be: “a reason
for bachelorism.” Since a bachelor was generally as frowned upon as an “old
maid” in most of this literature, that the tale purports to provide a rationale
for it hints that the tale will be out of the ordinary.
The tale opens with the narrator begging of one Charles Hunter the reason
for his bachelorhood. Hunter relates the sad history of his love for the elder
sister in the embellishment, her death at sea, then his love for her younger
sister, Anne, once she reaches young womanhood. Anne, alas, thinks of
Charles only as an older brother (and rightly so, as he has been the sisters’
guardian and is nearly twice their age), so he must give her up to another. In
relating his tale, Hunter rails against marriage, citing the woes endured by
Shakespeare’s Cassius, Othello, and Macbeth—victims of tragedies brought
on largely by their wives, Hunter insists. As Oakes Smith explains of her cen-
tral character in her letter to Griswold: “You see I have made bachelors very
good thinkers as to our sex. I have found them so; a little like Iago, indeed,
‘nothing unless critical’, but yet just in their estimates.”49
Yet, a careful reading of Oakes Smith’s tale renders her letter to Griswold
a bit disingenuous, since her characterization of Hunter is not entirely flat-
tering, and the tale clearly depicts the female narrator having a bit of fun at
Hunter’s expense. Oakes Smith’s narrator notes that she indulged his “ebulli-
tion of bachelor spleen” when he initially rails against womankind, in order to
prod him to continue his tale. The narrator describes the bachelor as “stout,”
“smooth-faced,” and habitually self-content, and her goading of him for the
tale—and the tale itself—feature him in no flattering light. In his description
of the elder sister, he observes that women “admire nobleness and generosity
of spirit” because they lack these characteristics; and that they admire “cour-
age” because they are “cowards.” Oakes Smith’s narrator protests this charac-
terization of her sex, and one suspects narrator elides with author here.
Oakes Smith’s rhetoric in her accompanying letter to Griswold suggests
she clearly understands both what Griswold expects of her, and what she
may be able to get away with if she simply accedes to her role in this profes-
sional exchange. She makes two additional requests of Griswold, presumably
because she has fulfilled her part of their literary bargain by submitting her
illustration in a timely manner, as commissioned. First, she asks for a proof
of the tale before it goes to press—a request editors and publishers generally
hesitated to comply with except for the best-known writers in their stables—
and Oakes Smith lacks that status at this early stage of her career. By way
of justification, she tells Griswold that she “fears the Mss is so bad it will be
‘full of blunders’” and she explains, “I cannot afford to have more nonsense
imported than belongs to me.” Her second request is for a free subscription
to the magazine. She justifies her request by noting, “Mr. Godey sends me
the Lady’s Book through the Port of the Bowery.” Thus she not only plays on
Griswold’s competitive spirit by pointing out that fellow editor Louis Godey
already extends to her this courtesy, but she deftly directs Griswold how to
ensure the subscription will reach her.
Apparently, Oakes Smith’s only difficulty in composing an illustration for
the engraving was to provide one that upheld, unironically, the platitudes of
womanly beauty and ideal domesticity suggested by the drawing. Her calcu-
lated letter to Griswold appears to be one piece in an elaborate system of
literary exchange based on her compliance with his request for an illustra-
tion, coupled with her awareness that the tale she has submitted may not be
exactly what Griswold had anticipated. Although her illustration presents a
conventional sentimental ending—the younger sister dies soon after disap-
pointing Hunter’s hopes for happiness with her by marrying a suitor of her
own choosing—her female narrator’s unflattering portrait of the bachelor
undercuts the force of his conventionally sentimental description of womanly
virtues and foibles. Like Osgood, Oakes Smith seems to use her illustrations
to challenge subtly her culture’s gender ideologies. Unlike Kirkland, however,
she seems less quick to impute fault to her sex for women’s unwillingness to
conform to patriarchal expectations.
A second tale submitted by Oakes Smith (under her pseudonym Ernest
Helfenstein) for the July 1843 issue of Graham’s displays a similar tendency to
challenge the gender and cultural stereotypes implicit in the engraving. The
embellishment, Coming to Get Married, shows a bashful, but smiling couple
entering a room where a stern-faced cleric is rising from his chair to attend to
them. Two women, one younger, one older, stand behind the minister, appar-
ently having just delivered his afternoon tea to his worktable. Oakes Smith’s
tale, rather than following the formula of the standard courtship tale (which
generally narrates the young couple’s various trials and mishaps, concluding
in their happy marriage) instead focuses on the early life of the minister and
his blighted first love. We learn that the woman pouring his tea is his maiden
sister (not his wife, as a viewer might assume), and the younger woman not
his daughter but another female relative entrusted to their care.
The tale follows the minister through his collegiate days and his attach-
ment to a woman of high intellect and deep melancholy, who he marries only
to learn that she loves another who has died. Her confession of her belated
realization of deep attachment to her dead former lover sends the minister
into a rage and he banishes his young wife to a cloistered life, while he chooses
a life ministering to (and marrying) others. Hence, an engraving that should
have prompted an illustration in conformance with courtship tales that
inevitably end in the matrimonial bliss of the married pair, instead depicts
the misery of marital disappointment. While the courtship tale would run
its course by decade’s end and tales of “marital complication” would become
far more common, a tale like Oakes Smith’s was still fairly rare this early in
the decade. That she felt emboldened to create it in the face of readers’ likely
expectations for something far more platitudinous indicates, I believe, that
the proto-feminism for which she would become later known was already
simmering and seeking literary outlet this early in her career.
Her biographers note that Oakes Smith’s mother arranged her marriage
to Seba Smith against her will, and that she herself believed marriage to be
a hypocritical institution.50 In her 1851 publication, Woman and Her Needs
(written as a pamphlet to be distributed during a lecture tour on which she
had embarked), she specifically upbraids older men who obsessively pursue
marriages with younger women. She opines, “the man who has passed his
life to thirty and upward in accumulating wealth, has become hard, selfish,
hackneyed in the world, and utterly blind to the soul-needs of a sensitive
girl of half his years.” She adds, “It is not unusual for girls to be married and
become mothers at sixteen, at the expense of health, happiness, and all the
appropriateness and dignity of life; and men seem quite proud of these baby-
wives, when in truth they should blush at their selfishness.”51
Seen in the light of these later proto-feminist statements, the embellish-
ment illustrations from the 1840s indicate that Oakes Smith had likely long
thought about how best to address injustices against women, particularly
women being married off to much older men. In the 1840s, she worked largely
within the conventional cultural channels of the middle-class illustrated peri-
odicals. By 1851, she felt emboldened enough to risk public censure—and
censure she did receive. Sarah Josepha Hale publicly broke with Oakes Smith
over her decision to take the lyceum stage and speak out for women’s rights.52
Although she would continue to publish her work in other quarters, by the
end of the 1840s her work for the Philadelphia pictorials had all but ended.
While Oakes Smith’s work for the illustrated magazines was winding up,
Caroline Kirkland’s was in full steam. Kirkland found herself forced to take
on additional work when left to support four children after the sudden death
of her husband. When she commenced her editorship of the Union Magazine
(July 1847), under publisher Israel Post, the magazine was being published in
New York, Kirkland’s home. However, in mid-1848, John Sartain purchased

the magazine, relocating publishing headquarters to Philadelphia. Kirkland
left a particularly rich trove of manuscript evidence on the practice of illus-
trating an engraving, by virtue of conducting the second portion of her stint
as editor of the Union long-distance from New York. However, even during
1847–48, evidence from her letters and from the magazine itself indicates that
Kirkland’s troubles with the pictorial matter of the magazine began early.
From its inception, the Union advertised “entirely original contents” and
“exclusively original pictures,” under the direction of T. H. Matteson, Esq.
Tompkins Harrison Matteson was an up-and-coming American artist, pop-
ular for his history and genre paintings with patriotic themes.53 Matteson
had exhibited paintings through the New York–based American Art-Union,
a subscription association that spawned similar art-unions in other Eastern
Seaboard cities. The Union launched with a title specifically referencing the
Art-Union. While the art-unions generally disbursed annual prizes on a lot-
tery giveaway to subscribers, the new editors promised each reader “not one
picture, but many, in return for his contribution to the cause.”54 Moreover,
these pictures were commissioned and composed exclusively for the maga-
zine, under Matteson’s direction.
Kirkland was extremely well educated for a woman of her era. However,
while her letters record an appreciation for the arts, her early published writ-
ings on the subject appear hesitant and unsure.55 A year after taking on edito-
rial responsibilities at the Union, Kirkland traveled to Europe with her friends,
the Rev. Henry Bellows and his wife, Eliza. In a letter home to acting editor
Bayard Taylor, she asks Taylor to inform Matteson that she is “racing through
galleries every day hoping to learn a little something about pictures.”56 In a
letter to publishing friend Evert A. Duyckinck dated a few months earlier,
she had groused about the Union publishers: “Those concerned consider the
‘illustrations’ as of so much more importance than the literary matter, that
every thing gives place to them” (Roberts 158).
Kirkland’s frustration over the preference shown the illustrations and in
working with Matteson to coordinate literary and artistic material is evident
from the first issue of the new magazine. Kirkland initially objected to Mat-
teson’s martial tendencies—the inaugural issue featured an original engrav-
ing of a scene designed by Matteson of a battle fought in the ongoing war
with Mexico. When the second Mexican War engraving designed by Matteson
appeared in the January 1848 issue, the illustration of the engraving included
an addendum by Kirkland specifically objecting to Matteson’s choice of “war-
like pictures.”57 Kirkland’s “Note” adds that she has been able to secure from
FIGURE 5.4 Steps to Ruin, I, frontispiece, The Union, November 1847. Designed by T. H. Matteson,
engraved by H. S. Sadd.
Matteson a promise to feature no more of these kinds of embellishments, “in

deference to her feelings.”58
When the subject matter of the engraving suited her own didactic predilec-
tions, Kirkland rose to the occasion. Matteson began in November 1847 a four-
part series of engravings entitled Steps to Ruin, modeled after the well-known
eight-plate temperance series by English artist George Cruikshank entitled
The Bottle.59 Kirkland reviewed the Cruikshank series in the November 1847
editorial column, in addition to writing the illustration for the first of Mat-
teson’s plates (see fig. 5.4).60 In her illustration of the plate, Kirkland claims
she intends to “make the picture the occasion of a little homily,” and proceeds
to tell the story of one John Hinchley—based, she claims, on incidents she
observed during her residence in the western frontiers of Michigan. The first
plate depicts a young man at the blacksmith’s, drinking and indulging in a
game of cards.61 Kirkland’s narrative blames the young husband’s behavior on
his overly harsh but avaricious father, who put the youth in apprenticeship to
a blacksmith the father knew to be less than morally upright. Kirkland opines
at the conclusion of her tale: “How much of the misconduct and unhappiness
of young people is the direct fruit of a deficiency of virtue, or sincere effort of
virtue in their parents, is an awful thought for many of us” (Kirkland “Steps
to Ruin,” Union, November 1847, 231).
She equally relished the opportunity to illustrate a second plate designed
by Matteson in the November 1847 issue, entitled The Novel Reader (see fig.
5.5).62 Genre pictures like this, depicting American domestic scenes, would
likely have been popular with the magazine’s national, and increasingly rural,
audience, and the detail in the engraving suggests Matteson’s careful atten-
tion to providing high-quality art. The scene depicts what appears to be a
serving girl reading a novel while being scolded by both her better-dressed
mistress and the hard-working head of the household, who appears to be a
shopkeeper. Meanwhile, the baby cries, a dog attempts to snatch a cooling
pie from the windowsill, and dirty dishes sit, unwashed, on the table. Draw-
ing out the moral for her readers, Kirkland asserts, “Though we consider a
thoughtless and absorbing habit of novel-reading next to a love of the bottle
in its ruinous effects upon character and happiness, yet it would be contrary
to all experience to think violence would mend the matter.” Admonitions
against novel reading were a staple of the advice literature and popular mag-
azines at mid-century.63 Here Kirkland equates novel reading in women as
calamitous a vice as intemperance in men—perhaps she draws this conclu-
sion for the reader because the two illustrations (Steps to Ruin No. 1 and The
Novel Reader) appeared in the same issue. Although Kirkland could be a harsh
critic of women’s foibles, here she advises male readers to “speak gently” to
their wives if indeed they discover them in this “vicious act.”
Her illustration for Matteson’s picture My Child in the December 1847
Union reveals that Kirkland held high expectations of her sex. In the engrav-
ing, a desperate and disheveled mother pleads, kneeling, before her irate hus-
band, even as this father figure directs a servant girl to carry their infant
daughter out of the room. Formatting her prose illustration as a one-page,
five-act tragedy, Kirkland opens her tale with the protagonist, Clara, defy-
ing her parent’s prohibition against marriage by eloping. Again, the narra-
tor blames Clara’s mother for “want of firmness” in failing to follow-through
on threatened punishment. Instead, Clara’s mother badgers her husband to
FIGURE 5.5 The Novel Reader, frontispiece, The Union, November 1847. Designed by T. H. Matteson,
set up the newlyweds in housekeeping, and, her every wishes indulged, Clara
plays the coquette while her husband takes to the gaming tables. Discovering
Clara in a compromising position, the enraged husband kicks her out of the
house, unyielding to her pleas to take with her their young child. Kirkland
closes her tale hoping that it serves “the blessed work of warning” to her read-
ers. The illustration—both visually and textually—suggests the influence of
the moral reform melodramas that were popular with urban audiences at
mid-century.64 The didactic message would have been a warning to young
middlebrow readers both against marrying contrary to a parent’s wishes, and
against falling victim to the lures of urban high-life.
Kirkland’s didactic tone is perfectly consistent with how she viewed her
own task, and that of the other artists and authors contributing to the
monthly magazines. In her inaugural editorial, she likens the launching of

a new magazine to an act of patriotism, stating, “To elevate the intellectual
and moral character of the people, is a work no less necessary and commend-
able” than that of the solider in defending the country from attack (“Intro-
ductory,” Union, July 1847, 1). In a letter to Eliza Bellows, wife of her minister
and good friend, the Rev. Henry Bellows, Kirkland defends her work on the
magazine: “I think it would not be difficult to show you that this kind of pub-
lication occupies a very important field in our rising country, and deserves
attention on that account if no other” (Roberts, 125). Additionally, in a letter
to her friend and fellow magazine editor Evert Duyckinck, she attests to her
own plans to make the magazine “more purely literary” and to “elevate it as
fast as I can with their concurrence” (Roberts, 124). Kirkland apparently saw
upholding both the literary quality of the magazine and its high moral tone
as consistent, and central to her role as editor.65
No wonder, then, that her efforts to illustrate Matteson’s gorgeous plate
for Taking the Advantage led to a reconstruction of the scene depicted that pre-
tends to misunderstand the artist’s intentions (see fig. 5.6). The plate shows
a country swain stealing a kiss from a lass who looks to be spilling her milk
in confused response. Meanwhile, an aging guardian adjusts her glasses in
the doorway behind, unsure of what she has just witnessed. Courtship scenes
like this one were a favorite subject for Matteson and other genre painters at
mid-century.66 Kirkland uses her illustration to contain the erotic zing of the
picture: “Not having had any consultation with the artist, we conclude the
adventurous swain in this picture to be the brother or cousin of the vexed
damsel—or, perhaps, some friend of the family just returned from Oregon—
though such a supposition may seem hardly to account for the puzzled look
of the old lady in the background” (Union, August 1847, 71).
Protesting that the American farmer is far too grave to offer “such a piece
of impertinence,” even in his youth, Kirkland’s illustration appears to dismiss
any possibility of a romantic connection between the busser and the target of
his attentions. Yet from the tone of her illustration, it is difficult to determine
whether Kirkland is offering a serious critique of the appropriateness of Mat-
teson’s choice of subject matter for the engraving, or whether she is adopt-
ing a gently mocking attitude toward the overly familiar courting rituals of
country folk. Certainly the former reading would be consistent both with
her general disapproval of the importance accorded the embellishments, and
with her specific disagreements with Matteson over pictorial subject matter
and the magazine’s mission of moral uplift. However, the latter reading is
consistent with her mocking treatment of her rural neighbors in her novels
and fictionalized western sketches.
FIGURE 5.6 Taking the Advantage, frontispiece, The Union, August 1847. Designed by T. H. Matteson,
Whatever Kirkland’s intent, at least one male reader sided with Matteson.
In a subsequent letter to the editor from a new reader in Ballston Spa, New
York, the writer crows “‘Taking the Advantage’ is an exquisite piece of art.
Then, so true to life! What lover has not taken the advantage?” The writer
continues, “The editor calls it a ‘piece of impertinence.’ Indeed! Who could
have refrained from ‘taking the advantage’ at such a time, and when such
a beautiful rosy cheek was the object of attraction?” (Union, “Letters,” Sep-
tember 1847). Evidently, at least some Union readers understood Kirkland’s
illustration as intentionally moralizing, and resisted it as such. Matteson’s
engraving, Kirkland’s illustration, and the male reader’s response indicate
some of the challenges inherent in trying to analyze the reception of maga-
zines marketed to mixed-gendered audiences. In this case, in the absence of
a published response from a female reader, the verdict of the male reader
seems to stand as the last word on this engraving. It is certainly a reading
that appears in keeping with the erotic iconology of the engraving: the phallic
spray of the spilling milk; the bottle erect on the middle shelf between two
round bowls—this visually suggestive imagery would certainly have been
understood by the artist, if not by some of his less sophisticated and less art-
savvy readers.67
Once the Union passed into the hands of John Sartain and moved from
New York to Philadelphia, Kirkland expressed increasing reluctance to meet
the demands of the new publisher to illustrate engravings for the magazine.
In a letter dated December 26, 1849, addressed to “Messrs. Sartain and Co.,”
Kirkland writes: “As to your request for a story I will look at the pictures with
the best intention in the world—I trust you are convinced I should be glad
to oblige you, or to advance your intention in any way—But you need not be
told that it is not easy or even possible to write stores when we will if it were,
I might be rich. If after due study of the designs I feel that I can write any
thing I shall be willing to publish, you may be assured nothing could give me
more pleasure—If not I will let you know as early as possible” (Roberts 255).
She goes on to explain that the previous tales written for illustrations were
“suggested by facts, incidents or occurrences” and that she “never yet wrote
one as long as you propose” nor of the “fixed length” stipulated in his request.
She concludes, “If I write one, the length will have to take care of itself.” In
the case of this particular set of designs, the task of illustrating them passed
to Grace Greenwood (Roberts 256).
Apparently, the issue of the length of her articles was far from over. Six
months later, June 7, 1850, she writes to “Sartain & Co” an irritated response
to a letter received from the publisher that apparently objected both to her
proposed trip to England for the summer and to the length of her articles for
the magazine. To the former charge she replies, “I certainly never asked or
desired ‘a furlough for six months on full pay.’ I travel to freshen my thoughts
and improve my capability for labor . . . and if you can suggest any thing for
the advantage of the Magazine that will be within my capabilities, I shall be
most happy to under take it.” In answer to apparent complaints about the
length of her articles for the magazine, she reminds Sartain that “subject,
length and all else were left entirely to me.” She contrasts Sartain’s evident
complaint that her articles are too short, with the observation, “At the same
time Prof. H[art] protests against long articles, as do most readers. To make
objections on this score is therefore very unreasonable” (Roberts 267–68).
Sartain evidently also complained about her fee for a two-part article on
“dress,” and suggested she write an article “Gossip from New York,” which
Kirkland begged “respectfully to decline” as, in her words “not in my line.”
Kirkland offers to withdraw her services as co-editor (at that time she was
co-editing with Professor John Hart, a Philadelphia educator), noting, “If my
services to the Magazine are not profitable to it I have no desire to force them
upon it. I have done my best, and can do no more. I can neither write to order
as to length nor subject, though I am always willing to oblige as far as my
ability will serve.”68 Although she continued to solicit submissions from Eng-
lish writers for the magazine while in London, and to submit her own essays
for publication, by July 1851 she was no longer advertised on the magazine’s
cover as a contributing editor.69 Central to her decision to leave her editorial
duties seems to be the issue of being asked to “write to order,” a request she
had attempted to honor from the magazine’s inaugural issue in supplying
the pictorial illustrations, but one that she, like other writers, seems to have
found challenging.
As these brief case studies suggest, a writer could choose to accept a com-
mission to illustrate an engraving and yet ignore, or challenge, the iconology
or ideology the engraving appeared to uphold. A writer’s decision to accept a
commission to illustrate an engraving operated within a much larger frame-
work of literary sociability and exchange. While the task offered fledgling and
economically needy writers an opportunity to secure quick cash and literary
exposure, most writers found the task somewhat onerous. Many writers were
willing to do so to maintain ongoing relationships with literary patrons and
protégés—an illustration dashed off today might lead to more lucrative work
tomorrow. That the task seems to have fallen most frequently to women writ-
ers suggests both the female author’s relative economic vulnerability in the
magazine marketplace and the gendered expectations for periodical author-
ship at mid-century.
In a publishing culture that subordinated the textual illustration to the
picture, we should perhaps not be surprised to find that the lesser task of
illustrating an engraving often fell to women writers. The important roles
of artist, engraver, editor, and publisher fell almost exclusively within the
purview of men. At decade’s end, even male artists, editors, and publishers
found themselves at odds, as editorial battles broke out over the status of art
engravings in the larger literary and artistic marketplace. Publishers scram-
bled to secure for their magazines the best American art, buying up and com-
missioning paintings for exclusive use in their magazines. They also maneu-
vered to ensure the continued services of overworked and highly sought-after
engravers. Finally, publishers squabbled over the question of who was best
qualified to judge the artistic merits of an engraving—the artist/engraver or
the art patron/connoisseur.
6
“ Engravings from
Original Pictures”
COMPE TING FOR AUDIENCES AND ORIGINAL ART
In the “Editors’ Table” for the May 1844 of his magazine, Louis Godey features
a letter from a reader who complains: “The great objection to the Monthlies of
Chestnut Street is their plates. Each has generally thirty-six plates a year—
women and children. Now these may be scarce on Chestnut Street, but they
are not so here.” This astute reader alludes to the fact that all the major Phila-
delphia illustrated periodicals emanated from publishing houses located on
Chestnut Street, within a stone’s throw of each other, and all run by male
editors and publishers (hence the quip about the absence of women and chil-
dren on Chestnut Street).1 In fact, Edgar Allan Poe is said to have famously
complained that if one were to remove the covers from these magazines, one
could not distinguish between them because all relied on the same authors
and the same embellishers (Mott, I, 352). While Poe and the reader were right
that Godey, Graham, and Peterson relied on many of the same authors and
embellishers, and featured a preponderance of images of women and chil-
dren in their magazines, they both missed the subtle differences between the
artistic matter in these magazines, and what those differences reveal about
imagined audiences.
The reader continues: “Now, can’t you throw in a little variety—say a
loafer, a bank director, a starved poet, an omnibus boy, or a cab driver, or
any thing that is not common in the West?” This reader’s request for images
of urban male figures highlights several important facts. Firstly, although
Godey prided himself on creating a magazine targeting his “fair readers,” men
clearly read (and generally paid the subscription fees for) these magazines.
119
120 CO MPE T ING FOR AUDIE NC E S A N D OR IG IN A L A RT
This male reader felt entitled to request images in keeping with his own inter-
ests. Secondly, this letter points to the fact that, by mid-decade, the illus-
trated monthlies reached readers far distant from the Eastern Seaboard cities
of the magazines’ origins, and that these readers were hungry for images of
American life in the distant cities. This male reader, and likely many others
receiving these magazines in the rural areas where the bulk of the nation’s
population still lived, relied on these magazines both to learn about life in the
cities, and to learn about American art.
In responding, Godey “pleads guilty” to the preponderance of images of
women and children, but argues that his selection of embellishments has
improved. He queries: “Have we not given scriptural, historical and Shake-
spearean subjects? Have we not published match plates illustrative of vir-
tue and vice; views of celebrated places; engravings from original pictures &
c.?” It is evident from Godey’s response to this reader—a response Godey
published prominently in the editorial space of his magazine—that Godey is
concerned about the breadth of subject matter given in his embellishments.
Beyond this, Godey’s response provides evidence of his continuing concern
with the reputation of his magazine in the promotion of American art—he
stresses that his magazine has given “engravings from original pictures.”
Most scholars who have consulted the images in these magazines have
made much the same mistake that Godey’s reader made—focusing solely
on the sentimental images of women and children in the illustrated periodi-
cals, at the expense of the rest of the artwork in the magazines.2 While the
illustrated monthlies did serve up fashion plates and idealized mother/child
images, they also featured original American art, commissioned specifically
for the periodicals, and circulated this artwork more widely than was possible
via any other medium. As noted in chapter 3, competition between publish-
ers early in the decade focused on artwork that utilized novel or innovative
printing techniques. But with the vanquishing of Miss Leslie’s at the end of
1843, the “big three”—Godey’s, Graham’s, and Peterson’s—shifted their focus
to securing original artwork executed by American painters, on American
themes, and prepared primarily by prominent Philadelphia engravers. In
particular, these publishers commissioned for exclusive publication in these
magazines original American landscapes, historical paintings, illustrations of
Native Americans, fancy pictures, and idealized female portraiture.
Although they competed for the services of the same artists and embellish-
ers, a careful examination of these specific genres of art engravings in each
magazine proves Poe wrong. Each publisher seems to have imagined a slightly
COM PE T IN G F OR AU D I E NC E S AND O R I G I NAL ART 121
different audience, and to have secured artwork intended to appeal to that

imagined audience. Godey’s reader was right that his magazine contained a
preponderance of images of women and children. Both Peterson’s and Graham’s
featured a great many images of idealized female portraits as well.3 Graham’s
female figures are far less likely to be maternal, however; belles, brides, and
coquettes form the bulk of Graham’s feminine figures—largely, I argue, because
George Graham imagined his primary audience to be other worldly-wise gen-
tlemen like himself.4 Most of his female images assume a male gaze and appeal
to the male imaginary, while Peterson and Godey select images intended pri-
marily for women readers/viewers and more likely to appeal to their desire to
emulate the idealized role models. Likewise, Graham featured more images of
Native Americans, and selected those designed to appeal primarily to a male
reader/viewer. Godey’s and Graham’s featured plates commissioned to illus-
trate important events in American history, although Godey sought images of
heroic American women, while Graham’s featured a preponderance of engrav-
ings highlighting war exploits and nation-building narratives.
With John Sartain’s purchase and renaming of the Union Magazine in
1848, a new kind of competition emerged between these four illustrated
magazines that also reflected tensions in the larger Philadelphia art commu-
nity. Central to this competition were two key questions: 1) What counted as
“art”?—particularly in reference to the embellishments included in the illus-
trated monthlies; and, 2) Who was the best judge of a work’s artistic merits—
other artists, or the patrons and connoisseurs upon whose generosity the
artist traditionally depended? In the Philadelphia pictorials, this argument
played itself out at decade’s end in a series of pointed exchanges in the edito-
rial spaces of these magazines—primarily between Louis A. Godey and John
Sartain.5
This chapter will begin by examining some of the promotional ploys and
editorial matter in these magazines that help determine differences in audi-
ence address. Key to competition between these magazines is the claim of
each to original American artwork, and the second half of the chapter will
focus on the specific artists promoted by these publishers, and the uniquely
American paintings commissioned for publication in the monthlies. I target,
in particular, two genres of images—of women, and of Native Americans—as
case studies for analyzing differences between artwork in these magazines.
Woodcuts, fashion plates, and the female nude formed a nexus for controver-
sies that developed at decade’s end over the questions of what constituted art
and who was qualified to judge its merits.
CONSTRUC TING AN AUDIENCE:

TITLES, PROMOTIONAL PUFFS, AND EDITORIAL SPACES
As we glimpsed in chapter 3 using Miss Leslie’s as our primary focus, these illus-
trated magazines targeted generally middle-class audiences with aspirations
of upward mobility. All three employed nationalistic rhetoric to differentiate
themselves from the highbrow New York magazines and European imports.
However, in the absence of publishers’ subscription lists, we must rely on
other interpretive strategies to construct a more complete picture of the audi-
ences imagined by each, in order to understand how publishers competed for
readers.6 We can learn about the audiences imagined by these periodicals by
examining briefly several different kinds of editorial content: magazine titles;
promotional puffs and subscription schemes; and editorial columns.
As noted in the introductory chapter, George Graham bought two existing
magazine’s—Atkinson’s Casket and Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine—naming
the newly consolidated monthly Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine.
Graham clearly hoped to differentiate himself from Godey by addressing an
audience of both men and women. However, his imagined readership was
decidedly more masculine than his competitors. Between January and June
1844, Graham briefly changed the title to Graham’s Magazine of Literature and
Art, presumably to showcase his support for original American literature and
art, and to contrast his magazine with Godey’s (who had early relied on Euro-
pean writers and French fashion plates). Then in 1848, after The Union Maga-
zine of Art and Literature entered the fray, Graham added the moniker “Ameri-
can” to the title, changing the name to Graham’s American Monthly Magazine
of Literature and Art. Doubtless, he sought to compete with the Union’s stated
alliance with the newly formed American Art-Union, and to highlight Sar-
tain’s English lineage. In each case, the name change indicated an attempt to
maintain and increase the magazine’s subscription base by manipulating the
audience address.
As also noted earlier, Charles Peterson launched his Ladies’ National
Magazine in 1842–43 as a less expensive competitor to Godey’s, targeting, at
least initially, female readers. After buying another small magazine, the Art-
ist, and combining the two, Peterson experimented with no less than five
magazine titles in 1843 alone (Mott, II, 306). Like Godey, Peterson employed
a woman editor (Ann Stephens) and frequently featured her book-length
fiction in monthly magazine installments designed to encourage continued
magazine subscription renewal from one volume to the next.7 In calling
his magazine the Ladies’ National Magazine, Peterson also seems to have
contrasted his predominantly American target audience with Godey’s inter-

national appeal (Godey’s was popular abroad as well as in the States). In
producing a smaller, less expensive magazine that occasionally lacked fash-
ion plates, Peterson also seems to target an audience of less affluent female
readers. However, as we have seen, to compete with Godey’s and, initially,
Miss Leslie’s, Peterson stressed his willingness to furnish the “costly and
beautiful” mezzotints that he believed would make his magazine “the most
popular work” available.
For his part, Godey maintained a steadfast commitment to a “ladies” book,
adding his name to the title in 1840, but changing little else about his mag-
azine’s address to its imagined female readers. His support of editor Sarah
Josepha Hale remained consistent throughout the magazine’s long publish-
ing history. In his “Publisher’s Table” address to his readers, he stressed his
magazine’s tireless support of women’s issues and his persistent offering of
the most up-to-date fashion plates, published consistently each month (the
other monthlies were sometimes erratic in offering fashion plates). With the
challenge of Miss Leslie’s early in the decade, Godey briefly emphasized his
ability to secure novel embellishments as well. By decade’s end, he demon-
strated a commitment to American artwork that outshone (and outspent)
Peterson’s, Graham’s, and Sartain’s Union.
All four publishers not only targeted an audience seeking the markers of
gentility; all four magazines also linked the attainment of gentility with the
consumption of art and literature, specifically with American art and litera-
ture.8 Yet in featuring “entirely original contents” (as each of these magazines
advertised in one way or another during this decade), the Philadelphia pic-
torials also shrewdly distanced themselves (and, presumably, their audience
members) from the attitudes and practices of the highbrow New York maga-
zines—particularly the Knickerbocker. “Old Knick,” as it was known, targeted
an aristocratic audience, and relied primarily on material borrowed from for-
eign, usually British, sources (Mott, I, 610). The Philadelphia pictorials were
thus decidedly more middlebrow in their address, and showed decided prefer-
ence for the work of American authors and artists.
Promotional schemes also reveal something about imagined audience
members. As already noted, Peterson commenced publication of his $2.00/
year monthly to compete directly with Godey’s $3.00/year magazine. Both
Graham’s and the Union also sold for $3.00/year and, like Godey’s, contained
more reading matter than Peterson’s. Entering the market simultaneously
with Miss Leslie’s, Peterson distinguished his magazine both by its cheapness
and by the quality of its embellishments. As he proudly announced in his
“Editors’ Table” for June 1843: “Never before in this country has a work of
such cost been offered at so low a price.”
Such puffs for one’s own publication, or that of a fellow publisher, were
common as a subscription period drew to a close. Most magazines started
new volumes in January and again in July, so that December and June issues
prominently featured promotional schemes designed to sell more subscrip-
tions. In the June 1843 promotion, Peterson makes the generous offer of
throwing in a copy of the annual The Gems of Art and Beauty to any subscriber
who brought in two new subscribers at the $2.00/year rate.9 By November
1844, in a “Word to the Ladies” Peterson is reminding them to “get up clubs”
to secure a reduced price on eight subscriptions of only $1.25/year, a signifi-
cant savings over the $2.00/year subscription fee. Indeed, although Peterson
sought an ever-widening circulation base, he wavered little from his basic
philosophy in starting the magazine: “the publisher believ[es] that small
profits on a large circulation are preferable to high gains on a small edition”
(“Editor’s Table,” June 1843, 191).
In addition to promotional pricing and gender address, publishers relied
on winning new subscribers by increasingly promoting their magazines as
national rather than merely regional, and as “American” in focus. By decade’s
end, particularly in the wake of the Mexican War, all four publishers employed
unifying and nationalistic rhetoric. In his “Chit-Chat with Readers” column in
December 1850, Peterson writes: “Our object is to describe real life as it exists
in America.” He points to Ann Stephens’s serialized American novel Palaces
and Prisons and another serial, Julia Warren, to substantiate this claim. He
also promises tales from New England, a novel of Middle States, a story of the
South, and romance of the Southwest. He concludes: “We intend, in a word,
to make our Magazine a home-guest in every part of the United States; and
thus, even more than heretofore, thoroughly national.”10
That audiences were national by the end of the decade is suggested also
from reader columns, like the “Letters from Readers” column published in
the front editorial section of the Union in its early issues. These kinds of col-
umns are notoriously slippery evidence: as other scholars have pointed out,
it is likely that some letters to the editor may have been written by the editor
him/herself. Certainly, that practice seems to have occurred with magazines
published later in the century.11 However, in the case of the Philadelphia pic-
torials, only Godey’s and The Union used letters with any regularity, and they
appear to be original. As scholars have noted, Godey used editorial columns
to cozy up to his readers;12 frequently he cites readers’ letters, as noted in the
introduction to this chapter, to advertise new features especially designed in

response to readers’ requests.
On the other hand, at the very least these letters construct an imagined
audience, and provide evidence of the target audiences for the magazines.
In the September 1847 issue, we see that the Union was being read in “the
west”: Cleaveland [sic], Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky—and in New England:
Hartford, Connecticut, and Delhi, New York. The October 1847 issue contains
additional letters from New London, Connecticut; Newburgh, New York;
Reading, Pennsylvania. Subsequent issues feature letters demonstrating
distribution to a southern audience as well—letters from Charleston, South
Carolina; Madison, Georgia; Asheboro, North Carolina. A cursory survey of
letters received during the first year of publication of the Union (July 1847 to
July 1848) reveals an imagined audience expanding from the major cities of
the eastern seaboard (New York, Philadelphia, Boston) to include the smaller
towns and villages in the Midwest and South.
The Philadelphia pictorials strove to reach an ever-widening geographic
audience and each sought to outdo the others’ subscription lists. George Gra-
ham boasted a circulation of 25,000 in December 1841, and by March 1842
that figure had jumped to 40,000. By April 1850, Godey’s boasted an initial
run of 62,500, noting, “We think this is nearly double that of any other maga-
zine published in the world” (“OUR WORK” column, 295). Peterson’s rheto-
ric in December 1851 clearly indicates the elusive figure magazine publishers
pursued: “In a great and intelligent country like this, with more than twenty
millions of inhabitants, a periodical so cheap, beautiful, entertaining, and
indispensable [sic], should not have a circulation of less than one hundred
thousand.” During and after the Civil War, Peterson would achieve that fig-
ure and better, subscriptions soaring to 165,000 (Mott, II, 309). In the 1840s,
though, Godey’s remained the one to best.
We should place these subscription rates in the context of income. At a
time when female garment workers earned between $0.75 and $1.50 per week
in New York City, female bookbinders $1.50 to $3.00 per week, and female
domestics $3.00 per month,13 it seems unlikely that urban working-class
female readers would have chosen to pay these subscription rates (in most
cases payable in advance). A skilled male laborer earned about $300 per year,
so that a subscription to the Union or Graham’s would have represented 1
percent of total wages for the year. Far more likely, as other scholars have
argued, that working-class readers relied on newspapers, story papers, and
dime novels for the bulk of their leisure reading materials.14 Clearly, these
magazines imagined an audience with discretionary income to spend on cul-

tural refinements.
Nonetheless, it is also likely that a great deal of cross-reading occurred
during this era. Magazines did not always reach only their intended audi-
ences. The numerous tales about seamstresses and factory girls in these mag-
azines typically depict them as poor but hard working. Although depicted as
the object of readerly sympathy, it is also conceivable that they themselves
were at least occasional readers. Additionally, Louis Godey reported that Civil
War soldiers subscribed to his ladies’ magazine (Mott, I, 590). In January
1849 George Graham quipped: “And when we wish a happy New Year to the
thirty or forty thousand who take, and the four hundred thousand who read
Graham, we wish a general happiness,” indicating that subscribers typically
circulated their copies to non-subscribing fans as well. In January 1852, in
fact, Graham dunned readers who circulated their copies of Graham’s widely,
but failed to encourage borrowers to subscribe. Godey published a letter in
July 1840 from one exasperated female reader who cancelled her subscrip-
tion, citing an inability to read the magazine due to her neighbors’ excessive
borrowing of her copy (“Editor’s Table,” 40).
Examining each publisher’s direct address to his imagined readership also
reveals something about audiences. Like Godey, both Graham and Peterson
served as editor-publishers, so their ownership of their magazines induced a
more intimate and motivated address to their readers. When Graham speaks
to his readers, he frequently employs the device of an intermediary, one “Jer-
emy Short” (a stand-in for fellow-editor and pal, Peterson).15 In a February
1849 “Graham to Jeremy Short,” Graham reminisces about incidents from
their boarding school days. In the March and April 1849 addresses to Jeremy,
Graham muses about the gold rush, and how investors were cheated out of
their contributions. In the January 1850 address, he warns Jeremy against
being tempted into other kinds of “speculations” likely to lose him money. In
the February 1852 address to Jeremy he includes a small woodcut engraving
and accompanying poem on “Winter” that urges Jeremy to “labor and care for
the poor!”
In each instance, Graham talks to his imagined reader as though he were
talking to his best friend—indeed, as though he were talking to himself! He
seems to have imagined his readers to be other “self-made men” (to use Peter-
son’s description of him) just like himself, who desire to be both “good Chris-
tians” and yet to enjoy the “refinement” accruing to the fruits of their labor.
Moreover, he imagines these men both within the context of their business
affairs and as lords of the home circle as well. That is not to say that Graham
did not also address the ladies, but in inheriting Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine,
he seems particularly keen to maintain his magazine’s masculine audience.
While Graham addressed an imagined male reader, Peterson played the
part of the beau in sweet-talking his lady readers, adopting a playfully roman-
tic tone Godey eschewed. For example, here he announces the merger of his
two magazines in the June 1843 issue: “So, in July, our fair friends must be
on the look-out. We shall come with the flowers and the summer skies, the
songs of our sweetest birds, and the sound of waters in sultry days, and, com-
ing thus, how else can we be but welcome? And every lady of taste is asked to
stand bridesmaid at the union of THE ARTIST AND LADY’S WORLD” (“Edi-
tor’s Table,” The Artist and Lady’s World, 191).
Both Godey and Graham also used their editorial space to boast about
their magazine’s preeminence in the field. Graham’s claimed greatest lon-
gevity since one of the magazines he purchased, The Casket, dated to 1826
(“Editor’s Table,” Graham’s, June 1849, 392). Godey dismissed Graham’s
claim, noting in January 1850 that his was “the oldest magazine in America,”
with Godey as sole proprietor for twenty years (“Prospectus for Godey’s for
1850”). Peterson stressed that his was the “most popular” of the Philadelphia
monthlies, although circulation numbers would not confirm that until the
Civil War years.
MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS AND THE PHILADELPHIA

ART SCENE: SECURING ORIGINAL ART WORK
The Philadelphia pictorials were part of an increasingly complex and some-

times contentious Philadelphia art scene. The Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts (PAFA), established in 1805, remained primarily under the control
of art patrons and amateurs through the 1840s, and fueled the frustrations of
struggling Philadelphia artists.16 PAFA supporters tended to favor the work
of old master European artists, often at the expense of underappreciated
American artists. Philadelphia artists responded with their own organiza-
tion, the Artists’ Fund Society, which held separate exhibitions from 1835 to
1845. Toward the end of the decade, the two briefly joined forces in mount-
ing exhibitions. Coming fast upon the heels of Miss Leslie’s successful year
showcasing innovations to American graphic arts, the Artists’ Fund Society
in 1844 partnered with the fledging Art-Union of Philadelphia to promote
the “Arts of Design” in the United States.17 By 1848, this Art-Union was not
only participating in exhibitions, but also soliciting five-dollar memberships
and awarding prizes. Graham, Godey, and Sartain were members of the New
York–based American Art-Union, and took leading roles in establishing the
Philadelphia Art-Union as well.18 In 1848 Sartain purchased the Union maga-
zine, named for the New York organization, and relocated it from New York
to Philadelphia.
In terms of sheer numbers, the Philadelphia pictorials far exceeded the
reach of exhibitions and art-unions in presenting original American art-
work to an eager public. In 1842, with Graham’s alone claiming a readership
of 40,000, the American Art-Union (New York) reported a membership of
only 1,120. Although by 1850 membership in the American Art-Union had
stabilized at 16,500, by December 1850, Godey’s reported the largest print run
in the world, printing nearly 70,000 copies per issue.19 Art-Union members
typically received only one engraving a year, while the Philadelphia pictorials
each published at least one mezzotint or line engraving monthly, in addition
to the fashion plate and illustrative woodcuts. For their $2.00–$3.00 annual
subscription, magazine readers could expect at least twenty-six to thirty-six
original full-page engravings per year, per periodical. Readers who subscribed
to more than one of the illustrated monthlies doubled and tripled the number
of original engravings they received in a year’s time. Again, these magazines
circulated to the small cities and towns of the heartland, where far fewer
likely could afford the $5.00/year Art-Union membership fee or travel to art
exhibitions in major cities.
The fierce competition between the magazines to purchase and publish
original artwork meant that serious artists began to have a steady venue for
the work they might not sell otherwise. By the mid-1840s, Godey’s alone solic-
ited regular work from a half-dozen artists and an equal number of engravers.
At this point in the decade, most artists and engravers worked for more than
one of the illustrated monthlies. By decade’s end, Godey would lead an effort
to corral certain artists and engravers into working exclusively for his maga-
zine, much as, at mid-decade, Godey’s and Graham’s had attempted to do with
the most popular writers of the day.
Godey began boasting of “original” American art, purchased specifically
for his magazine, as early as May 1839, announcing to readers, “We have in
the hands of our engraver, several original pictures, from our own collection.”
Again, in December 1839, he promised readers more original steel engravings,
noting that two of them would be “from pictures of our own” (“Editor’s Book
Table,” December 1839, 287). In the August 1840 issue, Godey slyly noted
improvements to his plates: “We said nothing in the July number of No. 1
of our Original large sized Steel Engravings—but our friends of the Press
have done it for us. Are not twelve such Engravings in a year worth more
than $3?” (96). In the December 1840 issue, he implicitly doubled the value
of the engravings by noting that in the previous six-month volume alone, the
engravings, if purchased separately, would cost more than a year’s subscrip-
tion (282).
Until 1844, Graham’s did not attempt to compete with Godey’s on this
account. Instead, George Graham pursued the literary giants of the era, bill-
ing his magazine as “far in advance of all the other literary periodicals of the
country.” In fact, up until February 1844, when he admitted he would like to
see “a high-toned magazine with fifty thousand readers . . . and without the
aid of pictures,” Graham had shown only a passing interest in the artwork
for his magazine. Nevertheless, the advent of Miss Leslie’s on the scene in
1843 had shaken things up a bit, and Graham evidently understood that if he
wished to remain in serious competition with Godey, he would have to start
competing on Godey’s turf—in the area of the embellishments.
As the frontispiece for the January 1844 issue, Graham’s featured a gor-
geous mezzotint by Sartain, taken from a painting by Sully titled Harry, but
with no accompanying explanation about the embellishment.20 In the Febru-
ary issue, Graham then includes an explanation for January’s engraving. In
a column entitled “OUR PORTRAIT GALLERY,” Graham writes, “The leading
embellishment in the January Number was from an original picture, painted
expressly for us by Thomas Sully, Esq., and in the present number we give an
original from Rothermel, a young Philadelphia artist who is rapidly rising in
his profession” (321). He next announces plans for additional embellishments
currently in the hands of the engravers, based on original paintings by Sully,
Leutze, Conarroe, Croome, and others. By early 1844 Graham had decided to
go head to head with Godey in securing original work from American artists.
These artists—Thomas Sully, Peter Rothermel, Emanuel Leutze, George
Conarroe, William Croome—became well-known in their era, thanks in part
to the wide circulation of the illustrated monthlies, but art historians have
typically under-acknowledged the work of all but Sully and Leutze in surveys
of nineteenth-century American art, and have especially ignored their maga-
zine art work.21 Yet the first four exhibited their work extensively during the
1840s, primarily in Philadelphia but elsewhere as well. Sully exhibited over a
hundred paintings in the city during this decade.22 Conarroe exhibited nearly
forty pictures during the 1840s, as did Leutze, even though Leutze spent the
latter part of the decade in Rome and Dusseldorf. Rothermel exhibited over
fifty paintings in the 1840s.23 William Croome, the least known today, was
quite familiar to magazine subscribers of the 1840s. In 1843, Godey employed
130 COMP ET ING FOR AUDIE NC E S A N D OR IG IN A L A RT
Croome to “Americanize” the fashion plates by portraying American women

without the tight lacing typical of the French fashions.24 As I noted in the
introduction, Croome also worked with fruit and floral designs early in the
decade. He also executed pencil drawings and woodcuts in the latter part of
the decade; Sartain employed him to produce woodcut illustrations for some
of his magazine’s literary matter.
The record of exhibition catalogues for PAFA and the Artists’ Fund Soci-
ety indicate that all three publishers owned paintings exhibited during these
years, and commissioned directly by the publishers from these very artists,
for inclusion in their magazines. Graham owned four paintings, Peterson
nine, and Godey at least seventeen paintings shown in Philadelphia, including
works by local artists James Hamilton, Peter Rothermel, and Thomas Sully.25
James Hamilton was a favored landscape painter. Scene on the Schuylkill,
painted by Hamilton, appeared as the lead engraving for the August 1845
issue of Godey’s, with this notice: “Engraved by A.W. Graham from an Origi-
nal Picture by J. Hamilton for Godey’s American Views.” Godey also featured
another landscape that may have been by Hamilton as the frontispiece to his
September 1846 issue. The engraving, entitled View on the Delaware Opposite
Philadelphia, bears the subtitle Engraved by J. Sartain for Godey from an original
picture. Charles Peterson also owned landscapes by Hamilton, and appears to
have engaged artist-poet Thomas Buchanan Read to paint portraits of him-
self and his wife.26
Sully’s portraits and fancy pictures garnered praise from both Graham
and Godey. Graham praises Sully as “deservedly, the father of American
artists,” and rhapsodizes particularly on his ability to capture the loveli-
ness of the female countenance: “His females are women, and yet spiritual
creatures, beings from a better world, and yet partakers of our feelings and
sharers in our sorrows. What his mistress is in a lover’s eye, that Mr. Sully
makes her.” The publisher’s effusions in February 1844 become more com-
prehensible in view of two details. First, Sully had just completed a portrait
of Graham’s wife in 1842, and Sully’s successful execution of this portrait
likely accounts, in part, for Graham’s newly discovered interest in promot-
ing the work of American artists.27 Sully’s Register of Paintings records the
completion not only of portraits of Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Godey, but also
one of Mrs. Sartain, “for her relatives in England” during this time.28 Sully
clearly mixed socially in both artistic and publishing circles—his Journal
also records social visits from Godey, Eliza Leslie, Graham, Sartain, and Gra-
ham’s editor Rufus Griswold.29 Secondly, Sully was recognized (and largely
dismissed by art historians, as we saw in chapter 2) precisely for his ability
to paint flattering female portraits and fancy pictures. Sully’s abilities would
thus have suited Graham’s preference for images of idealized womanhood to
present his imagined gentlemen viewers.
Sully’s work clearly suited Godey as well. He published more engravings
of Sully’s paintings than he did of any other of these five artists, at least four
between 1845 and 1850: The Rose & The Lily, (September 1845); Miss Leslie
(January 1846); A Spring Flower (May 1848); and Bishop White (July 1850). The
Rose & The Lily is an example of a painting originally begun as a portrait that
is then presented to Godey’s readers as an idealized “fancy picture.” It is likely
a portrait of Sully’s daughters Blanche and Rosalie, and Sartain’s engraving
even replicates Sully’s initials and the date 1841 in the lower lefthand corner
(see fig. 6.1). In his register of paintings for 1842, Sully records “Blanche and
Rosalie in group,” with a price, but no buyer listed.30 The facial features of the
two girls pictured in The Rose & The Lily bear a strong resemblance to Sully’s
other daughter, Mary Chester Sully, who married the painter John Neagle.31
In addition, the 1845 exhibition catalogue of the Artists’ Fund Society lists as
item 139, “Rose and Lily—Specimen of Printing in Colours after Sully, owned
by L.A. Godey.” So while it is not clear that Godey owned the original portrait
of Blanche and Rosalie mentioned in Sully’s register from 1842, it does appear
that he had an engraving done from the painting, and printed in colors,
though the embellishment offered as the frontispiece for the September 1845
issue of Godey’s is an uncolored mezzotint engraved by Sartain. Thus, images
of idealized womanhood suited both Godey and Graham—Godey presenting
them to his imagined female readers as models to be admired and emulated,
Graham to his imagined male readers as objects for the male imaginary.
Emanuel Leutze is another Philadelphia painter favored by the periodical
publishers. Leutze was born in Germany but brought to America as a child.
During the early 1840s, he lived in Philadelphia on Sansom Street, known
at the time as Art Row because also living in the neighborhood were John
Neagle, John Sartain, Thomas Buchanan Read, Jacob Eichholtz, and Peter
Rothermel.32 In the “Our Artists” column on Leutze published in the October
1846 issue of the magazine, the reviewer Henry T. Tuckerman praises Leutze
for the “moral significance” of his paintings and for his “prophetic genius.”33
Noting that Leutze works largely on historical pictures, Tuckerman faults his
work for being overly melodramatic at times. Tuckerman also urges Leutze
to turn to American historical themes (which Leutze later did). Although fea-
turing him in Tuckerman’s work commissioned for the “Our Artists” column,
Godey does not appear to have commissioned engravings from any of Leu-
tze’s work.
132 COMP ET ING FOR AUDIE NC E S A N D OR IG IN A L A RT
FIGURE 6.1 The Rose & The Lily, frontispiece, Godey’s, September 1845. Engraved by Thomas B.
Welch, from a painting by Thomas Sully. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
However, both Charles Peterson and George Graham featured engrav-

ings from Leutze paintings. In July 1843 Peterson published Perilous Feat,
engraved by Sartain; Graham featured a gorgeous engraving by Sartain from
a Leutze painting entitled Child & Lute as the frontispiece for his January
1845 issue (see fig. 6.2). According to PAFA’s cumulative exhibition catalogue,
the original title of the Leutze painting was The first Music Lesson, and it was
owned by G. W. Snyder.34 The theme of the painting—the important role of
the mother in educating the male child—recurred frequently in Graham’s; a
number of embellishments and accompanying textual illustrations highlight
the importance of early education to the self-made man.35
George W. Conarroe was another leading member of the Philadelphia
artistic community. In addition to exhibiting dozens of paintings in the
1840s alone, he served on the board of directors of the Artists’ Fund Soci-
ety.36 Although none of the publishers apparently owned any of Conarroe’s
work, Godey featured an engraving of his painting Rosalie as the frontispiece
to his November 1843 issue. Graham featured an engraving of Little Nell in the
Storm as the frontispiece for his March 1844 issue, and Mirror of Life (said by
Graham to be based on a real-life portrait) as a line and stipple frontispiece to
his February 1849 issue.37 These fancy pictures and idealized female portraits
undoubtedly proved popular with Godey’s and Graham’s readers.
FIGURE 6.2 The Child and Lute, frontispiece, Graham’s, January 1845. Engraved expressly for
Graham’s Magazine by J. Sartain from the original picture by E. G. Leutze. Courtesy of the American
Antiquarian Society.
Peter Rothermel was also a favorite of the magazine publishers; his work
appeared in Graham’s, Godey’s, and Sartain’s Union.38 George Graham fea-
tured Rothermel’s Viola as his February 1844 frontispiece, as the second of
his promised paintings by Philadelphia artists. A fancy picture, Viola had
been shown at the Ninth Annual Exhibition of the Artists’ Fund Society that
year. Beneath the embellishment is the inscription, “Engraved Expressly for
Graham’s Magazine by Welch & Walter from the Original Painting by P.F.
Rothermel/From Bulwer’s Zanoni.” Viola was a popular character from Brit-
ish author Edward Bulwer Lytton’s 1842 novel, Zanoni, and a suitable subject
for the fancy picture Rothermel painted. While Graham did not own Viola, he
had evidently secured it on loan from the owner in arranging for the Welch &
Walter mezzotint.39 In presenting the engraving to his readers, Graham not
only capitalized on the popularity of Bulwer’s widely read novel, he also sup-
ported a fledgling American artist whose painting of Viola perfectly suited
Graham’s sense of his audience.
Louis Godey seems to have owned at least four paintings by Peter Rother-
mel. The PAFA catalogue lists two of them—The Filagree Worker and Mrs.
Shubrick protecting an American Soldier, while Godey featured a third, A Gift
from Heaven, as the frontispiece for his May 1850 issue, and another, The Last
Visit, as the cover for his August 1851 issue. A Gift from Heaven, a fancy pic-
ture, belongs in the genre of “pleasant peasant” images, and shows a couple
of modest means in an unadorned interior, with mother and child seated in
a Madonna-like pose, the bare-armed father standing behind. The Last Visit
represents the genre of the “vanishing Indian,” and shows an Indian maiden
visiting with her aging father on the plains, seated on a gnarled tree, a prairie
town with church and steeple visible in the background. Magazine engraving
subtitles indicate that Godey owned both original paintings.
Graham, Sartain and Godey also wrote about Rothermel in their coverage
of the arts. Graham contrasts Rothermel and Sully in his frothy paean to Sully
in his February 1844 issue; but Rothermel is more frequently compared with
Leutze. Sartain, in his “Notice of Arts and Artists” for June 1849, compares
Rothermel’s “steady onward progress” to Leutze’s sudden rise to eminence
around 1837. In a follow-up notice in his art column for August 1849, Sartain
situates Rothermel as a focal point for the editor’s condemnation of would-
be “connoisseurs.” Sartain claims that Rothermel prospered in spite of such
“self-styled lovers of art,” and he pronounces these connoisseurs “snakes in
the grass.” Although he does not specifically mention Godey (who owned
works by Rothermel), Sartain did feud openly with Godey at decade’s end.
Godey clearly admired Rothermel’s work, and he also used Rothermel’s
painting Heroic Women of America/The Rescue (see fig. 6.3) to launch a new
FIGURE 6.3 Heroic Women of America/The Rescue, frontispiece, Godey’s, January 1847. Engraved by
A. H. Ritchie expressly for Godey’s Lady’s Book from an Original Picture by Rothermel. Courtesy of
the American Antiquarian Society.
series in his magazine based on a work-in-progress by Mrs. E. F. Ellet titled

Heroic Women of the Revolution. The series continued throughout 1848, with
a few episodes appearing in 1850. At a time when Peterson’s and Graham’s
were featuring endless engravings of idealized women in dreamy and passive
poses (as did Godey), Godey also commissioned embellishments featuring
out-of-the-ordinary American women busy at the work of nation-building.40
This strategy was in keeping with his commitment to promoting all that was
instructional and inspirational for the “fair sex.”
Another example illustrating the contrast between Godey’s use of embel-
lishments on a given subject, and that of the other magazines can be seen in
his engravings depicting the lives of Native Americans. Tales of the “vanish-
ing Indian” were ubiquitous in the Philadelphia periodicals, and over a dozen
full-page engravings on Indian themes appeared in these magazines during
the 1840s. These images fall into three broad categories: historical, proto-eth-
nographic, and idealized. Most of the idealized images divide along gender
lines: those of Indian males replicate the “noble savage” motif, while those of
females typically feature erotically charged, semi-nude Indian maidens.41
Most of the proto-ethnographic images originated from two highly pub-
licized western expeditions: the 1832–34 expedition headed by the Prussian
explorer Prince Maximilian of Weid, which resulted in Travels in the Interior
of North America in the Years 1832–34; and the travels of Thomas L. McKenney,
chief of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, whose volume The History of the Indian
Tribes of North America provided several artists and engravers with work.42
Swiss painter Karl Bodmer (alternately written Carl or Charles) traveled
with Prince Maximilian, preparing most of the sketches for his publications,
while Philadelphia artist and illustrator F.O.C. Darley prepared many of the
sketches for McKenney’s work.
Graham’s, Peterson’s, and Sartain’s Union all featured full-page embellish-
ments of semi-nude Indian maidens that no doubt titillated middle-class
audiences. Peterson’s offered The Indian Fruit Seller for April 1843 and The For-
est Queen for November 1850, both full-page embellishments showing Indian
maidens nude from the waist up. Graham’s featured similar embellishments
with The Captives in February 1843 and The Chief ’s Daughter in February 1845.
Sartain featured a number of female nudes in 1849 (one source of his feud
with Godey), including one of the Indian queen Anacoana in The Death of Las
Casas (discussed in chapter 5) in June 1850.
Godey’s presentation of the romanticized Indian maid is far more sub-
dued, in keeping with his motto of offering to his “fair ladies” only that which
is “free from grossness and puerility” (“PUBLISHER’S NOTICES,” June 1840,
384).43 He offered The Indian Maid in November 1840 and The Last Visit in
August 1851 (by Rothermel, discussed previously). In the former, the figure
of the Indian is small and set against a landscape; the latter, as noted previ-
ously, shows a fully clothed female comforting her aging father, with signs of
the encroachment of civilization in the background. Another embellishment,
The Indian Captive, serves as the frontispiece to the November 1845 issue of
Godey’s. This engraving shows a white female settler seated on a horse in front
of an Indian warrior. The subtitle to the engraving reads, “Painted for Godey
by Darley and Engraved by [John G.] Chapman.” This painting is not listed
in the PAFA catalogue, suggesting that it had not been exhibited in Philadel-
phia, but rather was commissioned by Godey exclusively for his magazine.44
Graham’s featured by far the largest number of proto-ethnographic images
of Indians in this decade. Beginning in July 1844, George Graham promised
his readers a series of “Indian sketches,” and nearly a dozen appeared in 1844
and 1845. Most of these were engraved by the New York firm of Rawdon,
Wright, and Hatch (occasionally in business with James Smillie, who also
collaborated with Robert Hinshelwood during these years) from sketches by
Bodmer, although the firm engraved from Darley sketches as well.45 Most of
these engravings focus on male figures, and highlight distinctive dress and
tribal customs, like Hunting Buffalo (September 1844), Horse-Racing of Sioux
Indians (January 1845), Blackfoot Indians on Horseback (February 1845), Maen-
nitarri Warriors in the Costume of the Dog Dance (October 1845), and Dance
of the Mandan Indians (September 1850). Others highlight sites of Indian
encampments and unusual geological formations, such as Elkhorn Pyramid
(November 1844) and Cave-in-Rock (July 1844). Two engravings, Fort MacK-
enzie (November 1847; see fig. 6.4) and Dance of the Mandan Indians (Septem-
ber 1850), portray the male warriors in grotesque poses—the former depicts
an attack by Assinboins and Crows against the Black-Feet Indians camped
outside the fort; the latter depicts a Mandan post–battle victory dance.
Far fewer Graham’s images depict proto-ethnographic figures of female
Indians, but these differ substantially both from the images of male Indians
and from the eroticized images of idealized Indian maidens. “Real” female
Indians appear not to have offered erotic appeal for Graham’s presumed male
readers. A Skin Lodge of an Assinboin Chief (December 1847) depicts family
members, mostly male but one female and one child, in daily chores, while
Mandan Women (May 1847) focuses on the depiction of the women’s dress
and seems concerned primarily with ethnographic verisimilitude. The female
Indian depicted in Skin Lodge is too small to make out clearly, but the one
depicted in Mandan Women clearly lacks the markers of feminine beauty
FIGURE 6.4 Fort MacKenzie, frontispiece, Graham’s, November 1847. Drawn by Charles Bodmer,
engraved by Rawdon, Wright, Hatch, and Smillie.
typical of Graham’s other images of either idealized (white) womanhood or

eroticized (Indian) womanhood. Mandan Women seems to have served as a
pendant to Mandan Chief, published in January 1845. The textual illustration
of that earlier engraving dwells on the “vanity” of the Mandan men, observ-
ing, “A warrior, in adorning, takes more time for his toilet than the most
elegant Parisian belle.” Noting that warriors choose adornments that display
their exploits both on the battlefield and with the tribal ladies, the sketch
pronounces Mato-Topo, the particularly warrior featured in this engraving,
an “Indian dandy.” It is hard not to hear in this engraving’s textual illustration
a gentle admonition to Graham’s readers, both male and female, against the
excesses of “dandyism.”
In contrast to Godey’s, however, Graham’s depictions of eroticized Indian
females clearly pander to the male imaginary, with their suggestions of sexual
availability and Indian promiscuity.46 Louis Godey never offered to his readers
eroticized Indian maidens; nor will you find in his magazine images of Indian
savagery and grotesqueness such as Fort Mackenzie. Graham’s imagined dual
FIGURE 6.5 Domestic Life among the Indians, frontispiece, Godey’s, June 1845. Drawn by F. O. C.
Darley, engraved by Rolph & Jewitt, printed by Illman & Sons. Painted and Engraved expressly for
Godey’s Lady’s Magazine. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
audiences of both male and female readers likely explain the greater variety of
images of Native Americans featured in his magazine, compared to Godey’s.
The difference in audience address between Graham’s and Godey’s is per-
haps best exemplified by the final Indian embellishment and illustration
described here In Domestic Life Among the Indians, published by Godey in his
June 1845 issue (see fig. 6.5), an Indian warrior sits with his chin resting on
his hands, a look of resignation on his face. He watches his mate tend the
fire, a papoose on her back, with the family dog resting nearby. The warrior’s
posture of resignation likely would have been understood by the magazine’s
readers as a sign of the Indian’s acceptance of the ascendancy of the white
man, and the inevitable vanishing of his tribe’s culture. In the accompany-
ing text, the narrator (likely Hale, as she illustrated a good many engravings)
decries the stereotypical depiction of the “innocence and happiness of savage
life” predominating in the literature of the previous century. The narrator
continues, “The real forest life of the poor Indian is now known to be one
of hardship and suffering.”47 Adding that the lives of both male and female
Indians are “hard and sad,” the narrator discourages readers from feeling any
particular sympathy for the females of the tribe: “We think in savage as in civ-
ilized life, that woman always remains where the Creator first placed her—by
the side of man.” The narrator concludes, “we don’t expect readers to want to
leave civilization to join Indians on the basis of the plates given” (“Domestic
Life Among the Indians,” Godey’s, June 1845, 252).
In addition to dunning the romantic depiction of the “noble savage” typi-
cal of the “previous century,” Hale’s pointed quip seems to address the equally
idealized and romanticized engravings of Indians ubiquitous in Graham’s and
Peterson’s. Although both Graham and Godey featured proto-ethnographic
Indian-themed embellishments, and both showcased these plates in compet-
ing for readership, their choice of plates indicates subtle differences in their
imagined audiences. Graham featured the work of Bodmer, prepared initially
for McKenney’s work but tailored here to Graham’s readership. Meanwhile,
Godey commissioned Darley to prepare both Domestic Life Among the Indians
(June 1845) and The Indian Captive (November 1845) exclusively for use in his
magazine, and likely owned both paintings as well. George Graham featured
more images of Indians in his magazine than that of any other type, except,
perhaps, of idealized white womanhood. Godey featured only a very few, and
clearly tailored those chosen to highlight themes of domesticity and women’s
social influence—messages appropriate to his imagined female readers.
All four publishers sought uniquely American artwork in promoting their
magazines, collecting and presenting original American landscapes, historical
scenes, fancy pictures, idealized female portraits, and images of Native Amer-
icans. However, although all touted the importance of their magazines in
promoting American art and artists, at decade’s end, Godey and Sartain, in
particular, disagreed in the editorial spaces of their magazines about several
significant issues facing the young American art community. While they bat-
tled over these important issues, they also battled over embellishers.
7
“A Mezzotint in Every Number”
BAT TLING FOR EMBELLISHERS, BAT TLING OVER ART
When Godey promised his readers in May 1844 “a mezzotint in every num-
ber,” he had at his command all the best artists and engravers working in
Philadelphia. Just as the list of American painters featured in his magazine
argues for their inclusion in a comprehensive narrative of nineteenth-century
American art, Godey’s roll call of mezzotint and line engravers stands out as
a who’s who in the graphic arts at mid-century. Godey’s invocation of their
names in his editorial spaces indicates that if they were not already, these
engravers would soon be household names: John Sartain, Henry S. Sadd, Wil-
liam Warner, William Tucker, and Jacob D. Gross (mezzotinters); Joseph Ives
Pease, Thomas B. Welch, Adam B. Walter, Francis Humphreys, Archibald L.
Dick, and Joseph Gimbrede (line engravers). Yet again, with the exception of
Sartain, the importance of the work of these engravers to the popularization
and democratization of American art is all but missing from narratives of
nineteenth-century American art.1
Although by decade’s end the fiercest competition was between Sartain
and Godey, George Graham and Charles Peterson struggled to compete, each
developing a kind of niche market with specialty engravings. As noted in the
previous chapter, Graham featured over two dozen engravings taken from
sketches of the western expeditions of Thomas McKenney and Prince Maxi-
milian, executed by Karl Bodmer and F. O. C. Darley. The New York firm of
Rawdon, Wright, Hatch and (sometimes) Smillie engraved most of the Bodmer
and Darley sketches for Graham’s. This firm, comprised of the brothers Ralph
and Freeman Rawdon, Neziah Wright, George W. Hatch, and James Smillie,
executed dozens of engravings for Graham’s in the 1840s, and appears to have
engraved exclusively for his magazine in the Philadelphia market.2 They also
142
BAT T LIN G F OR E M B E L L I S H E R S, B AT T L I NG OV E R ART 143
FIGURE 7.1 The Sportsman, frontispiece, Graham’s, October 1847. Painted by J. F. Lewis, engraved by
A. L. Dick.
specialized in American landscape scenes, and engraved a great many scenes

originally drawn by William H. Bartlett and published in Nathaniel P. Willis’s
1840 publication, American Scenery.3
Graham also preferred the work of another prolific New York line engraver,
Archibald L. Dick. Dick engraved nearly a hundred plates for the Philadelphia
pictorials in the 1840s, and for several months during 1843 and 1844 Gra-
ham’s, Godey’s, and Peterson’s all featured plates executed by him. George Gra-
ham relied on Dick for landscape scenes (some, again, originally executed by
Bartlett), and for the “sportsman”-themed plates likely to appeal to Graham’s
gentlemen readers. Typical in this vein are Highland Sport (October 1843),
A Day in the Woods (December 1843), and The Sportsman (October 1847; see
fig. 7.1). Peterson also employed Dick for landscape scenes, but relied on him
as well for engravings of idealized women, such as The Swiss Girl (December
1843), Florence (July 1844), and Julia (November 1852).
Dick received the largest number of commissions from Godey, however,
executing over half of his Philadelphia magazine plates for Godey’s. He was a
144 BAT TL IN G FOR E MBE L L ISHE RS, BAT T LIN G OV E R A RT
versatile engraver. His work for Godey includes landscapes (Schuylkill Water
Works, September 1840; Niagara Falls, February 1841) and contrast plates
(Sickness and Health, January 1847; Gravity and Gaiety, April 1847). However,
he specialized in genre scenes. As the frontispiece to his May 1844 issue,
Godey featured May Day Morning, pronouncing it a “sweet rural picture, from
the burin of Dick, who is always successful in similar scenes” (“Editors’ Table,”
248). Other Dick engravings in this vein include The Stray Kitten (April 1841);
Family Devotion (May 1842); The First Ear Ring (June 1843); The Family Jewels
(August 1843); The Pastor’s Visit (April 1844); The Pic-Nic (June 1844); The Fair
Client (February 1846); and The Love Letter (August 1846), among others.
Another New York engraver, although little known today, Frederick Quarre
was discovered and promoted by Godey and went on to work for the other
Philadelphia pictorials as well.4 Quarre and his wife prepared lace pattern
work for Godey as early as 1839. In August 1839, Godey introduced a plate
by Quarre as “a specimen of Lace Drapery,” boasting that “a more beautiful
and appropriate ornament has never been published in the Book. The work is
of the finest kind, and the imitation is perfect” (“Editors’ Table,” 95). Quarre
published his own magazine, the Artist, in 1842; this is the magazine Charles
Peterson bought out in 1843 and combined with Lady’s World beginning with
the July 1843 issue. In the “Editors’ Table” that announces the merger, Peter-
son also announces that Quarre and Sartain will be “chiefly employed in illus-
trating the book” (191).
Like Peterson, George Graham also featured work by Quarre in the early
part of the decade. Peterson notes, in a puff for his November 1844 issue enti-
tled “A Brilliant Array,” that Quarre is known for his “brilliant illustrations in
color, such as bouquets, shell-work, lace, arabesque colored birds, & c.” (180).
Plate 8 is an example of a Quarre embellishment from Graham’s combining
colored lace work and hand-painted birds.
Once Peterson and Graham snapped up the services of Madame and Mon-
sieur Quarre, Godey turned to a Philadelphia engraver who specialized in sim-
ilar novelty embellishments, William Croome (discussed briefly in the intro-
duction). Although little known today, Croome was perhaps better known
to Godey’s lady readers than any other of his featured engravers, for it was
Croome who “Americanized” Godey’s fashion plates by redrawing the figures
free of the “tight-lacing” typical of French fashions.5 As Godey noted in intro-
ducing these new fashion plates in April 1843, “Formerly the proportions of
the figure were somewhat disregarded in exhibiting the dress; but since we
have obtained the valuable aid of Mr. Croome, the claims of good taste and
artistical [sic] fidelity in drawing the figure are fully recognized” (“Editors’
FIGURE 7.2 Mountain Airs and City Graces, frontispiece fashion plate, Godey’s October 1850.
Table,” 204). The popularity of these Americanized fashions and novelty gift
plates in Godey’s likely contributed to Croome’s status as a household name
at mid-decade.
By decade’s end, however, Godey’s “Paris Fashions Americanized” were
being prepared by two other engravers on Godey’s roll call: Joseph Ives Pease,
and Francis Humphreys. Pease worked first in Albany with his brother, Rich-
ard, before moving to Philadelphia.6 In addition to working as a line engraver,
he also exhibited watercolors and crayon portraits at PAFA in the late 1840s.7
However, he became better known to the reading public when he engraved all
the portraits for Thomas Buchanan Read’s 1849 anthology, The Female Poets
of America. Pease excelled at engraving the female countenance, as both his
portraits for Read’s anthology, and his thematized fashion plates for Godey’s
demonstrate. In 1850, he prepared two thematized fashion plates: Wedding
Costumes (March) and Mountain Airs and City Graces (October), in addition
to three additional hand-colored plates, The Flower Girl (July; presented in
Godey’s August “Chit-Chat” column as a fashion plate, 126), The Rose (Septem-
ber), and Evening Star (November).8 Godey seems to have had Pease in mind
in his debate with John Sartain over whether or not the fashion plates should
be treated as art (more on this dispute later in the chapter). Pease’s thema-
tized fashion plates, like the October 1850 Mountain Airs and City Graces (see
fig. 7.2), appear to have been extremely popular with Godey’s readers.9
Pease seams to have alternated monthly fashion plates with Humphreys
(not to be confused with William Humphreys, also a line engraver) and with
A. W. Graham, who, like Pease, also produced thematized fashion plates.
Graham engraved I Am Sorry You Can’t Go (April 1850), and The Train is Com-
ing (May 1850). Humphreys, like Croome, also executed line engravings for
Godey’s competitors as well at decade’s end.
Graham and Godey also competed for the services of line engraver William
E. Tucker. Tucker had engraved for the annuals in the 1830s, and he both drew
the designs and executed the engravings for title pages for both publishers’
magazines.10 In October 1848 Graham announced that Tucker was in Europe
at the publisher’s behest and “engaged to engrave exclusively for Graham’s”
(“Editor’s Table,” 240). However, by March 1850, Godey was boasting the same
thing, stating that he had sent Tucker to London “for the purpose of enlisting
the services of the best artists that could there be found . . . whatever expense
[may] attend the measure.” In August Godey noted that Tucker’s additional
charge is to secure a set of religious plates (March, 223; August, 188). Graham
long relied on Tucker to engrave his elaborate title pages, as did Godey (see
FIGURE 7.3 Godey’s 1848 Lady’s Book, title cover, January 1848. Designed and engraved by
William E. Tucker.
the particularly elaborate cover for Godey’s 1848 volume, fig. 7.3). The two
apparently competed fiercely for Tucker’s services between 1848 and 1850.
After boasting that he has secured Tucker’s services exclusively, two
months later Graham appears to have lost Tucker to Godey’s deeper pockets.
Graham grouses in his “Editor’s Table” about the “degrading of magazines
into picture-books for children,” and announces he will no longer attempt
to compete, but will offer his readers only the “most finished and elegant”
plates he can secure (December 1848, 366). Meanwhile, Godey boasts in
his November 1848 number, under a special heading entitled “WM. E.
TUCKER, Esq.”: “We have several plates in the hands of this gentleman,
one of which will appear in the January number, and another soon after.
We will say that no engraver in the United States can equal the effort of
this talented artist for the initial number of next year” (323). Tucker’s title
page is beautiful, and his frontispiece engraving for Graham’s January 1849
issue is particularly well executed. Entitled The Belle of the Opera, it is one
of a dozen images of idealized womanhood Graham’s featured in 1848 and
1849 alone. As noted previously, both Godey and Graham featured these
idealized portraits, but Graham relied on belles, brides, and coquettes,
while Godey preferred maternal figures.11 The next month Godey boasts
that he has “the two best line engravers” in the country in the persons of
“Messrs. Pease and Tucker.” Godey’s boast could easily have been intended
for Graham—clearly the two publishers each thought they had snagged
Tucker exclusively in 1848; but by that time, Godey was also locked in a
death struggle with Sartain.
While Godey and Graham fought over Tucker, Peterson maintained his
steady commitment to securing exquisite mezzotints for his magazine, rely-
ing primarily on Jacob D. Gross, a pupil of Sartain’s. Beginning in March
1847, with the tale “Agnes Courtenay” and an accompanying mezzotint of
the same title, Peterson announced, “We have found this new enterprise
of illustrating a continued story exceedingly popular” (“OUR MEZZO-
TINT,” 126). Peterson followed the same formula of commissioning a mez-
zotint to illustrate more than half a dozen other tales (though many were
not “continuing”).12 Gross engraved most of Peterson’s prized mezzotints,
but he engraved for Godey as well. In fact, Peterson sought out his services
almost exclusively after the appearance of a November 1846 Godey’s column
in which Godey declared his work superior to his master’s. Indeed, Gross’s
mezzotints for Peterson’s at least match Sartain’s: It is I, from the June 1849
issue of Peterson’s, is in the “pleasant peasant” vein, and is particularly well
executed (see fig. 7.4).13
FIGURE 7.4 It is I, frontispiece, Peterson’s, June 1849. Engraved by J. D. Gross.
BAT TLING OVER EMBELLISHERS, BAT TLING OVER “ART ”
The real feud at decade’s end was between Godey and Sartain. It appears
that the conflict began simmering in 1844, but broke out in earnest in 1846
over Godey’s approbation of the work of Jacob Gross, Sartain’s pupil. Once
Sartain purchased the Union in 1848 and relocated the magazine from New
York to Philadelphia, Godey found that Sartain was no longer a hireling, but a
competitor, particularly for the services of engravers. Sartain could lay claim
to their loyalties as a fellow engraver, while Godey wielded the power of his
larger purse strings. The battle spread to include competition over issues of
art. Using the art columns and editorial spaces of their corresponding maga-
zines, Godey and Sartain disputed several key issues also affecting the larger
Philadelphia art community at mid-century: the use of woodcuts for illus-
tration; the artistic merits of fashion plates; the female nude; and the role
of patrons and connoisseurs in evaluating art. By the early 1850s, only one
magazine would remain in business.14
While Godey had certainly mentioned the arts and artists in his editorial
spaces earlier in the decade, by way of “puffing” upcoming embellishments
purchased and executed exclusively for the magazine, he did not publish a
regular column on the arts until later in the decade. His editorial persona in
the early to mid-1840s establishes him as a patron of the arts, but not specifi-
cally as a connoisseur or critic. For example, a four-line notice in Godey’s pub-
lisher’s column for November 1840 notes that his “friend,” the artist Russell
Smith, has given him a landscape. Godey praises Russell’s work and thanks
him for the gift (240). In the same column, Godey inserts a two-line notice
of Catherwood’s Diorama and urges readers not to neglect the “splendid” view
of Jerusalem depicted therein (240). In the same column for November 1841,
Godey notes that the engraving The Wreck is taken from an “original” picture
painted by John G. Chapman exclusively for “the Publisher” (240).
Beginning in 1844, however, Godey begins to feature extended notices on
the arts, although initially it is not clear who is contributing these articles.
A clue to Godey’s shift from patron of the arts to publisher of art criticism
appears in a January 1844 notice in the “Editor’s Book Table.” Godey typically
used this space to review newly released books, or to notice other newspa-
pers, magazines, or gift-books. In the January 1844 column, he notes, “We
hear that our friend Sartain, the artist, has the chief direction of the literary
as well as the artistical [sic] department of Campbell’s semi-monthly Maga-
zine.” While praising Sartain’s “taste,” Godey mentions that Campbell’s fea-
tures only literary reprints from recent British magazines; hence Sartain is
praised merely for his “judicious selection” of the material copied into Camp-
bell’s.15 Sartain’s foray into magazine publishing apparently prompted Godey
to reconsider his commitment to art criticism: if an artist could publish a
magazine, perhaps a publisher who patronized the arts ought also to provide
criticism of the arts?
A half-year later, in the August 1844 issue, Godey features his first extended
column of art criticism. The “Editors’ Table” opens with a defense of the
magazine’s entry into this field: “The encouragement of the fine arts, more
particularly those of drawing, engraving and painting, must, in our country,
depend very much on female influence.” The column continues by noting that
the Lady’s Book led support of American arts and artists by featuring “engrav-
ings of the first merit.” Godey takes credit also for “improving the taste for
this delightful art,” noting that under the influence of Godey’s, other maga-
zines followed suit in seeking to publish the finest engravings and notices of
the arts (95).
To “corroborate” his own opinion of the importance of cultivating a “taste”
for the arts of drawing, engraving, and painting by offering a critique of these
arts, Godey then offers his first column of art criticism, a review of the annual
exhibition of the National Academy of Design. Although Godey does not iden-
tify the author of the review, he notes that it was solicited from “a gentleman
of New York, who has enjoyed great advantages of foreign travel and personal
acquaintance with our best artists, both at home and abroad” (95).
It seems very likely that this exhibition review, and many other art col-
umns published in Godey’s in the second half of the decade, were written by
Henry T. Tuckerman. As art historian David B. Dearinger has noted, Ameri-
can art criticism was still in its infancy in the 1840s.16 Tuckerman, a versatile
contributor to the periodicals, published one of the first “histories” of Ameri-
can art in 1847, Artist Life, or Sketches of the American Painters.17 What has
not been previously recognized is that many of these biographical sketches
originally appeared, unsigned, in Godey’s, beginning with a selection on Dan-
iel Huntington in August 1846. In a sly note in the January 1848 editorial
space, Godey observes: “We perceive that the press in general are praising Mr.
Tuckerman’s book upon the artists of America. It does not seem to be gener-
ally known that most of the articles in it, if not all, were originally published
in the Lady’s Book” (72).
While the biographical sketches of the artists in Godey’s are easy to iden-
tify as the work of Tuckerman, other Godey’s art columns prove more elu-
sive to authenticate. “Visits to the Painters,” published in December 1844,
carries the byline “by an amateur.” Since the column focuses primarily on
Philadelphia artists (Tuckerman lived in New York from 1845 on) and men-
tions “frequent” visits, both to the artists and to Godey’s own residence, it
seems unlikely that Tuckerman authored this column. One possible source
is Joseph Sill, a member of the Amateurs and Artists Association in Philadel-
phia, who records in his diary numerous visits to the Philadelphia painters
during these years, and records that artist James Reid Lambdin asked him to
write notices for the papers on upcoming Artists’ Fund exhibitions.18
By mid-1846, Godey was alternating the “Our Artists” column (contributed
anonymously by Tuckerman) with a new column formally titled, “Notices of
the Fine Arts.” The column featured a decorative woodcut heading represent-
ing popular artistic symbols—a painter’s palette and easel, books, canvases,
busts, and framed paintings. Some columns announced upcoming exhibitions
and works-in-progress; others covered Philadelphia area art happenings, like
the opening of the “life school” at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Some were devoted to specific genres, like engraving (January 1848) and bank
note engraving (February 1848). Only one of these columns carries Tucker-
man’s byline (November 1847); one, devoted to wood engraving, bears the
mysterious initials “C. T. H.” (August 1847).
Although Sartain appears to be still engraving for Godey at this time—a
September 1846 plate “View on the Delaware Opposite Philadelphia notes that
it was engraved by Sartain from an original by J. Hamilton—by November it
is clear that a rift has occurred between the two. Whereas Sartain once vir-
tually monopolized the mezzotint work in Philadelphia, a generation of his
pupils were now coming into their own, and placing their work in venues pre-
viously serviced by Sartain. New mezzotinters emerged as well. The Novem-
ber 1846 issue of Godey’s features a frontispiece Beneficence of Washington,
engraved by Gross, and in the “Editors’ Table,” Godey has this to say about his
mezzotints:
Our plates this month are both grave and gay. The mezzotint by Gross
is equal to anything ever done by Sartain—indeed, Mr. G. was his pupil,
and bids fair to outstrip his tutor. Upon the subject of mezzotints, we
may remark that everything depends upon the printing. Our subscribers
may remember the plate “A View on the Delaware,” published in our Sep-
tember number. The plate, although engraved by Mr. Sartain, was printed
by Mr. John Butler, of this city; hence its great beauty. (240)
Godey’s comments slur Sartain on two counts: first, the publisher pronounces
Sartain’s pupil’s work as equal to Sartain’s and predicts that Gross will surpass
FIGURE 7.5 The Lost Glove, frontispiece, The Union, April 1848. Designed by T. H. Matteson,
the master; second he credits the beauty of the plate A View on the Delaware
not to Sartain’s engraving, but to Butler’s printing. Since Sartain generally
engaged his own printer to print his mezzotints, it appears that this is not
part of the business arrangement with Godey.19
Godey’s apparent demoting of Sartain’s talent may have contributed to
the mezzotinter’s decision to take on ownership of his own magazine. When
he moved the illustrated monthly to Philadelphia in 1848, he rechristened it
Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art. Godey found himself compet-
ing not only with Graham and Peterson for mezzotinters, but with Sartain—
and he had lost the services of the accomplished engraver as well. Godey may
well have feared that other engravers sympathetic to Sartain’s efforts to pub-
lish his own illustrated magazine might defect to Sartain and leave Godey
scrambling for embellishers.
Sartain immediately brought one former Godey’s engraver with him in his
new venture: Henry S. Sadd. Like Sartain, Sadd had learned the art of mez-
zotint engraving in England, and had immigrated to America in 1840. He had
engraved for the former art director of the Union magazine, Tompkins H. Mat-
teson, in New York. A prolific engraver, Sadd executed nearly three dozen plates
for these pictorials alone in the 1840s, including Taking the Advantage and Steps
to Ruin, discussed previously. His engraving of Matteson’s The Lost Glove is one
of the few images of African Americans in these magazines in this decade, and
is in the vein of the happy minstrel figure (see fig. 7.5).20 Although the engrav-
ing depicts the diminutive African American servant with slightly caricatured
features, the accompanying textual illustration explicitly pokes fun not at the
servant, but at the aging dandy who accuses the servant of misplacing a glove,
when in fact the dandy has left it atop his head after removing his hat.
Taking notice of Sartain’s snagging of Sadd in his “Notices of the Fine
Arts” column for January 1848, Godey (or one of his stand-ins) sniffs at the
“murky mantle of mezzotinted mediocrity” emerging from the pages of his
new competitor’s magazine. An elaborate verbal pun begins with a denuncia-
tion of “SARTAIN SADD ‘scrapers’ of steel and copper. . . .” The author contin-
ues with other pronouncements about the work of engravers John and Seth
Cheney and James Smillie. The editorial concludes: “For the rest of the graver
brotherhood, the Ellises, Kellys, Neagles, Peltons, Balches and other fashion-
able names of the day, we are at a loss to know upon what ground they found
admirers, or in what line they could justly be said to stand high?” (Godey’s,
January 1848, 61).
The pronouncement against “SARTAIN SADD ‘scrapers,’” possibly writ-
ten by Tuckerman but certainly with Godey’s tacit approval, undoubtedly
heightened tensions between Godey and Sartain. Evidently, Sadd was not
the only mezzotint engraver Sartain sought to steal away from Godey. In his
April 1848 “Editor’s Book Table,” in a special column titled “OUR MEZZO-
TINT ARTIST,” Godey writes: “Offers have been made to the gentleman who
is engaged exclusively by us for this department, to engage his services for
another establishment, but he was not to be bought. Fear of his great success
has lead [sic] to this step. He is pronounced the best engraver in mezzotint
now in this country” (251). Godey likely refers here to William Warner. How-
ever, he could just as easily be referring either to Thomas B. Welch or Adam
B. Walter. Walter was Welch’s pupil and they formed a business partnership
early in the decade, executing many plates for Godey’s.21 In fact, The Bud and
the Blossom (discussed in chapter 5) and Viola (discussed in chapter 6) are
Welch and Walter creations.
Although Welch took on work under his own name in 1847, in his “Edi-
tors’ Book Table” for November 1848, Godey announces upcoming work
by the duo. In another column devoted to “OUR MEZZOTINT ARTISTS,”
Godey announces: “Mr. Walter and Mr. Welch are both busily engaged in the
pictorial department of this work . . . Messrs. W. & W. are artists, and pro-
duce plates that will bear examination. They are considered here in Philadel-
phia as pre-eminent among mezzotint engravers.” A month later he boasts
of this duo, “We have the two best mezzotint engravers in America, Messrs.
Welch and Walter.” This boast clearly challenges Sartain’s long-held suprem-
acy as the country’s premier mezzotinter. Godey ends his editor’s column
for November 1848 on an ominous note, announcing that his next issue will
include an article on mezzotint engraving to answer the claims of another
article recently published.
The promised column appeared a month late—in January 1849—and
indicated that there was more at stake than Godey’s loss of a mezzotinter.
Whether authored by Tuckerman or someone else, the column specifically
addresses claims made in an April 1848 article published in The Nineteenth
Century, edited by Rev. C. C. Burr. The article pronounced Sartain “the father
of mezzotinto engraving in this country,” claiming he remained “the master.”
Godey’s column takes exception to this pronouncement, and draws on evi-
dence from a variety of sources to argue that mezzotint had been successfully
executed long before Sartain arrived. Of his work, the column notes: “Mr.
Sartain has made some elegant pictures, but he has made many more that
even inferior artists would not suffer to go into the world with their names
attached. His art seems to us to be to him merely the means of pecuniary
advancement. . . .” Clearly at stake is the role of the graphic arts and graphic
artists—is the engraver “inspired” as is the canvas painter, or does he ply

the burin as a trade? Godey’s column suggests the graphic arts could be “art”
or they could be “trade,” but not both; or, at the very least, that an engraver
degrades himself by engraving merely for money.
The column continues by pronouncing the late William Warner as “far
exceeding Sartain in the quality of his mezzotints,” claiming, “The last two or
three engravings executed by Mr. Warner before his decease were the most
exquisite gems that ever came from a burin” (“Editor’s Table,” 69). Warner,
dying young, seems to have met Godey’s ideal of the “inspired genius” (by vir-
tue of dying young?). Godey appears to have published three mezzotints by
Warner in 1848: Happy Hours, as the frontispiece for the January 1848 issue;
Lobster Sauce for March 1848; and Widow’s Hope for the April 1848 issue. Lob-
ster Sauce is a humorous (and somewhat ghastly) piece showing a ferocious
cat looming over a dead fish with fang and claw bared. Happy Hours is in the
“pleasant peasant” genre and shows a young girl frolicking with a pet lamb
at her side. Widow’s Hope captures the kind of intimate domestic scene of
mother and child for which Godey’s was best known. Warner also painted, and
exhibited a dozen paintings, mostly portraits and fancy pictures, before his
death in 1848.22
In fact, Warner was one of the rare artists who not only painted but
engraved directly from his own work. Although Godey attempted to set up
Warner as a foil to Sartain, they were actually more alike than not. Both
painted. Both engraved. Moreover, it is likely that in securing Warner’s work,
Godey worked to his own pecuniary advantage as well, since Warner served as
both artist and engraver for his work published in Godey’s. It seems unlikely
that Godey acknowledged, or even recognized, the irony in his pronounce-
ments about Warner and Sartain.
Sartain’s response to Godey’s critique, when it came, was decidedly muted.
In the June 1849 issue of Sartain’s Union, an editorial signed by Professor Hart
(then co-editor with Caroline Kirkland) announced the increase in circulation
from 7,000 to 20,000 in six months under Sartain ownership.23 The editorial
continues: “Our object, however, has been, not to put other Magazines down,
but to establish our own. It is not the belief of any one connected with Sar-
tain’s Magazine, either as editor or proprietor, that its success depends upon
the rise or fall of others, but upon its own independent course.”
Though Sartain declined, at this point, to fire back editorially to defend
his own artistry, he indicated his intent to continue competing with Godey
to produce innovative and high-quality art for his magazine. His August 1849
issue featured an embellishment titled The Serenade, an example of “Block
Printing in Colours,” which the “Arts and Artists” column pronounced as

“a specimen of art yet new in this country.” The column explains that the
embellishment was produced by a series of successive impressions on paper
taken from six engraved blocks of wood, and notes that this method is less
cumbersome than working from stone. This apparently incited Godey’s ire on
yet another issue—whether or not printing in colors from wood blocks could
compete with printing in colors from stone. Godey preferred using stones
(lithography); Sartain clearly championed using wood for colored plates.
Godey and Sartain also sparred over the use of woodcuts, usually smaller
illustrations done on wood, used to accompany sketches and tales. Godey
denigrated all printing from wood as “cheap.” Sartain considered woodcuts
“economical” and efficient, arguing that they were the method best suited for
producing a series of illustrations to accompany a longer tale (“TO THE PUB-
LIC,” September 1849).24 In addition, Godey only declared them “cheap” after
bragging he had been the “first” to introduce the practice in 1848 by engag-
ing William Croome to illustrate a series of sketches penned by T. S. Arthur
(Godey’s, December 1848, 393). Godey clearly wanted to have it both ways in
this debate.
On the question of the fashion plates: Godey considered them works of
art, while Sartain dismissed them as merely utilitarian. For April 1850, Godey
featured a fashion plate colored using aqua tint. His “Editors’ Book Table” for
the same issue includes a special notice “OUR FASHION PLATES.” He argues,
“The fashions published in our February and March numbers have never been
surpassed by any ever published in France.” He goes beyond this boasting to
proclaim, “For beauty of engraving and elegant coloring, they may be called
embellishments.” Sartain’s answer, coming five months later in September,
was decisive. In a full-page address titled “TO THE PUBLIC” attached to the
back of his magazine, Sartain addresses, among other topics, the question
of fashion plates. He asks his readers if they would imagine encountering
a fashion plate on the wall of an art gallery. If the answer is “yes,” then the
plates should be considered works of art. If “No,” as Sartain insists, then art
they are not.
Godey also objected to the publication of images of the female nude. In
his “Prospectus” for 1850, published at the end of his January issue, Godey
strenuously objects to what he calls the “vulgar ‘model artist’ engravings” a
“competitor” ran in 1849.25 Sartain featured a series of these images in 1849,
clearly based on the European tradition of the female nude. He published
Undine in the March issue; La Esmerelda in April; Snake in the Grass in October
(discussed in chapter 5); and The Fountain of Vaucluse in November. While the
nude had made inroads in gallery exhibitions, its inclusion in an illustrated

middle-class magazine set off this furor between Sartain and Godey.
If Sartain refrained from defending himself as an artist and engraver pub-
licly, he withholds little in a critique of the “art connoisseur” that does every-
thing but name Godey as the subject of ridicule. Another column in the same
August 1849 issue, titled “CONNOISSEURDOM” and signed with the initials
“J.S.,” Sartain takes a swipe at the “lovers of the fine arts.” He describes how
they while away their leisure hours in the public galleries critiquing the work
of artists (presumably while the artists are hard at work in their studios).
He criticizes these folks for asserting that only the “amateur and the con-
noisseur” can judge what is “good in art,” and claims they are like sheep—
afraid of making a purchase until their choice has been judged admirable by
those who know little more than they do. While he names no one directly, it
is likely he had Godey in mind, particularly in view of their ongoing editorial
disputations.
While Sartain defended his magazine publicly, privately he expressed his
extreme anxiety at the competition he felt from both Godey’s and Graham’s.
In a letter to his son Samuel, then in London, dated June 4, 1850, he urges
Samuel to buy some “quality plates,” noting that “Graham has come out strong
in his July number,” and that Godey and Graham have purchased some inex-
pensive but “choice” plates left over from the publications of Charles Heath,
a London dealer. He warns Samuel, “Thus you perceive that there is consider-
able danger that the éclat we had may pass over to Graham and our exertions
must be well directed for the balance of this year from September.”26
Even while Sartain fretted about Godey’s and Graham’s purchases of Eng-
lish plates, Godey was busy playing the “exclusively American” trump card. In
July 1850, he promised his readers, “In the course of a little while, we shall
be enabled to publish in the Lady’s Book plates designed and engraved by
American artists only, relying no longer upon English engravings to illustrate
an American book” (“Editors’ Book Table,” 61). Godey no doubt realized that
his “new” American plates would be ready just as Sartain would be rolling out
Samuel’s newly acquired, but used, English plates.
Indeed, it would appear that Godey, Peterson, and Graham decided to close
ranks against Sartain at decade’s end, for just as Sartain secured European
plates and British writers, all three published notices in their editorial spaces
decrying the practice of relying on foreign contributions to American maga-
zines. In his January 1850 “Editors’ Table: Chit-Chat with Readers,” Peterson
brags that his magazine is “not only a lady’s magazine, but a national one also
. . . thoroughly and consistently American” (70). Later in the same column, he
claims that a letter from an American author indicates that, while he looks
forward to an occasional piece from a foreign author (the letter writer spe-
cifically names Fredrika Bremer and William and Mary Howitt, all of whom
Sartain had solicited to contribute to his magazine in 1849–50), the author
considered it “out of place, in toto.” Peterson indicates his decision henceforth
to publish only American authors, and this pronouncement seems a pointed
critique of Sartain. Godey boasts in December 1850, “We cannot forget that
we are American born,” another dig at Sartain, who had emigrated from Eng-
land (“Editors’ Book Table,” 386). Likewise, Graham pointed out in his Feb-
ruary 1850 editorial column that he and Godey had led the way in paying
liberally for the work of American writers, and gradually shunning the work
of British writers (88)—an announcement that comes precisely at the time
that Sartain is featuring contributions by Bremer and the Howitts.
Regardless of whom we might judge to have “won” these artistic debates,
Godey simply was able to outspend Sartain on his embellishments, and
Godey knew that well enough to publish to his readers his anticipated outlay
for 1851. In a full-page “Prospectus” for the new volume appended to the rear
of the October 1850 issue, Godey lists over eighty plates, including work by
all the well-known artists and engravers, for which he claims to be spending a
staggering $50,000. Sartain’s Union limped along through 1851 but the finan-
cial misdeeds of Sartain’s partner sank the engraver’s financial ship. By that
time, Godey’s, Graham’s, and Peterson’s had tougher competition to contend
with in the market for engraved art reproductions, and it was not to be found
in the City of Brotherly Love.
8
Conclusion
THE ASCENDANCY OF NEW YORK, AND MARKE T STRATIFICATION
As early as January 1844, George Graham looked nervously to the New York
publishing houses. In a January 1844 “Review of New Books” column, he
swooned over the “swarm of new works” coming out of the “prolific press of
the Harpers” (46). In 1848 Charles Peterson also wondered what the broth-
ers would be up to next. As a new decade dawned, new forms of competi-
tion arrived on the art reproduction scene, threatening the supremacy of the
Philadelphia pictorials, and one from the very source Graham and Peterson
most feared: in June 1850 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine made its debut
(Mott, II, 383).
The remaining Philadelphia pictorials circled the wagons by repeating the
assertion that they were truly “American.” Graham, apparently the most ner-
vous about his New York publishing brethren, attempted to dismiss Harper’s,
sneering in his “Editor’s Table” for March 1851 that it was a good “foreign
magazine” because it featured European writers, not American ones (280).
Graham had good reason to fret, since his was a decidedly more literary maga-
zine like Harper’s. Godey remained noticeably silent on the matter; evidently,
as the publisher of the leading “ladies” magazine, he feared little direct com-
petition from Harper’s, at least in terms of his primary audience.
Godey faced competition from another corner, and notice of this new
threat surfaced in the pages of his magazine in 1849. Godey spent the decade
of the 1840s tirelessly promoting the work of American artists and engrav-
ers, most of them Philadelphia artists and engravers. By decade’s end, their
names were like familiar friends to the 100,000 readers regularly buying his
magazine and clipping out his full-page embellishments. However, a singular
engraving featured in his August 1849 presaged change. The mezzotint was
160
FIGURE 8.1 Taking the Queue, frontispiece, Godey’s, August 1849. Engraved by H. S. Wagner for
Godey’s. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
162 THE ASCENDANC Y OF NE W YORK, AND MARKET STR ATIFIC ATION
engraved by Henry S. Wagner, a portrait engraver active in Philadelphia in

the 1840s and 1850s.1 Titled Taking the Queue, the engraving is a curious blend
of the anachronistic and the new (see fig. 8.1). The bewigged male slumberer
harks back to paintings of an earlier era. The verbally punning title (queue/
hair braid; queue/cue), the playful kittens, the kitchen interior, everything
right down to the clothing and hair style on the superintending domestic
matron, all scream “Lilly Martin Spencer.”
Although Godey does not identify this engraving as originating from a
Spencer painting, or as a portrait of Spencer, and although no Spencer paint-
ing by this title is known to exist, the visual evidence is certainly suggestive of
Spencer’s work from this era. Lilly Martin Spencer relocated from Cincinnati
to New York by late 1848, and Sartain had taken notice of her work in his arts
column for January 1849. She exhibited a painting, Domestic Happiness, or
Hush! Don’t Wake Them in Philadelphia in 1849.2 Sartain later featured a bio-
graphical sketch of Spencer in his August 1851 issue (152–54), accompanied
by a crude woodcut portrait of the artist. The biographical sketch notes that
she had recently exhibited two paintings at the Philadelphia Art Union, The
Flower Girl and Domestic Felicity, that had “attracted considerable attention”
from viewers.
Regardless of whether or not Taking the Queue is an echo of a lost Spencer
work, from historical hindsight, the presence of this image in Godey’s late
in the decade of the 1840s inadvertently advertised the shift in cultural and
artistic influence that would be clearly under way by the early 1850s. Taking
the Queue puns verbally on another Lilly Martin Spencer connection to the
shifting cultural tides that Godey noted in his pages in 1849—by the mid-
1850s Spencer would be “taking the cue” from other struggling New York art-
ists, and selling her canvases to the French firm of Goupil, Vibert & Co. for
print distribution. As Spencer scholar April Masten has noted, Spencer sold
dozens of paintings to the firm in the 1850s, and this firm distributed nearly
one million prints of her paintings in the 1850s.3
Godey had fumed about Goupil and company’s invasion of the New York
art market in a column entitled “AMERICAN ART-UNION, NEW YORK” in
December 1849 (468). Godey charged that the French firm, “by studied effron-
tery and erroneous statements,” had been trying to establish themselves in
competition to the American Art-Union as an “International Art Union.”
Godey charged that the French firm, clearly a commercial business and not a
promoter of American art, had taken advantage of the “general taste for Fine
Art, which [the American Art-Union] had created and fostered for the last
ten years,” merely “for the purpose of increasing their business and disposing
THE ASCENDANC Y OF NE W YORK, AND MARKET STR ATIFIC ATION 163
in this country of a large collection of pictures, which cannot be sold to good

advantage in their own.” Godey further pointed out that all the engravings
were made in France, all the pictures [at that time, at least] of French origin,
and all the workmen employed by their firm also French. “The whole affair is
under the supervision and control of Frenchmen in Paris,” Godey raged.
As both loyal supporter of the art-union movement and proud publisher
of original American artwork, Godey loudly protested the efforts of outsiders
to corner the market for the inexpensive distribution of art engravings. How-
ever, his indignant indictment of the French firm would do little to stem the
tide of popularity for cheap prints of American art. Nor would Godey’s efforts
restore the Philadelphia pictorials to their former position of eminence as
the leading distributors of American art reproductions. By the mid-1850s not
only Goupil and company, but also a new group of American printmakers, like
Currier & Ives, would garner the lion’s share of the market for inexpensive
American art prints, and realize single-print circulations Godey could never
have imagined.4
The end of the 1840s did not herald the demise of all of the Philadelphia
pictorials, although it did mark the shift in the center for artistic produc-
tion from Philadelphia to New York, and secondarily, to Boston. Although
Sartain’s Union folded in 1852 and Graham’s in 1858, Godey’s and Peterson’s
steamed ahead, both continuing publication until 1898.5 Thus it would be an
oversimplification to argue that Goupil, Vibert & Company, Currier & Ives,
and other distributors of art prints replaced or displaced the illustrated mag-
azines. Rather, it would appear that what was at work was increased market
stratification, driven by market demand. By the mid-1850s readers of modest
means could choose to purchase engraved matter from a range of sources:
$1.00/year Boston monthlies that relied heavily on recycled steel-engraved
plates and woodcut engravings; $3.00/year Philadelphia pictorials, with their
range of mezzotints, woodcut and steel engravings, and lithographs; and
hand-colored lithographic prints circulated by both Goupil, Vibert & Com-
pany and Currier & Ives.6
Each of these distribution sites appear to have serviced slightly differ-
ent markets, in terms of class and gender (although, clearly, largely white,
and predominantly middle-class). The dollar monthlies likely appealed to a
middle-class audience of more modest means, and possibly to an audience of
pious working-class readers (many of the dollar monthlies espoused a com-
mitment to a mission of religious and moral uplift). The Philadelphia pictori-
als and their imitators, at $2.00 to $3.00 annual subscription, likely targeted
a predominantly middle-class audience. By virtue of their wider geographic
penetration into smaller towns that may not have supported a vendor spe-
cializing in single-print sales (like a bookseller), these magazines reached a
larger audience than that of the art-unions, whose influence was clearly on
the decline after the collapse of the American Art-Union in 1852.7 Additionally,
the $5.00 annual subscription fee assessed by most of the art-unions likely
indicates an audience of relatively well-to-do middle- to upper-class readers.
Yet, even at its peak, the American Art-Union topped out at just under 19,000
members—at a time when Godey boasted print runs nearly three times
that number. Moreover, the larger size and higher expense of the art-union
engravings, compared to those circulated in the magazines, indicates that art-
union members could be expected to afford the additional expense of a frame
before mounting an engraving on a parlor wall for display.
If we assume that the New York firms of Goupil, Vibert & Co. and Currier
& Ives, filled the gap vacated by the art-unions in circulating higher-quality
art engravings generally of a larger size than that provided by the illustrated
monthlies, we still see evidence in these three distribution sites of market
differentiation based on gender and subject matter. Most of the 2,000+ paint-
ings purchased by the American Art-Union illustrated American scenes, pre-
dominantly of male subjects engaged in public-sphere activities, though the
art-union eschewed the genre of the individual portrait of the great man.8
Art-union managers chose only one to two paintings per year for engraving
and distribution to subscribers (rather than the dozens of engravings avail-
able in the periodicals); the remainder could be seen at art-union exhibitions
staged in New York during the year. Goupil, Vibert & Co. initially seem to
have engraved and distributed the work of Continental artists, although
when they did turn to American art, they preferred to purchase canvases of
well-known American artists, like Lilly Martin Spencer.9 Meanwhile, Cur-
rier & Ives relied on producing lithographs designed by their own in-house
artists, and rarely purchased paintings from the leading artists of the day.
Moreover, while the art-unions favored masculine, public-sphere scenes and
sported a largely male subscription base, Currier & Ives favored idealized,
often romanticized subjects that targeted largely white, middle-class women
living in cities and larger towns.10
Godey’s and Peterson’s continued to thrive, in spite of increased competi-
tion from these print purveyors, largely because these magazines delivered
more than merely art reproductions to their devoted readers. Both publish-
ers continued to feature popular literary content, and both also diversified
their embellishment offerings. By the late 1850s a typical issue of Godey’s
contained twelve pages of front matter, including fine art engravings, prized
FIGURE 8.2 Burial of De Soto in the Mississippi, frontispiece Sartain’s, October 1851. Engraved
by J. Sartain from an original Drawing by Jas. Hamilton. Discovered in the scrapbook of the
Pennsylvania Old Guard State Fencibles. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives.
steel-engraved fashion plates, woodcut engravings of additional fashions for

women and children, and pattern work, as well as numerous woodcut engrav-
ings illustrating the contents throughout.
With the demise of Sartain’s Union Magazine in 1852 and Graham’s Maga-
zine in 1858, it would appear that Godey’s formula of offering his “fair read-
ers” a predictable diet of fine engravings, fashions, pattern work, light fiction,
poetry, sketches, and essays won out over the efforts of Sartain and Graham
to target mixed-gendered audiences with a more volatile mix of articles and
engravings. Certainly, Godey proved to be the more astute businessman, and
Peterson, riding on the popularity of Godey’s coattails with his cheaper $2.00
ladies’ magazine, appears also to have benefited from the Godey formula and
his own good business sense. Additionally, it would appear that the novelty
embellishments featured by publisher Morton McMichael in Miss Leslie’s
Magazine in the pivotal year of 1843 proved too expensive to produce to sus-
tain an audience of moderate means—and this despite McMichael’s spirited
efforts to link consumption of his magazine both to support for America’s
ingenuity in the mechanical arts, and to aspirations of upward social mobil-
ity. Other indicators, like the huge success of Harper’s Monthly, a magazine
targeting a largely masculine, cosmopolitan audience, suggest increased mar-
ket differentiation divided along gender lines, certainly by the mid-1850s.11
Yet, evidence indicating how individual subscribers actually used these
magazines, and particularly the embellishments, while certainly more elusive,
suggests a more complex picture. We know that Civil War soldiers requested
copies of Godey’s at the front lines, so clearly Godey’s formula, while targeting
primarily women, appealed to male readers as well (Mott, I, 590). Americans
prized their art prints, and wills and estate listings indicated that they passed
along these prized markers of middle-class status to their heirs.12 Moreover,
what to make of this Sartain’s engraving (see fig. 8.2), sporting barely per-
ceptible pinholes in each corner, found pasted on the page of one of a half-
dozen scrapbooks compiled by The Old Guard State Fencibles, a military mili-
tia group dating to 1813 and headquartered in Philadelphia? Page after page
of the scrapbooks chart the military and social life of the organization from
1831 through 1880, with similar engravings, newspaper clippings, admission
tickets to balls, dinners, and other social events, and the like.
This engraving, like many in the scrapbook, demonstrates evidence that
it once graced a wall somewhere. The question is, Where? the State Fencibles
meeting chambers? the stable of one of the officers or militiamen? the mod-
est parlor of a militiaman’s wife? Absent corroborating evidence, it is difficult
to determine. Yet, the scrapbook compiler clearly thought highly enough of
this engraving entitled Burial of De Soto in the Mississippi to remove it from
Sartain’s Magazine, pin it up, and then to include in his/her compilation of
ephemera documenting the activities of the militia group.13 Sartain’s Maga-
zine may have folded, but engravings like this survived, in scrapbooks, on
parlor walls, in estate holdings passed down to survivors. Evidence like this,
and like that of personalized bound volumes of these magazines found in
libraries and archives (and now bought and sold on the Internet), points to
the lingering significance of these Philadelphia magazines to the history of
American art and print culture.
By the early 1850s, Philadelphia’s era of dominance, in both the art and
publishing arenas, had passed. What the illustrated gift books had done to
distribute and democratize American art in the 1830s, the Philadelphia pic-
torials continued in the decade of the 1840s. By the mid-1850s, however, New
York rose to prominence as the undisputed artistic and publishing center of

the nation. Meanwhile, in terms of sheer numbers, it appears that the bulk of
the distribution of high-quality art engravings shifted largely to single-print
distributors like Goupil, Vibert & Company and Currier & Ives. However, for
the decade of the 1840s, the Philadelphia pictorials brought the best of origi-
nal American artwork to hundreds of thousands of households in every corner
of the union, and did more than any other institution to promote the produc-
tion, distribution, democratization, and commodification of American art.
Notes
CHA PT ER 1
1. While these magazines certainly were not the only venue for the circulation
of art engravings in the decade of the 1840s, the period under study in this project,
these magazines reached larger audiences, at lower prices, than any other venue for
the distribution of American art. While illustrated annuals and gift books served as
the primary sites for the distribution of art engravings in the 1830s, and single-print
distributors like Currier & Ives and the French firm of Goupil & Co. monopolized the
market for inexpensive art prints in the 1850s and beyond, I argue that the illustrated
magazines served as the primary site for the distribution of original American art in the
decade of the 1840s.
2. On comparative circulation of monthly magazines in the 1840s, see Frank Luther
Mott, A History of American Magazines 1741–1850, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1957). All subsequent references to Mott’s five-volume history published by
Harvard University Press will be made parenthetically in the text by volume and page
number.
3. There is a burgeoning body of scholarship on the emergence of the middle class
and middle-class culture forms in the mid-nineteenth century, that both builds on and
challenges the groundbreaking work made in the 1980s by Stuart Blumin and Mary
Ryan. For earlier definitions of the economic and social boundaries of the middle class,
see Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1989); and Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County,
New York, 1790–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). For more recent
scholarship on middle-class culture forms, see John Henry Hepp IV, The Middle-Class
City: Transforming Space and Time in Philadelphia, 1876–1926 (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Melanie Dawson, Laboring to Play: Home Entertainment and
the Spectacle of Middle-Class Cultural Life, 1850–1920 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 2005); Heidi Lynne Nichols, The Fashioning of Middle-Class America: Sartain’s Union
Magazine of Literature and Art and Antebellum Culture (New York: Peter Lang, 2004); Mary
Louise Kete, Sentimental Collaborations: Mourning and Middle-Class Identity in Nineteenth-
Century America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999); and Katherine C. Grier, Culture
& Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850–1930 (Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1988). The recent release of the ProQuest American Periodical Series
Online (APS Online) enables scholars to search for references to the “middlin’ classes”
and the “middle class” in the periodical press. A recent search of APS Online between the
dates of 1835 and 1855 returned more than one hundred results of articles specifically
referencing and defining an American middle class and middle-class culture in these
decades. Publications represented every geographic sector of the country and periodicals
ranging from weekly newspapers to farmer’s almanacs to scientific journals. These results
169
170 N OTE S
challenge earlier scholarly arguments suggesting that the middle class was ill-defined in
American social and cultural life before 1855. Clearly, there was in the preceding decades a
widespread understanding of the parameters of the middle class and middle-class culture.
4. On Godey’s exercise of control over the magazine’s contents, see Camille A.
Langston, “Sarah Josepha Hale’s Rhetoric Of ‘Mental Improvement’ and ‘Women’s
Sphere’ In Godey’s Lady’s Book,” in Popular Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers
and the Literary Marketplace, ed. Earl Yarington and Mary De Jong (Newcastle upon Tyne,
England: Cambridge Scholars, 2007), 118–36. On Hale’s presentation of her bodily persona
in the magazine, see chapter 5 of Alison Piepmeier, Out in Public: Configurations of Women’s
Bodies in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2004), 172–208.
5. For more on the life of George Graham, see Alf Pratte, “George Rex Graham,” in
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 73: American Magazine Journalists, 1741–1850, ed.
Sam G. Riley (Detroit: Gale Research, 1988), 153–58.
6. For more on the life of Charles Peterson, see Karen Nipps, “Charles Jacobs
Peterson,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 79: American Magazine Journalists,
1850–1900, ed. Sam G. Riley (Detroit: Gale Research, 1999), 236–41.
7. On the importance of Peterson’s serial novels, see Patricia Okker, Social Stories: The
Magazine Novel in Nineteenth-Century America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 2003).
8. In the “Editor’s Table” for Godey’s, September 1841, Louis Godey introduced his
readers to McMichael, his sometimes editor and business partner, upon McMichael’s
launch of an earlier publication, The People’s Library, a Magazine of Choice and Entertaining
Literature. McMichael and Leslie, both associated with Godey’s, launched Miss Leslie’s
eighteen months later, in direct competition with their former employer.
9. Frank Luther Mott uses the term “Philadelphia picture periodicals” to describe
these magazines (I, 520). A nineteenth- century reviewer referred to them as the “picture
magazines” of Philadelphia (I, 348). A Godey’s reader refers to them as the “monthlies
of Chestnut Street” and complained that they all featured a preponderance of images of
women and children (see chapter 6 for a discussion of this letter to the editor). In this
study, I use the term “Philadelphia pictorials” to refer to these magazines. Although not
the first illustrated magazines published in Philadelphia, these five magazines certainly
positioned Philadelphia as the leading center for illustrated periodicals in the decade of
the 1840s. For a brief history of two earlier and important illustrated monthlies published
in Philadelphia, see articles on The Columbian Magazine (Bruce Granger, 112–16) and The
Port Folio (Edward Chielens, 319–23) in American Literary Magazines: The Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries, Edward E. Chielens, ed. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986).
10. Literary critic W. A. Jones makes this observation in a column for the Democratic
Review in 1844. See Mott, I, 348.
11. James Playsted Wood, Magazines in the United States (New York: Ronald Press,
1971), 47. Louis Godey claimed one hundred thousand readers early in the decade (from
readers sharing with family and friends) and claimed to have printed 40,000 copies of
its July 1849 number (Godey’s, July 1849, 82). Mott asserts that just before the Civil War,
Godey’s subscription list topped out at 150,000 (see Mott, I, 181).
12. See Godey’s December 1850, 386. On Art-Union figures see Mary Bartlett Cowdrey,
American Academy of Fine Arts and the American Art-Union 1816–1852 (New York: New-York
Historical Society, 1963), 243.
NOT E S 171
13. See, for example, Mott, I, 592. Also see Wood, Magazines in the United States, 45;
David B. Dearinger, “Annual Exhibitions and the Birth of American Art Criticism to 1865,”
in Rave Reviews: American Art and Its Critics, 1826–1925, ed. David B. Dearinger (New
York: National Academy of Design, 2000); and Katharine Martinez and Page Talbott,
eds., Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape: The Sartain Family Legacy (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2000), 15–17.
14. A recent dissertation-turned-book discusses the Union, but focuses mainly on the
textual materials and features few illustrations; see Nichols, The Fashioning of Middle-
Class America. Patricia Okker’s recent book focuses on some of the novel-length fiction
serialized in these magazines; see Okker, Social Stories. Isabelle Lehuu discusses some of
the illustrations from Godey’s but focuses exclusively on the idealized images of women
and children; see Isabelle Lehuu, Carnival on the Page: Popular Print Media in Antebellum
America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), ch. 5.
15. Most of the standard survey texts of nineteenth-century American art focus
almost exclusively on paintings (as opposed to sculpture, architecture, or the graphic
arts), within a framework of accepted art historical genres (landscape, portraiture,
historical, genre, etc.). Examples of this tendency include Barbara Novak, Nature and
Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825–1875 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1981); Barbara Novak, American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism and
the American Experience (New York: Praeger, 1969); Patricia Hills, The Painter’s America:
Rural and Urban Life, 1810–1910 (New York: Praeger, 1974); Elizabeth Johns, American
Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991);
and Barbara Groseclose, Nineteenth-Century American Art (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000). For examples of work published over the past few decades that situates art
within larger social and cultural contexts, see Wayne Craven, American Art: History and
Culture (Madison: Brown & Benchmark, 1994); Joshua C. Taylor, America as Art (New
York: Harper & Row, 1976); Frances K. Pohl, Framing America: A Social History of American
Art (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002); Patricia A. Johnston, ed., Seeing High and Low:
Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2006). A few noted art historians (as opposed to graphic arts historians) have
published book-length studies focused primarily on graphic arts, but these studies have
tended to focus either on the graphic art of canonical artists (as a kind of apprenticeship
for their more highly respected canonical artwork), or on nineteenth-century publications
explicitly showcasing engravings and other print media. For an example of the former,
see Neil Harris, The Artist in American Society: The Formative Years, 1790–1860 (New York:
G. Braziller, 1966). For an example of the latter, see Sue Rainey, Creating Picturesque
America: Monument to the Natural and Cultural Landscape (Nashville: Vanderbilt University
Press, 1994).
16. As noted earlier, Charles Peterson seems to have initially targeted primarily a
female audience, but as the decade wore on and he strove to increase circulation, he seems
to have shifted his focus to attract male readers also.
17. For additional background on nineteenth-century reading practices see Cathy N.
Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America, Expanded Edition (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2004). Also see the work of Ronald J. Zboray and Mary
Saracino Zboray on the circulation and consumption of mass-marketed books in Ronald
J. Zboray, A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading
Public (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino
172 N OTE S
Zboray, Literary Dollars and Social Sense: A People’s History of the Mass Market Book (New
York: Routledge, 2005).
18. On the topic of reprints see Meredith L. McGill, American Literature and the Culture
of Reprinting, 1834–53 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).
19. Other scholars have focused on female editorship in the nineteenth century.
On Hale’s editorship of Godey’s, see Patricia Maida, “Breaking Ground: The Legacy of
an American Female Editor,” CEAMAGazine: A Journal of the College English Association,
Middle Atlantic Group 11 (1998): 47–56. Also see Patricia Okker’s groundbreaking work,
Our Sister Editors (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995); and the essay collection
Blue Pencils & Hidden Hands, Sharon M. Harris, ed. (Boston: Northeastern, 2004), 20. See
Audrey Roberts, “The Letters of Caroline Kirkland” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin,
1976), 68.
21. Mott provides some information on the economics of the magazine business,
particularly in Vol. I, ch. X, “Editors, Contributors and Management.” Scholars working in
the history of the book tradition also explore the financial relationships between authors,
editors, and publishers; see for example William Charvat, Literary Publishing in America
1790–1850 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959); Cathy N. Davidson, ed.,
Reading in America: Literature and Social History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1989); Kenneth M. Price and Susan Belasco Smith, eds., Periodical Literature in
Nineteenth-Century America (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995); Ann
Caroline Gebhard, “The Invention of Female Authorship in Nineteenth-Century America”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1991); Linda Morris, Women Vernacular Humorists in
Nineteenth-Century America: Ann Stephens, Frances Whitcher, and Marietta Holley (New
York: Garland, 1988); and Melissa J. Homestead, American Women Authors and Literary
Property, 1822–1869 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Recent work in
literary history has focused on the contributions of canonical writers to the periodicals.
See, for example, James M. Hutchisson, Poe (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
2005), especially chapters 5 through 7; Jeffrey Charis-Carlson, “‘You, Who So Well
Know the Nature of My Soul’: Poe and the Question of Literary Audience,” American
Periodicals 12 (2002): 198–207; Jeffrey A. Savoye, “Reconstructing Poe’s ‘The Gold-Bug’: An
Examination of the Composition and First Printing(s),” Edgar Allan Poe Review 8, no. 2
(2007): 34–48; and Burton R. Pollin, “Dickens’s Chimes and Its Pathway into Poe’s ‘Bells,’”
Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures 51, no. 2 (1998): 217–31. Historians
of many different ilks have sampled from these periodicals to forward arguments specific
to their fields of inquiry. See, for example, Anne Blue Wills, “Pilgrims and Progress: How
Magazines Made Thanksgiving,” Church History 72, no. 1 (2003): 138–58; and Richard J.
Powell, “Cinque: Antislavery Portraiture and Patronage in Jacksonian America,” American
Art 11, no. 3 (1997): 49–73. For recent work on the professionalization of American women
artists see Sarah Burns, Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Kirsten Swinth, Painting Professionals: Women
Artists and the Development of Modern American Art, 1870–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2001); Laura R. Prieto, At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization
of Women Artists in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); and April F.
Masten, Art Work: Women Artists and Democracy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
22. Although late in the decade of the 1840s these magazines began to feature full-
page advertisements, generally inserted at the back of a monthly volume, throughout
NOT E S 173
this decade publishers relied almost solely on subscription revenue to stay in business.
Advertising changed both the look of American magazines and their economics. For a
study done on the relationship between advertising and content of turn-of-the century
magazines, see Ellen Gruber Garvey, The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering
of Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
23. For a discussion of this “explosion” in print culture in America, see Lehuu, Carnival
on the Page. For a similar discussion focused on Britain, see Patricia Anderson, The Printed
Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790–1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1991).
24. For information on the American Art-Union, see Cowdrey, American Academy of
Fine Arts and the American Art-Union 1816–1852. Heidi Nichols discusses the relationship
between the American Art-Union and Sartain’s Union Magazine in chapters one and three
of her book.
25. On early American museums, see David R. Brigham, Public Culture in the Early
Republic: Peale’s Museum and Its Audience (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1995); and James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). On the importance of window displays to
American consumer culture, see Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling
of American Holidays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). For a discussion of
mid-nineteenth-century methods of self-imaging, see Shawn Michelle Smith, American
Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1999). For a discussion of billboards, banners, signs, and currency, see David M. Henkins,
City Reading (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
26. Basil Hunnisett points out that Philadelphia’s illustrated magazines began
circulating art reproductions from the beginning of the nineteenth century. He cites the
Port Folio (launched in 1801) as the earliest example. He credits the gift books, however,
as the first medium dedicated principally to circulating art: “The annuals were the first
means of popularizing artistic illustrations, which dictated the accompanying text in most
cases, averaging 8–12 illustrations per volume . . .” (330). The heyday of the gift books was
the 1830s and early 1840s, and their costs likely made them prohibitive for lower-middle-
class reading audiences. It is fair to say that the illustrated magazines in the 1840s took
over where the gift books left off in extending the distribution of art reproductions to
ever widening audiences. See Basil Hunnisett, Engraved on Steel: The History of Picture
Production Using Steel Plates (Cambridge: Ashgate, 1998), especially chapter 10.
27. On the art engravings circulated in gift books, see Stephanie Gray Mayer Heydt,
“The Art of The Gift: Edward L. Carey, William Sidney Mount, Daniel Huntington and the
Antebellum Gift Book” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 2008). In Dissertations & Theses:
Full Text [database on-line]; available from www.proquest.com (publication number AAT
3314029; accessed June 29, 2009).
CHA PT ER 2
1. That Godey’s and Graham’s were considered industry leaders during this period
(1838–52) can be traced in references to the illustrated magazines found throughout the
periodical literature of the day. See for example “Notices,” Oasis: a Monthly Magazine
Devoted to Literature, Science and the Arts, July 28, 1838, 189; “The White Room,” Sargent’s
174 N OTE S
New Monthly Magazine of Literature, Fashion and the Arts, February 18, 1843, 90; “Literary
Notices,” Brother Jonathan, December 23, 1843, 473–74; “The Fashionable Monthlies,” New
Englander (January 1844), 96–105; “Our Cotemporaries,” Southern Literary Messenger
(February 1845), 128; “Illustrated Magazines,” Broadway Journal, January 25, 1845, 60–61;
“Topics of the Month,” Holden’s Dollar Magazine, January 1848, 57–58; “Literary World,”
Prisoner’s Friend, January 1, 1849, 225; “Literary World,” The Rural Repository (January
1850), 236; “The Illustrated Magazines,” Southern Quarterly Review (November 1850), 535;
and “Parlor Periodicals,” Democrat’s Review (January 1852), 76–82.
2. Wendy Wick Reaves, ed., American Portrait Prints: Proceedings of the Tenth
Annual American Print Conference (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, for the
Smithsonian Institution, 1984), ix. Peter C. Marzio notes the same disparagement by art
historians of chromolithographic prints in his important 1979 study The Democratic Art:
Pictures for a 19th-Century America (Boston: David R. Godine); see especially chapter 1.
3. See Alan Wallach, Exhibiting Contradiction: Essays on the Art Museum in the United
States (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), especially 11–15. See also
Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).
4. See Neil Harris’s classic discussion of this view of the artist in Harris, The Artist
in American Society: The Formative Years, 1790–1860, especially 34–48. Also, see Lee L.
Schreiber, “The Philadelphia Elite in the Development of the Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Arts, 1805–1842” (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1977), 46–51.
5. See also Michael Winship, American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
6. For a parallel discussion of the collaborations between artists, engravers, and
authors of British illustrated books, see chapter 4, “The Art of Steel Engraving,” in Basil
Hunnisett, Steel-Engraved Book Illustration in England (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980).
For an earlier study that looks at the relationships between New York writers and artists,
see James T. Callow, Kindred Spirits: Knickerbocker Writers and American Artists, 1807–1855
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967).
7. In fact, Sartain poured so much money into the magazine that he claimed it took
him seven and a half years to pay off the debts once Sartain’s Union folded in mid-1852.
See Mott, I, 771–72, and John Sartain, The Reminiscences of a Very Old Man, 1808–1897
(New York: D. Appleton, 1899), 219.
8. Recent studies on the careers of John Neagle, James Reid Lambdin, and the
Peale family exemplify work that redresses earlier scholarly neglect by focusing on the
breadth of artistic endeavors these artists pursued. The brief case studies included here
are intended as examples of a typical career path at mid-century. For more detailed
treatment of these artists, see Robert W. Torchia, John Neagle: Philadelphia Portrait Painter
(Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1989); Lillian B. Miller, ed., The Peale
Family: Creation of a Legacy 1770–1870 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1996); Ruth Irwin
Weidner, The Lambdins of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Schwartz Gallery, 2002).
9. For more on itinerant portrait painters of the 1820s and 1830s, see Leah Lipton,
“William Dunlap, Samuel F. B. Morse, John Wesley Jarvis, and Chester Harding: Their
Careers as Itinerant Portrait Painters,” American Art Journal 13: 3 (1981): 35–50. The
“painting tour” was firmly established by the mid-nineteenth century and most of the
well-known East Coast portrait painters went on western and southern tours when
NOT E S 175
commissions began to slack off. For a discussion of the painting tour in the eighteenth
century, see Margaretta M. Lovell, Art in a Season of Revolution: Painters, Artisans, and
Patrons in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 14.
10. See the John Houston Mifflin collection (PHMC, Collection MC 135, on microfilm
1432). Also see the 1844 Exhibition Catalogue for the Artists’ Fund Society.
11. Lambdin served as an officer for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts annual
exhibition (see Exhibition Catalogue for 1849) and as an officer and on the Board of
Council for the Artists’ Fund Society (see Exhibition Catalogues for 1844 and 1845). Also
see James Lambdin Diary (PHMC Manuscript Group 6: Diaries and Journals Collection
1763–1938).
12. John Neagle Papers 1817–1865 (AAA Reel 3909, Frame 19). Robert Torchia also
discusses this incident in his wonderful biography of Neagle. See Torchia, John Neagle:
Philadelphia Portrait Painter, 17, 53–55.
13. 1874 description of Thomas B. Welch’s portrait of Stonewall Jackson in the Albert
Duveen Collection (AAA Microfilm NDu3).
14. Frank Weitenkampf, American Graphic Art, with a New Introduction by E. Maurice
Bloch (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1970). John Cheney seems to have moved effortlessly
from painting to engraving, sometimes painting a copy of a picture from an engraving
made of the picture, and at other times engraving either from original paintings or copies
of paintings (AAA Dreer Collection of Painters & Engravers, Reel P20, Frame 441 and AAA
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection, Reel PA23, Frame 523).
15. See “Preface and Acknowledgements,” Martinez and Talbott, eds., Philadelphia’s
Cultural Landscape: The Sartain Family Legacy, xiii.
16. On Durand’s negotiations with engraving firms see, for example, a letter to the
firm of Rawdon, Clark & Co. dated December 16, 1833. Durand negotiates prices for
an engraving: $200; $250 if a hand is included; $25 less if the engraving done on copper
instead of steel (AAA Simon Gratz Collection, Reel P22, Frame 147). For a detailed
discussion of Durand’s work as an engraver, see Wayne Craven, “Asher B. Durand’s
Career as an Engraver,” American Art Journal 3, no. 1 (1971): 39–57. On Henry Inman’s
work as a painter, see William H. Gerdts, The Art of Henry Inman (Washington: National
Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1987), William H. Gerdts, “Henry Inman: Genre
Painter,” American Art Journal 9, no. 1 (1977): 26–48.
17. Daniel Huntington, letter to Henry C. Carey dated November 24, 1849 (AAA
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection, Reel P23, Frame 549).
18. James Reid Lambdin, letter to Ferdinand J. Dreer dated December 27, 1852 (AAA
Reel P20, Frame 508).
19. See Sully’s “Register of Paintings” for 1842 on painting from an engraving; and for
1848 on painting from daguerreotype (AAA Reel D18). For a discussion of Sartain’s work
from photography and daguerreotype, see Martinez, in Reaves, ed., American Portrait
Prints, 135–93. Notes written in the margins of the copy of the exhibition catalogue that I
examined at the Library Company of Philadelphia pronounce Sartain’s Lady and Parrot as
“tiny, stiff,” but praise his Twilight on the Atlantic with “good conception & well-executed.”
20. John Sartain, letter to N. Cleaveland Esq. Dated October 31, 1854 (AAA Alfred W.
Anthony Collection, Reel N4, Frame 1033).
21. Letter dated December 16, 1833, from Asher Durand to Rawdon, Clark & Co.,
Simon Gratz Collection at the Archives of American Art, reel P22.
176 N OTE S
22. John Sartain, letter to Asher Durand dated June 9, 1834 (AAA Asher Durand
Collection, Reel N19, Frame 829).
23. George W. Bethune, Address to the Artists’ Fund Society, 1840, in the James R.
Lambdin collection, Archives of American Art, reel P38. For more on mid-century lectures
and publications on American art, see William H. Gerdts, “‘The American “Discourses’: A
Survey of Lectures and Writings on American Art, 1770–1858,” American Art Journal 15,
no. 3 (1983): 61–79.
24. Washington Allston to James McMurtries, in a letter dated March 2, 1837 (AAA
Dreer Collection of Painters and Engravers, Reel P20, Frame 423).
25. Lilly Spencer Martin treated print sales of her work in this manner. See April F.
Masten, “Shake Hands? Lilly Martin Spencer and the Politics of Art,” American Quarterly
56, no. 2 (2004): 377.
26. Daniel Huntington to Henry Carey, in a letter dated October 17, 1849 (AAA Dreer
Collection of Artists and Engravers, Reel P20, Frame 491).
27. Daniel Huntington, letter to Henry C. Carey dated December 11, 1849 (AAA Edward
Carey Gardiner Collection, Reel P24, Frame 150).
28. For a fuller discussion of the history of the painting and its reproductions,
see William H. Gerdts, “Daniel Huntington’s ‘Mercy’s Dream’: A Pilgrimage through
Bunyanesque Imagery,” Winterthur Portfolio 14:2 (1979): 171–94.
29. For more on this exchange, see Leah Lipton, A Truthful Likeness: Chester Harding
and His Portraits (Washington: National Portrait Gallery, 1985), 79–80.
30. Asher Durand, letter to James B. Longacre dated October 30, 1836 (AAA Longacre
Family Papers, Reel P1, Frame 1001).
31. John C. Buttre, Memorandum of agreement with J. B. Polk dated November 27,
1865 (AAA Albert Duveen Collection, Reel DDU-1, Frame 80).
32. William Sidney Mount, letter to Edward L. Carey dated January 9, 1842
(AAA Simon Gratz Collection, Reel P22, Frame 336). Basil Hunnisett, in his work on
relationships between English book engravers and artists, observes that engravers
preferred to collaborate with living artists to produce the best results. See Hunnisett,
Steel-Engraved Book Illustration in England, 35.
33. Hunnisett, Steel-Engraved Book Illustration in England, 35.
34. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, hereafter referred to as HSP, letter from
John Sartain dated June 6, 1852. Sartain Family Papers, Reel 4563, Frame 952.
35. HSP, “John Sartain’s answers to queries put in Andrew R. Chambers’ Bill” (Sartain
Family Papers, Reel 4563, Frame 953).
36. Receipt for John G. Chapman, dated March 10, 1836 (AAA Simon Gratz Collection,
Reel P22, Frame 94).
37. John G. Chapman, letter to Edward L. Carey dated December 29, 1839 (AAA
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collections, Reel P23, Frame 522).
38. For example, in a letter to Carey & Hart from 1846, Frances S. Osgood, who had
edited The Floral Offering for the firm, requests a $50 advance on her fee since the firm
has experienced “an unexpected delay in publication” of the annual and, in Osgood’s
words, put her to “some inconvenience” (HSP, Gratz American Poets Collection, Case
7 Box 7, Frances S. Osgood folder). In a similar move, Epes J. Sargent, in a letter
dated January 24, 1843, offers a $5 discount on an article solicited by Carey & Hart
for The Gift for 1844, explaining that he is willing to take $20 instead of his usual $25
NOT E S 177
in exchange for not deferring his bill until the volume is published. He reasons: “a
little now, is more acceptable that a good deal will be likely to be a year hence” (HSP,
Gratz American Literary Duplicates, Case 6, Box 35). Catharine Maria Sedgwick states
her stipulations even more forcefully in a letter dated March 6, 1836: “With this I
forward to you a tale which Miss Leslie requested me to write for the Gift for 1837—.
Heretofore I have made no stipulations, as to the price of those little productions
written by me for your annuals but as the compensation received from you is much less
than that which I get from any other quarter, I take the liberty to name eighty dollars
as the price of this story. & lest you should deem me encroaching allow me to add that
this is considerably less than I receive from The Token for an equal quantity of writing
—. The copy-right, for a reprint, as I have uniformly done, I reserve to myself.” In a
July 1840 letter to Carey & Hart she requests prompt remittance for the $100 owed to
her (HSP, Gratz American Literary Duplicates, Case 6, Box 35). Engraver Joseph Ives
Pease also appealed to Carey & Hart on August 18, 1842, for a draw of $60–$70 against
money owed him for two engravings accepted for The Gift—one published 1842, the
other 1843—explaining that he might “need some of the ‘needful’” and “could not
obtain it” from other sources.
39. John G. Chapman, letter to Rufus W. Griswold dated April 14, 1843 (AAA Simon
Gratz Collection, Reel P22, Frame 98).
40. John G. Chapman, letter to Rufus W. Griswold dated July 27, 1843 (AAA Simon
Gratz Collection, Reel P22, Frame 97).
41. Two recent studies do advance a more balanced assessment of Sully’s career, but
each focuses on one specific portrait in the Sully oeuvre. See Carrie Rebora Barratt, Queen
Victoria and Thomas Sully (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); John Clubbe,
Byron, Sully, and the Power of Portraiture (Hants, England: Ashgate , 2005). While both
Barratt and Clubbe discuss other Sully paintings, Barratt’s book is clearly more concerned
with positioning Sully’s portrait of Queen Victoria in relationship to other portraits of
the monarch. Likewise, Clubbe’s primary impetus seems to be his passion for Byron.
However, unlike Sully’s earlier biographers, Clubbe non-disparagingly acknowledges the
wide range of artistic work Sully performed in order to earn a living.
42. Steven E. Bronson, “Thomas Sully: Style and Development in Masterworks of
Portraiture 1783—1839” (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1986), 1.
43. David M. Robb Jr., “Thomas Sully: The Business of Painting” (Master’s thesis, Yale
University, 1967), 39–43.
44. David Dearinger argues that Samuel F. B. Morse actually authored the review.
See Dearinger, “Annual Exhibitions and the Birth of American Art Criticism to 1865,” in
Dearinger, ed., Rave Reviews: American Art and Its Critics, 1826–1925, 53–91.
45. Monroe H. Fabian, Mr. Sully, Portrait Painter (Washington: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1983), 17.
46. Fabian, Mr. Sully, Portrait Painter, 13.
47. Bronson, “Thomas Sully: Style and Development in Masterworks of Portraiture
1783–1839,” 2.
48. For example, he lists “landscape with female child,” “lady and child entirely in
white drapery,” and “a mother bathing her infant.”
49. I examined both the typescript copy of the “Hints” on microfilm N18 at the
Archives of American Art, and the 1965 reprint of the 1873 published version (New
178 N OTE S
York: Reinhold Publishing). For a discussion of the differences between published and
unpublished versions of the “Hints,” see Clubbe’s “Select Bibliography” note, 299.
50. Robb, “Thomas Sully: The Business of Painting,” 40.
51. Bronson, “Thomas Sully: Style and Development in Masterworks of Portraiture
1783–1839,” 247.
52. Robb, “Thomas Sully: The Business of Painting,” 23—24, 38–39.
53. His portrait of Nathaniel Chapman, M.D., engraved by Neagle, appeared in
Atkinson’s Casket in 1830.
54. The Journal of Thomas Sully (AAA Reel N18, Frame 308).
55. Sully’s journal records social visits with many of the major artists of his day, as well
as with Graham’s editor, Rufus Griswold; George Graham himself; the publisher Louis
Godey; and author and editor Miss Eliza Leslie (whose brother, Charles, had studied with
Sully), among others.
56. I have examined copies of The Gift from 1837, 1842, and 1843 containing Cheney’s
engravings of Sully’s work.
57. Sylvester Rosa Koehler, Catalogue of the Engraved and Lithographed Work of John
Cheney and Seth Wells Cheney (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1891), 43, 57, 60.
58. See, for example, his notation on the portrait of “Miss Gratz” from June 5, 1807
(AAA Reel N18, Frame 261). See also his notation on the “Fancy group of the misses Beard
and Lea” (AAA Reel N18, Frame 412). Also, see his notation of November 26, 1840, on the
fancy piece entitled the “Family Group” (AAA Reel N18, Frame 526).
59. “Editor’s Table,” Graham’s Magazine, February 1844, 97.
60. See Sully’s Register of paintings 1801–71 (AAA Reel D18, for years 1834–1840,
especially).
61. Thomas B. Read to Chris Garrett, February 13, 1851 (AAA Read Family Papers, Reel
1478, Frame 411).
62. See Joseph Sill selected diaries (AAA Reel P29, frame 250).
63. Sill also remarks in his diaries from the early 1840s that he considered writing
some notices of the exhibitions for the papers because he believed “the Arts need such
encouragement here!” See AAA reel P29, frame 246.
CH AP TER 3
1. See Record Books, Carey & Hart (HSP: Edward Carey Gardiner Collection, Collection
227A, Box 98, Volume 1 of the Record Books). See also Elisa E. Beshero-Bondar, “Eliza
Leslie,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 202: Nineteenth-Century American Fiction
Writers, ed. Kent P. Ljungquist (Detroit: Gale Research, 1989), 166–72. For a brief sketch of
Miss Leslie’s see Mott, A History of American Magazines 1741–1850, I, 733–34.
2. McMichael’s last name also appears in the literature of the day (newspapers and
magazines) as “Mcmichael” and “M’Michael.” For the sake of consistency, I will use
“McMichael” unless the name appears as part of a publication title.
3. Combined in 1841 by George R. Graham from two earlier, ailing magazines, Burton’s
Gentleman’s Magazine and The Casket. See Mott I: 544–55).
4. For a detailed description of parallel developments in Britain, see Anderson, The
Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790–1860. For an alternative take
NOT E S 179
on the relative importance of these improvements to changes in book distribution and

consumption (as opposed to periodicals), see Zboray, A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic
Development and the American Reading Public, especially chapter 1.
5. See undated obituary on McMichael in the HSP Society Collection under Morton
McMichael. See also Mott, I, 582.
6. For biographical details on Leslie, see Godey’s January 1846 article, “Our
Contributors, Miss Eliza Leslie,” 1. Also see Alice B. Haven, “Personal Reminiscences of
Miss Eliza Leslie,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, April 1858, 344–50; Beshero-Bondar, “Dictionary of
Literary Biography,” 166–72; John S. Hart, Female Prose Writers of America (Philadelphia:
E.H. Butler, 1852), 26–32; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Catalogue of the
Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings (Philadelphia: T.K. and P.G. Collins, Printers, 1843);
Ophia Smith, “Charles and Eliza Leslie,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography,
1950, 512–27.
7. See Beshero-Bondar, “Dictionary of Literary Biography,” 169.
8. See sketch as reprinted in Hart, Female Prose Writers of America, 30–31.
9. See manuscript evidence cited in Smith, “Charles and Eliza Leslie,” 517–18.
10. See J. B. Dobkin, “Timothy Shay Arthur,” in American Writers for Children before
1900, ed. Glenn E. Estes (Detroit: Gale Group, 1985), 77–82; Kathleen L. Endres, “Timothy
Shay Arthur,” American Magazine Journalists 1850–1900, ed. Kathleen L. Endres (Detroit:
Gale Group, 1989), 33–43; and Donald A. Koch, “Timothy Shay Arthur,” Antebellum
Writers in New York and the South, ed. Joel Myerson (Detroit: Gale Group, 1979), 3–7. For
a discussion of Arthur’s tales in Godey’s Lady’s Book in the 1840s, see Francis Timothy
Ruppel, “Marketplace Romances: Elusive Ambitions in the Fiction of T. S. Arthur, Edgar
Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland College Park,
1997). In Dissertations & Theses: Full Text [database on-line]; available from www.
proquest.com (publication number AAT 9808663; accessed June 15, 2009).
11. See John W. Forney, Memorial Address Upon the Character and Public Services of
Morton Mcmichael, as Editor, Public Officer and Citizen (Philadelphia: Sherman, 1879).
12. See “Editors’ Table,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, September 1841, 144.
13. The question of tax-supported public high school education was a source of public
debate in this era. The Franklin Institute had sponsored a series of successive high schools
beginning in 1826, and by 1836 the Pennsylvania state legislature had passed legislation
to fund public high schools. Philadelphia’s Central High School opened in 1839, the same
year as McMichael’s address. See Bruce Sinclair, Philadelphia’s Philosopher Mechanics: A
History of the Franklin Institute 1824–1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1974), particularly chapter 5.
14. Wick Reaves is particularly concerned with portrait prints and the challenges faced
by Cephas Childs in trying to introduce consumers to lithographed prints of their painted
portraits, for distribution to a wider circle of friends, when line and stipple engravings
on steel had been the preferred method for portrait prints previously. See Reaves, ed.,
American Portrait Prints, 97.
15. Bamber Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and
Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Inkjet, 2nd ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004),
sec. 13a.
16. On the place of Godey’s Lady’s Magazine in the history of American fashion
magazines, see Mary Jane Lewis, “‘Godey’s Lady’s Book’: Contributions to the Promotion
180 N OTE S
and Development of the American Fashion Magazine in Nineteenth Century America”

(Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1996). In Dissertations & Theses: Full Text [database
on-line]; available from www.proquest.com (publication number AAT 9710927; accessed
June 29, 2009).
17. It is difficult to determine which of Godey’s several “editors” was behind this drive.
As Sarah Josepha Hale biographer Patricia Okker notes, Godey reminded readers in 1859
that Hale was not the fashion editor (see Okker, note 25, 231). The title page for January
1843 lists Hale, McMichael, and Godey as editors, with Sedgwick, Leslie, and Willis as
regular contributors. Since Leslie and McMichael had, in fact, defected to start their own
monthly and it is unlikely Godey suggested the changes in the fashion style, that leaves
Hale and Sedgwick. While it is possible that Sedgwick drove the reform, it seems rather
in keeping with Hale’s forceful presence at the magazine to have pushed through the
changes to the fashions and then to have turned her attention to the literary matter she
so clearly preferred to direct.
18. On the rise of a celebrity culture in America, see Thomas N. Baker, Sentiment
and Celebrity: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999); and David Haven Blake, Walt Whitman and the Culture of American
Celebrity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
19. See “Publisher’s Notice,” 48, and fashion plate, 49, Godey’s Lady’s Book, January
1840.
20. See “Editors’ Table,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, April 1840, 191.
21. See Godey’s Lady’s Book, January 1843, 58. Godey’s “apology” for the change
included a letter of support from Harriet Beecher Stowe, who praised the magazine for
revamping the fashions to show “a healthful, well-proportioned female figure.” Evidently
there had been some discussion of discontinuing the fashion plates altogether, because
the February 1843 issue includes a snippet from a letter sent by Mrs. Ann F. Annan, a
regular contributor to the magazine, stating “I am glad to find that you intend to continue
the Fashion Plates. They are a strong attraction to female subscribers out of the large
cities. The new series promises to be a very great improvement” (“Editors’ Table,” 105).
22. The September 1843 number of Godey’s contained a Coloured Rose and Butterfly
Godey claimed to have commissioned before the Peterson’s August Peony and Butterfly. He
huffed that his magazine featured an uncolored version of the rose embellishment in July.
23. See “Publisher’s Table,” Peterson’s Magazine, August 1843, 72.
24. “Publisher’s Table,” Miss Leslie’s Magazine, June 1843, 220.
25. See Frontispiece to Godey’s Lady’s Book, November 1843.
26. Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints, sec. 1b.
27. Basil Hunnisett notes that, even with steel plates, Sartain needed to engrave four
plates of each subject to meet the circulation demands of 40,000 for Graham’s Magazine
in the early 1840s. See Hunnisett, Engraved on Steel: The History of Picture Production Using
Steel Plates, 336. For these reason, publishers frequently used the editorial spaces of their
magazines to encourage subscribers to be the first to re-subscribe. Charles Peterson, in
particular, claimed that the earliest imprints (and therefore the crispest) went to the
earliest re-subscribers. See “Publisher’s Card,” The Ladies National Magazine, December
1848, 216.
28. On Sartain’s career, see the excellent collection edited by Martinez and Talbott,
eds., Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape: The Sartain Family Legacy. See also Katharine
NOT E S 181
Martinez, “John Sartain (1808–1897): His Contribution to American Printmaking,”

Imprint 8, no. 1 (1983): 1–12. Finally, see Martinez’s essay “Portrait Prints by John
Sartain,” in Reaves, ed., American Portrait Prints, 135–93.
29. See “Publisher’s Table,” Miss Leslie’s Magazine, March 1843, 112. In that same issue
Leslie and McMichael also offered their readers a plate of “Berlin worsted patterns for
Slippers,” proclaiming that this embellishment is “an entirely new one . . . as this is the
first time any thing of the kind has been attempted in this country.”
30. For a discussion of “commodity fetishism” see Sut Jhally, The Codes of Advertising:
Fetishism and the Political Economy of Meaning in the Consumer Society (New York:
Routledge, 1990); and Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning
in Advertising (London: Marion Boyars, 1978).
31. Indeed, as a reviewer for the Southern Chronicle noted of Godey’s early issues for
1845, the magazine had become “as ornamental as an annual” (“The Editors’ Book Table,”
Godey’s, March 1845, 144).
32. Nicholas B. Wainwright notes this about Duval: “Duval came into his own as a
lithographer in 1835, when the partnership of Lehman & Duval moved into attractive
quarters in a new four-story building on the southeast corner of Dock Street and Bank
Alley. This was an excellent business location, for it faced the Merchant’s Exchange in the
heart of the commercial district.” See Nicholas B. Wainwright, Philadelphia in the Romantic
Age of Lithography (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1958), 30.
33. For a discussion of lithography as a fine art, see Janet Flint, “The American
Painter-Lithographer,” in Art and Commerce: American Prints of the Nineteenth Century
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 127–28. See also Antony Griffiths,
Prints and Printmaking: An Introduction to the History and Techniques (New York: Alfred
Knopf, 1980), 101–2.
34. For more on Cephas Childs and Alfred Newsam, see Wendy Wick Reaves, Reaves,
ed., American Portrait Prints, 83–134.
35. Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints, sec 19a.
36. How to Identify Prints, sec 19d.
37. See Peter C. Marzio, “The Democratic Art of Chromolithography in America: An
Overview,” in Art & Commerce, 92.
38. See Michael Twyman, Lithography 1800–1850 (London: Oxford University Press,
1970), 147–50.
39. See “The New Art of Lithotint,” Miss Leslie’s Magazine, April 1843, 113–14.
40. Karen Nipps, Naturally Fond of Pictures: American Illustration of the 1840s and 1850s
(Philadelphia: Library Company of Philadelphia, 1989), 2; and Marzio, “The Democratic
Art of Chromolithography in America: An Overview,” 92.
41. See George C. Groce and David H. Wallace, The New-York Historical Society’s
Dictionary of Artists in America 1564–1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957),
595; Mantle Fielding, Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, with an
Addendum by James F. Carr (New York: James F. Carr, 1965), 344–45; Elizabeth M. Harris,
The Art of Medal Engraving: A Curious Chapter in the Development of 19th Century Printing
Processes (Newtown, PA: Bird & Bull, 1991), 7–12; and Arthur H. Frazier, “Joseph Saxton
and His Contributions to the Medal Ruling and Photographic Arts,” in Smithsonian Studies
in History and Technology, ed. Smithsonian Institution (Smithsonian Institution Press,
1975), 2–8.
182 N OTE S
42. Thomas Beckman, “American Diesinkers and Their Cameo Stamps, 1850–1880: A
Researcher’s Discoveries and Survey,” Maine Antique Digest (May 1999): 44b–46b.
43. Beckman, 45b. Collectors and print enthusiasts publish trade magazines that
routinely attempt to establish printing “firsts” of all kinds. Scholars working in the fields
of the history of science and technology also occasionally examine the artwork in these
magazines. See for example, Ann Buermann Wass and Clarita Anderson, “Rivalling Nature
in the Beauty and Brilliancy of Their Coloring: Synthetic Dyes and Fashionable Colors in
Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine 1856–1891,” Chronicle of the Early American Industries
Association 53:4 (December 2000): 156–62.
44. Again, the correspondences from the Franklin Institute echo this same conflation
of the mechanical arts and utility. See Chapter V of Sinclair, Philadelphia’s Philosopher
Mechanics: A History of the Franklin Institute 1824–1865.
CH AP TER 4
1. Back matter, The Boston Miscellany, August 1842. For additional information on
the magazine, see Debra Brown, “The Boston Miscellany of Literature and Fashion,”
in American Literary Magazines: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Edward E.
Chielens (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 70–73.
2. John Inman, “Prospectus,” The Columbian Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, January
1844.
3. As Jan Pilditch has noted, Godey’s Lady’s Book also featured popular articles on
science, but in ways that upheld editor Sarah Josepha Hale’s belief in the ideology
of “separate spheres.” See Jan Pilditch, “‘Fashionable Female Studies’: The Popular
Dissemination of Science in Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1830–1860,” Australasian Journal of
American Studies 24: 1 (2005): 20–37.
4. Rev. B. F. Tefft, “Editor’s Table,” Ladies’ Repository, January 1849, 31.
5. For additional brief sketches that better detail the sometimes tangled relationships
between these southern magazines, see articles on each of them in Chielens, ed., American
Literary Magazines: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
6. I examined copies from 1847–49 at the American Antiquarian Society, and found
only two engravings of any note, and both depicted specific southern landscapes
connected to business enterprises.
7. Mott, Vol. I, 629. By way of comparison, five years later Godey’s circulation surpassed
the entire population of Richmond, Virginia, at the time the Southern Literary Messenger
had been launched. Mott, Vol. I, 581.
8. Thomas Willys White, “Editorial Remarks,” the Southern Literary Messenger,
December 1834, 190.
9. White’s successor as editor/proprietor, Benjamin Blake Minor, who ran the
magazine from 1843 to 1847, recorded in 1905 his remembrances of the magazine’s
publishing history in a volume entitled The Southern Literary Messenger 1834–1864. In
his introduction to the 2007 reprinting of Minor’s work, Jonathan Daniel Wells affirms
the claim that southerners subscribed primarily to northern magazines like Godey’s and
Graham’s. See Jonathan Daniel Wells, “Introduction,” in The Southern Literary Messenger
1834–1864 (Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2007), xv.
NOT E S 183
10. Patricia Okker discusses this phenomenon in her chapter “Women Reading,” in
Our Sister Editors, especially page 111, where she cites comments by magazinist Nathaniel
P. Willis and Godey’s. Whether factually true that women were the primary readers
of monthly magazines, certainly popular perception held it to be true. For example,
numerous other publications also identified the illustrated magazines as in particular
“service of the ladies.” See “The Illustrated Magazines,” The Southern Quarterly Review 2:4
(November 1850): 535. This article lumps The Lady’s Book in with Graham’s and Sartain’s,
even though the latter two magazines explicitly targeted a mixed-gender audience. An
article in the New Englander, “The Fashionable Monthlies,” likewise identifies Graham’s,
Godey’s, and Miss Leslie’s (Philadelphia), the Boston Miscellany (Boston), along with
Sargent’s, The Lady’s Companion, the World of Fashion, and The Pioneer (New York), as “our
lady-literature.” See “The Fashionable Monthlies,” New Englander 2:5 (January 1844): 96.
Another writer for the Democrat’s Review bemoaned the effect of the “renowned Triad”
(Godey’s, Graham’s, Sartain) on the quality of American magazine writing, in clearly
gendered terms: “But between pirated magazines on the one hand, and the Philadelphia
magazines on the other, our periodicals of a more sensible and masculine stamp are
in danger of going down altogether.” See “Parlor Periodicals,” Democrat’s Review 30:1
(January 1852): 76.
11. For the history of this organization, see Leah Lipton, “The Boston Artists’
Association, 1841–1851,” American Art Journal 15, no. 4 (1983): 45–57.
12. The painting, donated to the United States Senate by White’s son, Octavius,
was oft copied in its time. For information on the painting and its historical context,
see the United States Senate website www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/artifact/
Painting_33_00002.htm.
13. For a description of the painting and the events surrounding it, see the Worcester
Art Museum online collection description at www.worcesterart.org/Collection/Early_
American/. For a book-length study of the events surrounding Andre, see John Evangelist
Walsh, The Execution of Major Andre (New York: Palgrave, 2001). For a discussion of the
numerous nineteenth-century representations of the capture of Major Andre, see Larry
J. Reynolds, “Patriot and Criminals, Criminal and Patriots: Representations of the Case of
Major Andre,” South Central Review 9, no. 1 (1992): 57–84.
14. Groce and Wallace, 10, 70. For more on Andrews, see Nancy Carlson Schrock,
“Joseph Andrews, Engraver: A Swedenborgian Justification,” Winterthur Portfolio 12
(1977): 165–82.
15. For more on Billings, see Groce and Wallace 49; and James F. O’Gorman,
Accomplished in All Departments of Art: Hammatt Billings of Boston, 1818–1874 (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1998).
16. After the 1840 London publication of Nathaniel P. Willis’s volume American
Scenery, featuring plates designed by William H. Bartlett, nearly all the illustrated
magazines engaged designers and engravers to copy Bartlett’s designs for their own
magazines. That volume had featured Boston and Bunker Hill, Mount Auburn, East Port
and Passamaquoddy Bay, and Northampton, all Massachusetts locales. Bunker Hill and
Mount Auburn, popular Boston landmarks, became the subject of engravings in the other
illustrated monthlies.
17. In the January 1843 issue, under the heading “It is a Truth to be Believed,” the
editor announces that contrary to reports that the magazine has 3,000 subscribers,
184 N OTE S
the largest print run peaked at 2,509, and that the current list held slightly fewer than
1,800 subscribers (40). For more on the history of the Ladies’ Repository, especially in
comparison to other New England monthlies, see Bertha Monica Stearns, “New England
Magazines for Ladies 1830–1860,” The New England Quarterly 3, no. 4 (1930): especially
632–35.
18. Rev. E. G. Brooks, “Creeds,” Ladies Repository, April 1844, 373.
19. For more on the history of Universalism in the United States, and its particular
intersection with reform movements, see Ann Lee Bressler, The Universalist Movement in
America 1770–1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), especially 80–96.
20. For more on Bartlett’s sketches for American Scenery, see Alexander M. Ross,
William Henry Bartlett: Artist, Author, and Traveller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1973), 38–42. Also see Rainey, Creating Picturesque America: Monument to the Natural and
Cultural Landscape, 30–31.
21. Groce and Wallace, 497.
22. Rev. Henry Bacon, “Hudson Highlands/See Plate,” Boston Repository, July 1843, 38.
23. For more on Brackett, see Groce and Wallace 74; on Read, same source, 527.
24. Rev. Henry Bacon, “The Rev. John Murray,” Ladies’ Repository, July 1845, 37.
25. For more on Universalist history and theology, see John A Buehrens and Forrest
Church, A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism (Boston: Beacon Press,
1998).
26. George Bethune, “Address to the Artists’ Fund Society, 1840, in James Reid
Lambdin Collection AAA, Reel P38.
27. Rev. Henry Bacon, “Children of Universalists,” Ladies’ Repository, April 1846, 398.
28. The Ladies’ Repository is the focus of my second book-length project, in process.
This magazine was not included in the original American Periodicals Series on microfilm
and, likewise, has not been digitized for the APS online series released by ProQuest.
Scholars must consult bound volumes in research libraries and archives, such as the
American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.
29. “Commission for Procuring New Subscribers,” the Eclectic, January 1844, front
matter.
30. In an April 1840 “Editor’s Table,” Godey claimed 17,500 subscribers; at that time,
Snowden claimed on the cover of his magazine 22,500 subscribers. See Mott, I, 628.
31. Viaduct on Baltimore and Washington Railroad (July 1839); The Narrows/From Fort
Hamilton (November 1839); East Port and Passamaquoddy Bay (March 1840); Washington’s
House, Mount Vernon and Harper’s Ferry/From the Potomac Side (May 1840); Boston and
Bunker Hill (July 1840); View from Mount Ida/Near Troy (September 1840); Light House
Near Caldwell’s Landing/Hudson River and Cemetery of Mount Auburn (November 1840);
View of Northumberland/On the Susquehanna (March 1841); The Indian Falls Near Cold
Springs/Opposite West Point (June 1841); Crow-Nest from Bull Hill/Hudson River (August
1841); Caldwell/Lake George (October 1841); View from Hyde Park/Hudson River (November
1841); View of the Capitol at Washington (December 1841); View of Baltimore (January
1842); Utica (February 1842); Village of Sing-Sing/Hudson River (April 1842); Washington/
From the President’s House (June 1842); Valley of the Connecticut (January 1844).
32. Philadelphia’s Port Folio was perhaps the earliest American monthly to feature
engravings from paintings targeting belles lettres works. For more on the genre of the
“literary painting,” see Gerdts, “Henry Inman: Genre Painter.”
NOT E S 185
33. The four Burns plates include Now Westlin’ Win’s (June 1839); Burns and His
Highland Mary (February 1840); Bess and Her Spinning Wheel (August 1840); and The Rigs
O’ Barley (February 1841).
34. Effie Deans (July 1841) and Madge Wildfire (January 1842) are characters from Heart
of Mid Lothian; Alice Bridgenorth (November 1841) is a character from Peveril of the Peak;
and Eveline Berenger (October 1839) from The Betrothed.
35. For more on Snowden’s fondness for his embellishments, see Robert W.
Weathersby II, “The Ladies’ Companion,” in Chielens, ed., American Literary Magazines,
195–99.
36. The Chinese engravings were modeled on those executed in London by Thomas
Allom for the two-volume series China in a Series of Views, Displaying the Scenery,
Architecture, and Social Habits of That Ancient Empire (London, Fisher, Son, 1843), originally
released in four installments. Allom’s great-great-granddaughter, Diana Brooks, reports
that Allom never traveled to China, instead producing his over 120 sketches of Chinese
culture by studying paintings and drawings in the British Museum contributed by earlier
travelers to China and by Chinese artists. See Diana Brooks, Thomas Allom (1804–1872)
(London: British Architectural Library, RIBA, 1998), 40.
37. Caroline Kirkland, “Introductory,” The Union Magazine of Art and Literature, July
1847, 1.
38. For a well-researched study of America’s intersection with Chinese culture in the
nineteenth century, see John Rogers Haddad, The Romance of China: Excursions to China in
U.S. Culture, 1776–1876 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), especially chapters
4 and 7. Also, see Steven Conn, “Where Is the East? Asian Objects in American Museums,
from Nathan Dunn to Charles Freer,” Winterthur Portfolio 35, no. 2–3 (2000): 157–73.
39. Although Roman Catholic priests had set up missions in China dating to the late
sixteenth century, Protestant missionary efforts really took off in the early 1800s. By the
mid-1830s, American booksellers were actively promoting works by British and American
missionaries to China, and newspapers and magazines regularly featured articles covering
missionary activity in China, reports on American trade with China, and reviews of books
on Chinese missionary and trade activity. See for example, “First American Trade with
China,” The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review (May 1841), 468; and a review of
the Rev. Charles Gutzlaff’s A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient and Modern, Comprising a
Retrospect of the Foreign Intercourse, and Trade with China, published in the Boston Recorder,
June 16, 1835, 9.
40. See for example, General James Tallmadge’s “Address Before the American
Institute at New York October 26, 1841,” reprinted in Niles’ National Register, January 8,
1842, which uses data on American imports and exports to argue for tariff protection for
American goods, and urges American entry into the production of goods like silk, then
heavily imported.
41. See, for example, T. B. Wakeman’s address before the eighth annual exhibition,
which includes a history of the Institute’s founding, reprinted in Mechanics’ Magazine and
Journal of the Mechanics’ Institute 5:2 (February 1835): 68ff.
42. “American Institute Fair,” American Agriculturist 2:5 (August 1843): 139.
43. For more on Inman’s literary career, see Sam G. Riley, “John Inman,” in American
Magazine Journalists, 1741–1850, ed. Sam G. Riley (Detroit: Gale Group, 1988), 192–96.
44. For information on Ormsby, see Groce and Wallace, 478.
186 N OTE S
45. See for example “An Apology,” The Columbian, January 1844, 46; and John Inman,
“A Legend of Chelsea Hospital,” The Columbian, August 1846, 94.
46. Groce and Wallace, 457.
47. For a study of representations of Pocahontas in American history, literature, and
visual culture, see Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: The Evolution of an American Narrative
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
48. Images of Washington were ubiquitous in the mid-nineteenth century. For a
discussion of some of the major paintings of Washington, see William H. Gerdts and
Mark Thistlethwaite, Grand Illusions: History Painting in America (Fort Worth: Amon
Carter Museum, 1988).
49. In his brief sketch of the magazine, Arthur Wrobel largely overlooks these belles
lettres plates, dismissing the embellishments as “pleasantly diverting” although “either
sentimental or edifying.” See Arthur Wrobel, “The Columbian Lady’s and Gentleman’s
Magazine,” in Chielens, ed., American Literary Magazines, 107–12.
50. A Philadelphia precursor to Graham’s, Atkinson’s Casket had published two plates
featuring similar scenes from the same Cooper novels that publisher Israel Post would
choose for the Columbian: Harvey Birch from The Spy (November 1837); and The Panther
Scene from The Pioneers (January 1837). These earlier copper plate engravings likely served
as Post’s inspiration for launching his magazine’s series of steel engravings based on
novel scenes. However, the Philadelphia pictorials offered nothing to compare with the
Columbian plates in the 1840s. As chapter 4 points out, Charles Peterson did begin to
commission art engravings to illustrate his continuing fictional tales after 1846; however,
none of the other Philadelphia illustrated monthlies copied Post’s decision to issue art
engravings depicting scenes from previously published American novels.
51. Elaborately detailed scenes such as these could be found in the mammoth daily
papers of the day. See William H. Truettner, “Storming the Teocalli—Again: Or, Further
Thoughts on Reading History Paintings,” American Art 9, no. 3 (1995): 57–95.
52. For a compelling take on the intersection of American empire and the ideology of
separate spheres, see Amy Kaplan, “Manifest Domesticity,” American Literature 70, no. 3
(1998): 581–606.
53. For a discussion of the rise of illustrated journalism, see Joshua Brown, Beyond
the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002).
54. For a discussion of Mexican War imagery, and particularly of Matteson’s
contributions to the Columbian and Sartain’s Union Magazine, see Robert W. Johannsen,
To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1985), especially chapters 5 and 8. See also Martha A. Sandweiss,
Rick Stewart, and Ben W. Huseman, Eyewitness to War: Prints and Daguerreotypes of the
Mexican War, 1846–1848 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989).
55. See Johannsen, chapter 1.
56. Although Mott cryptically noted that “there was no little exchanging of plates
among publications, and few of the magazines kept themselves free of the second-hand
vice” (I, 520), he offered no specific examples of this practice. Since few magazines listed
in the Index (which served as a table of contents) the artist or engraver for a particular
plate, and since OCD scanning techniques used to digitize these magazines rarely pick
up the artist and engraver attributions generally found in very small print beneath a
NOT E S 187
published engraving, it has been challenging for art historians to actually trace this
practice. However, I examined bound copies of all the magazines cited in this study, and
entered this information into a fully searchable database. In crosschecking engraving
titles, the results for the New Mirror stood out in this regard. While I could ascertain a few
traded plates between some of the other monthly magazines, nearly a fifth of the New
Mirror’s plates surfaced again in later illustrated monthly magazines.
57. David Dearinger has noted the importance of the New World to early American art
criticism. See his essay “Annual Exhibitions and the Birth of American Art Criticism to
1865,” in Rave Reviews: American Art and Its Critics, 1826–1925, especially 61–64.
58. Most of the recycled plates seem to have been sold to one of four monthly ladies’
magazines: The Ladies’ Repository (Boston); the other Ladies’ Repository (Cincinnati); The
Ladies’ Companion (New York); and the Mother’s Assistant (Boston).
59. William Snowden (or his successor at the Ladies’ Companion) appears to have sold
off two of his China plates to the New Mirror after publishing them in his own magazine:
The Culture and Preparation of Tea appeared first in August 1843 in Snowden’s magazine,
then again in the July 27, 1844, issue of the New Mirror. The Duke and Duchess Reading
Don Quixote appeared first in Snowden’s monthly May 1843, then again in Morris’s
weekly September 7, 1844. Mott reports that changes in post office regulations that
treated the weekly as a magazine, thereby charging much higher postage, led to the
publisher’s decision to switch formats once again, and publish a daily newspaper instead,
with a weekly supplement renamed the Weekly Mirror, to be sent to former New Mirror
subscribers. See Mott I, 329.
60. For a brief history of the Methodist Book Concern, see David Dzwonkoski, “The
Methodist Book Concern,” in American Literary Publishing Houses, 1638–1889, ed. David
Dzwonkoski (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 1986), 304–10.
61. “Editor’s Table,” the Ladies’ Repository, January 1846, 32.
62. Rev. E. Thomson, “Valedictory,” the Ladies’ Repository, July 1846, 221.
63. The February 1847 issue, for example, featured “The Poetry of the Hebrews” by
Professor Waterman, and “Literature and Mental Cultivation” by Professor E. W. Merrill.
The March issue follows with an article on the development of the printing press by
Bishop Morris, and another on “The Family Library,” by Rev. A. Stevens.
64. The Frankensteins were the Peales of Cincinnati: six siblings became painters—
Eliza, George, Godfrey, Gustavus, John, and Marie. See Groce and Wallace, 238–39.
65 Godfrey made his first trip to sketch the falls of Niagara in 1844, and dedicated
most of his life’s work to scenery thereabouts. See Groce and Wallace, 238–39.
66. Safford’s early precocity and subsequent life and academic career were covered
widely in the American news media. See, for example, “Mr. T. H. Safford, Mathematician
and Astronomer,” The Round Table 3:47 (July 28, 1866): 467–68, published at the time
Safford left Cambridge Observatory in Boston to run the new Chicago Observatory. He
died in 1901 after a long and illustrious career. See “Obituary,” New York Observer and
Chronicle 79:25 (June 20, 1901): 800.
67. The magazine published a second mezzotint portrait in January 1852, Young
Mathematician in a Fix, which appears to be a second portrait of a slightly older Stafford,
but nothing in the editorial description of the plate nor in the magazine contents
identifies it as such. The mathematic problem illustrated in the engraving appears to be a
simple equation the youth is attempting to work out on a small chalkboard held in his lap,
188 N OTE S
so it may be unlikely that this could be Stafford—whose genius allowed him to complete
highly complex calculations in his head.
CH AP TER 5
1. Gratz American Literary Duplicates Collection, Case 7, Box 31, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania. For a brief history of the additional publishing ventures of the firm Carey
& Lea, see David Kaser, “Carey & Lea,” in Publishers for Mass Entertainment in Nineteenth
Century America, ed. Madeline B. Stern (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980), 73–80.
2. Frank Luther Mott specifically points to this practice in Godey’s in his sketch of
the magazine. See Mott, I, 591. Also see Allison Bulsterbaum, “Godey’s Lady’s Book,” in
Chielens, ed., American Literary Magazines, 144–50. However, archival evidence, as well
as evidence within the magazines themselves, demonstrates that the other Philadelphia
periodicals followed this practice to varying degrees throughout the decade. Art historian
William Gerdts has chronicled a corollary practice, ekphrasis, which he defines as “the
literary representation of the visual arts” in his essay for the 2000 National Academy
of Design collection Rave Reviews: American Art and Its Critics, 1826–1925 (New York:
National Academy of Design, 2000), 145–157. Although Gerdts focuses specifically on
poetry composed upon the occasion of viewing a work of art, and positions this poetry as
a kind of art criticism, Gerdts seems unaware of the fact that many magazine engravings
were illustrated by poems (although he does mention an 1832 Godey’s poem entitled
“The Portrait: A Sketch,” which relies in its narrative setup on the narrator’s viewing of a
fictitious portrait hanging in a gallery exhibition [Gerdts 152]).
3. Recent scholarly work has focused on the importance of the literary salon to mid-
nineteenth-century American writers. For example, on the importance of literary salons
to the career of Edgar Allan Poe, see Eliza Richards, Gender and the Poetics of Reception in
Poe’s Circle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), especially her introduction.
See also Charlene Avallone, “Catharine Sedgwick and the Circles of New York,” Legacy:
A Journal of American Women Writers 23, no. 2 (2006): 115–31. Joanne Dobson’s article
on Frances S. Osgood’s erotic poetry is another good example of the importance of
literary sociability to understanding an author’s work. See Joanne Dobson, “Sex, Wit and
Sentiment: Frances Osgood and the Poetry of Love,” American Literature 65, no. 4 (1993):
631–50.
4. For example, after popular writer and editor Joseph C. Neal died in July 1847,
Godey, Graham, and Peterson appear to have steered work to his widow. Between July
1847 and the end of the decade, nearly two dozen poems and short tales by his widow,
Mrs. Joseph C. Neal, appeared in the three magazines. By contrast, none of her work is
recorded prior to June 1847. It seems likely that the three publishers proceeded from dual
motives: both out of sympathy for Mrs. Neal and a desire to come to her aid and—by
virtue of prominently featuring her name on her submissions—to capitalize on the
literary reputation of her deceased husband to benefit sales of their own periodicals.
5. For a collection of essays devoted to the contributions of various women authors
to periodical literature, see Aleta Feinsod Cane and Susan Alves, eds., “The Only Efficient
Instrument”: American Women Writers and the Periodical, 1837–1916 (Iowa City: University
of Iowa Press, 2001).
NOT E S 189
6. See “Editor’s Book Table,” Godey’s, May 1850, 359.

7. See Smillie’s “Memoirs: A Pilgrimage,” Archives of American Art reel 1710, frame 24.
Smillie does provide a predominance of Graham’s engravings for 1844 and 1845.
8. For example, John Sartain, with the shoe on the other foot after taking on the
responsibilities of publishing his own magazine, writes to Charles G. Leland, just after
completing the February 1852 issue of the magazine, that he will need the illustration for
“Raffaelle” intended for the March issue “as soon as possible.” Item number 76x414 of the
Winterthur Library Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera.
9. See Georgia B. Barnhill, “Felix Octavius Carr Darley,” American Book and Magazine
Illustrators to 1920, ed. Steven E. Smith (Detroit: Gale Group, 1998), 60–67.
10. As quoted in Patricia Okker, Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale and the Tradition of
the Nineteenth-Century American Women Editors (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1995), 96.
11. I have found no manuscript or magazine evidence to suggest that George Graham
ever wrote textual illustrations to accompany engravings in his magazine, although after
his financial troubles between 1848–50, he did write an editor’s column that attempted to
cozy up to readers disappointed by the impact of his financial troubles on the magazine’s
pictorial and literary content.
12. Nearly two dozen short poems and sketches by Hale, with titles matching the
engravings, appeared in Godey’s in the early 1840s. Similar illustrations, likely also by
Hale, continued to appear in the magazine during the second half of the decade, most
without authorial attribution. It appears that Hale gradually found other writers to
replace her to provide the bulk of the illustrations for the engravings; among the little-
known writers who shouldered the responsibility for this task were a Professor W. J.
Walter, a Professor Frost, and Miss Virginia Deforest. Godey particularly singled out
the first of these in a July 1841 “Editor’s Book Table” column “COMMENCEMENT OF A
NEW AND BEAUTIFUL VOLUME” (48), by mentioning two steel engravings prepared by
Archibald L. Dick and noting, “How well has Professor Walter illustrated them!”
13. In his “Editors’ Book Table” column for November 1842 (251), Godey announces
in a special section “TO OUR READERS” that “Mrs. Sarah J. Hale will illustrate one of
the plates in the December number.” In addition, he notes, “Miss Virginia Deforest, our
new contributor, has won golden opinions by her illustrations of our plates.” Also in this
column, Godey announces, “Mrs. E. F. Ellet. We have two articles on hand written by this
lady, one of them illustrative of a splendid steel plate.”
14. “The Bride of Ceylon,” March 1844, 125; “The Reaper’s Friend,” December 1844,
269; “The Love-Letter,” March 1845, 135; “The Flowers,” July 1845, 32; “The Love Token,”
December 1845, 282; “The Young Cavalier,” January 1846, 44; “Catherine Seyton,” February
1846, 73; “The Parting,” April 1846, 174; “The Greeks at the Well,” September 1846, 119;
“The Two Friends,” November 1846, 251; “Hawking,” January 1847, 81; “Pittsburgh,” April
1847, 249; “Miriam,” July 1847, 36.
15. Tuckerman also appears to have been perennially short on cash. His May 9, 1843,
letter to Griswold reads, “[A.L.?] Dick showed me his engraving of Hoffman, yesterday.
It is a very pretty thing, but, between ourselves, no likeness. Advise me when you want
the sketch to accompany it.” In several other letters to Griswold, Tuckerman requests
$10 in advance for poems he has submitted for Graham’s. See the Gratz American Poets
collection, Case 6, Box 36, HSP.
190 NOT ES
16. In a letter to Griswold dated September 10, 1842, Sargent writes, “I will send you
a story for the picture—probably in one week—certainly in two. I shall charge you for it
$25, and if the terms are acceptable, your silence shall be considered an answer.” See Gratz
American Literary Duplicates, Case 6, Box 35, HSP.
17. The complicated ways in which authorship was gendered in the mid-nineteenth
century has interested feminist literary historians for the past several decades, dating
back to the work of Elaine Showalter, Judith Fetterly, Nina Baym, Mary Kelley, Mary
Ryan, and others. More recent work, like Eliza Richards’s study of Poe and his circle,
seeks to complicate our understanding of the connections between gender and genre. It
does seem clear, from literary correspondences and from contemporary pronouncements
in the press, that these illustrated monthly magazines were gendered “feminine” as a
literary genre, regardless of the specific gender of contributing authors, or of the intended
audience(s).
18. Heidi M. Schultz, “The Editor’s Desk at Sartain’s Magazine: 1849–1851,” American
Periodicals 6 (1996): 95.
19. See Stephen Meats, “The Letters of Henry William Herbert, ‘Frank Forester,’
1815—1858” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 1972), xi.
20. Unpublished letter from Hannah F. Gould to Sarah Joseph Hale dated 22 Feb. 1847,
in the Louis A. Godey collection at The Athenaeum of Philadelphia.
21. Meats, “Letters,” 136. Also see Stephen Meats, “Henry William Herbert,” in
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 3: Antebellum Writers in New York and the South, ed.
Joel Myerson (Detroit: Gale Group, 1979), 150–59.
22. Herbert’s life provides a cautionary tale about the excesses of male “sporting
culture” in the major Eastern Seaboard cities. A published biography of his longtime
friend, publisher George R. Graham, indicates that both Herbert and Graham had
drinking problems; see J. Albert Robbins, “George R. Graham, Philadelphia Publisher,”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 75 (1951): 279–94. For more on the lures
of sporting culture, see Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual
Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Vintage, 2003);
Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); and
Timothy J. Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of
Sex, 1790–1920 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992).
23. As Meats states in his notes to this letter, Herbert here is likely referring to
the short sketch he submitted to accompany Highland Sport, an engraving published
September 1843 in Graham’s. Meats, “Letters,” 142–43.
24. Meats, “Letters,” 142–43.
25. In an early content analysis of the images in these magazines, I catalogued
approximately 150 of these idealized images of women out of a total of 1,000 engravings
published between 1847 and 1852.
26. Meats, “Letters,” 136. Meats, obviously unaware of the practice of editors to send
proof sheets of the engravings to authors, writes that “Herbert evidently sent a picture
along with the sonnet, with a note of explanation.” Clearly, Herbert was returning
the proof sheet of the engraving to Griswold along with his sonnet. Meats classifies
Herbert’s magazine writing as “hackwork,” and there is substantial evidence from
Herbert’s letters, such as the one quoted here, that he essentially considered it in the
same light.
NOT E S 191
27. On the popularity of Kirkland’s western sketches for these magazines, see Scott
Peeples, “‘The Servant Is as His Master’: Western Exceptionalism in Caroline Kirkland’s
Short Fiction,” American Transcendentalist Quarterly 13, no. 4 (1999): 304–16.
28. See Mary De Jong, “Frances Sargent Osgood,” in Antebellum Writers in New York,
Second Series, ed. Kent P. Ljungquist (Detroit: Gale Group, 2001), 275–284.
29. Rufus Griswold insisted, in his literary tribute to Osgood after her death, that
Samuel had gone to California to recover his own health and to increase his fortune for
the sake of his family.
30. Thomas Sully also painted this subject (1846), as did George W. Conarroe. It
seems likely that both Sully and Conarroe worked either from Sartain’s engraving, or
from a copy of the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence on which Sartain’s engraving is
based. For a discussion of Sully’s painting, see Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,
Catalogue of the Memorial Exhibition of Portraits by Thomas Sully, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia:
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1922), 108. For a view of the Conarroe painting,
see Philadelphia Museum of Art, Paintings from Europe and the Americas in the Philadelphia
Museum of Art (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1994), 267.
31. Evidently, some versions of the tale are even darker, with hints of human
cannibalism—Little Red Riding Hood gobbling up her granny before being gobbled up by
the wolf.
32. See especially the work of Mary De Jong: “Lines from a Partly Published Drama:
The Romance of Frances Sargent Osgood and Edgar Allan Poe,” in Shirley Marchalonis,
ed., Patrons and Protogees: Gender, Friendship, and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 31–58; “‘Read Here Thy Name
Concealed’: Frances Osgood’s Poems on Parting with Edgar Allan Poe,” Poe Studies/Dark
Romanticism: History, Theory, Interpretation 32:1–2 (1999): 27–40; and De Jong, “Frances
Sargent Osgood,” in Antebellum Writers in New York, Second Series, 275–284.
33. In the tribute volume to Osgood edited by Mary E. Hewitt, Griswold claims that he
had to convince Osgood, on her deathbed, that she was, in fact, dying; see The Memorial:
Written by Friends of the Late Mrs. Osgood and Edited by Mary E. Hewitt (New York: George
P. Putnam, 1851), 16. In his tribute to her in Sartain’s Union, July 1850, 52, John Hart
claims that her death had been unexpected by her close friends.
34. Frances S. Osgood to John S. Hart, November 11, 1849, Gratz American Literary
Duplicates, Case 6, Box 33, HSP.
35. For a collection of essays that examines the myriad ways that women writers
negotiated with male editors and publishers, and used their periodical writings to advance
specific social causes and to critically examine gender ideologies, see Cane and Alves, eds.,
“The Only Efficient Instrument”: American Women Writers and the Periodical, 1837–1916.
36. Lydia Huntley Sigourney, who also wrote illustrations for the periodical
embellishments, had offered to do the same thing for Hart, suggesting that she could
“re-model” her lines on the “Sleeping Child,” which she had previously submitted to
Sartain’s, but which the magazine had not yet used. See Schultz, “The Editor’s Desk
at Sartain’s Magazine: 1849–1851,” 102. Schultz uncovered a cache of letters from
contributing authors to editor Hart. In this same essay, Schultz publishes Grace
Greenwood’s letter acknowledging her contribution to the magazine that ended up
substituting for the illustration Kirkland declined to provide (noted above), a ballad
“Arnold de Winkelreid.” See Schultz, 100.
192 N OTE S
37. On Osgood’s erotic poetry see Dobson, “Sex, Wit and Sentiment.”
38. Joy S. Kasson, Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American
Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 46–72.
39. See Dobson, “Sex, Wit and Sentiment,” 663. Also see Paula Bernat Bennett,
“Laughing All the Way to the Bank: Female Sentimentalists in the Marketplace, 1825–
1850,” Studies in American Humor 3, no. 9 (2002): 11–25.
40. Similar images in these magazines include: The Indian Maid, Godey’s, November
1840; The Captives, Graham’s, February 1843; The Chief ’s Daughter, Graham’s, February
1845; The Indian Maiden’s Reply, the Columbian, June 1847; and The Forest Queen, Peterson’s,
November 1850. For scholarly discussions of the Indian maiden figure in American art,
see Steven Conn, History’s Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the
Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Robert F. Berkhofer Jr.,
The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978); Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1998); and Kasson, Marble Queens and Captives.
41. See Mary G. De Jong, “Lines from a Partly Published Drama: The Romance of Frances
Sargent Osgood and Edgar Allan Poe,” in Patrons and Protegees: Gender, Friendship, and
Writing in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Shirley Marchalonies (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1988), 31–58; De Jong, “‘Read Here Thy Name Concealed’”; and Mary
G. De Jong, “Frances Sargent Locke Osgood (1811–1850),” in Writers of the American
Renaissance, ed. Denise D. Knight (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003), 275–84.
42. On the life of Oakes Smith, see Veronica Margrave, “Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806–
1893),” in Knight, ed., Writers of the American Renaissance, 277–81; Timothy H. Scherman,
“Elizabeth Oakes Smith,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography 239: American Women Prose
Writers, 1820–1870 (Detroit: Gale Research, 2000), 222–30. Also see literary biography
of Oakes Smith in “Our Female Poets, No. 1” by Charles J. Peterson, Ladies National
Magazine, September 1843, 88–89.
43. Seba Smith to Carey & Hart, March 25, 1842, in the Edward Carey Gardiner
Collection, Box 82, folder 15, HSP.
44. Ibid.
45. Elizabeth Oakes Smith to Rufus S. Griswold, June 13, 1842, Gratz American Poets
Collection, Case 7, Box 9, HSP.
46. For a comparative analysis of the various types of female heroines in Godey’s
fictional tales 1837–38 and 1857–58, see Janice Hume, “Defining the Historic American
Heroine: Changing Characteristics of Heroic Women in Nineteenth-Century Media,”
Journal of Popular Culture 31, no. 1 (1997): 1–21.
47. See Laura Prieto’s analysis of a self-portrait by Sarah Miriam Peale in At Home
in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2001), 14.
48. The academic debate over the ideology of “separate spheres” is nicely summarized
in Cathy Davidson and Jessamyn Hatcher’s introduction to their 2002 collection No
More Separate Spheres!, Cathy N. Davidson and Jessamyn Hatcher, eds. (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2002).
49. Elizabeth Oakes Smith to Rufus S. Griswold, June 13, 1842, Gratz American Poets
Collection, Case 7, Box 9, HSP.
50. See Margrave, “Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806–1893),” 277.
NOT E S 193
51. Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Woman and Her Needs (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1851),
55, 66.
52. See Susan Belasco, “Elizabeth Oakes Smith,” in The American Renaissance in New
England, Fourth Series, ed. Wesley T. Mott (Detroit: Gale Group, 2001), 273–280.
53. See Audrey Roberts, “The Letters of Caroline Kirkland” (Ph.D. diss., University of
Wisconsin, 1972), 1231. For additional biographical details on Matteson and a review of
some of his better-known paintings, see Frank Weitenkampf, American Graphic Art, with a
New Introduction by E. Maurice Bloch (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1970). See also Hills,
The Painter’s America: Rural and Urban Life, 1810–1910; Hermann Warner Williams, Mirror
to the American Past: A Survey of American Genre Painting: 1750–1900 (Greenwich, CT: New
York Graphic Society, 1973); William H. Truettner, ed., The West as America: Reinterpreting
Images of the Frontier, 1820–1920 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1991).
54. On the establishment of the magazine and its connection to the Art-Union, see
Nichols, The Fashioning of Middle-Class America, 9–32, 86.
55. Kirkland mentions viewing Hiram Powers’s “The Greek Slave” in her “Editorial
Miscellany” for October 1847. Her letters indicate her enthusiasm for the statue, but in
the editorial space, she writes, “We are delighted to offer our readers something from a
competent pen . . . ,” alluding to the inclusion in the October issue of a review of Powers’s
work by Orville Dewey. She continues: “The passionate admiration which it excites is so
new among us, that we wait for the better-informed to account to us for our own feelings,
and to sanction our emotions by the assurance that what we admire in our newness is no
less approved by those who have, at great cost of time and study, learned to judge.” In a
letter addressed to Minor Kellog dated January 7, 1848, she writes of taking “a last look
at your beauty” (Kellog was directing a traveling exhibition of the statue). See AAA Reel
D-30, frame 71.
56. See letter to Taylor from London dated May 17, 1848 (Roberts 173). While in
England and separated briefly from her friends the Bellows, she wrote to them that
she was attempting to meet with some of the English artists who prepared designs for
the illustrated periodicals because her brother Joseph pronounced their work “very
superior” while confiding that he believed they worked for “cheaper” than the American
artists (Roberts 188). During this European voyage, she also attempted actively to
solicit contributions from English writers for the Union. Her actions here seem a bit
peculiar because, in her editorial voice for the magazine, she espouses the importance
of promoting American art and literature. She later explains to her newly appointed
co-editor, John Hart, that English writers expect to be paid more than their American
counterparts (Roberts 209). Her attempt to promote better pay for both American and
European writers contributing to the periodicals appears to have been balanced by an
effort to reduce the capital outlay for the magazine’s illustrations.
57. The Mexican War proved to be a popular subject for mid-century genre
paintings. Matteson’s design News from the War reworks similarly titled paintings by his
contemporaries by focusing not on excited male readers reveling in the news of American
victories, but on the prostrate and grieving widow of a soldier whose death is announced
in the paper. For a view of James Goodwyn Clonney’s Mexican News, also from 1847, see
Taylor, America as Art, 43. See Johns, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday
Life, Plate 1 and 180, for a treatment of Richard Caton Woodville’s War News from Mexico,
dated 1848.
194 N OTE S
58. Matteson’s paintings on the Mexican War have not received the attention granted
to similar work by his contemporaries, Richard Caton Woodville (War News from Mexico)
and James Goodwyn Clonney (Mexican News). Perhaps this is because Woodville’s and
Clonney’s are clearly genre paintings, focusing on views of Americans receiving the news
of the war, while Matteson’s work is clearly historical and, as Kirkland complains, focused
on bloody battle scenes. In addition to the two paintings published in the Union and
mentioned here, Matteson executed several others for the Columbian, as noted in chapter
4, and at least one other, Storming of the Castle of Chapultapec: by the American Army under
General Scott, September 13, 1847, which appeared as an engraving in Pictorial Brother
Jonathan. On this third design see William H. Truettner, “Storming the Teocalli—Again:
Or, Further Thoughts on Reading History Paintings,” American Art 9, no. 3: 75.
59. The setting is also reminiscent of similar genre paintings by better-known
Matteson contemporaries William Sidney Mount and Francis W. Edmonds.
60. Kirkland later met Cruickshank during her European travels in 1848. She
pronounced him a “funny looking fellow,” with “the true artist temperament—nervous,
tender, full of irritability and egotism,” but concedes that he is a man “of great worth and
honesty.” See Roberts 190.
61. Matteson’s design echoes Richard Caton Woodville’s 1846 The Card Players, as well
as William Sidney Mount’s earlier Raffling for the Goose (1837). For a discussion of these
paintings see Johns, American Genre Painting, 180, 38–41.
62. This same engraving appears in the 1853 annual The Winter Wreath, edited by
Nathaniel Parker Willis. The annual credits the original artist, Matteson, and the original
engraver, Milo Osborne, but the accompanying textual illustration is written by Willis.
63. On the issue of women and novel reading, see Amy Beth Aronson, Taking Liberties:
Early American Women’s Magazines and Their Readers (Westport: Praeger, 2002), 51; and
Ellen K. Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1987), 40. On the ways that Godey’s contributed to both the
visual and literary discourse on women’s reading habits, see Okker, especially chapter 5,
on “Women’s Reading.”
64. For more on the moral reform melodramas, see Bruce A. McConachie,
Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and Society, 1820–1870 (Iowa City: University
of Iowa Press, 1992), particularly chapter 6, “We Will Restore You to Society.” For the
connection between temperance reform and moral reform melodramas, see John W.
Frick, Theatre, Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), particularly chapter 4, “Reform comes to Broadway:
temperance on America’s mainstream stages.” Frick points out that Cruikshank’s The
Bottle series became popular as a kind of tableaux vivants performed on the Broadway
stage.
65. For more on Kirkland’s understanding of her editorial role, see Okker, Our Sister
Editors, 17–18; and Nichols, The Fashioning of Middle-Class America, 9–11.
66. For more on these courtship scenes, see Sarah Burns, “Yankee Romance: The
Comic Courtship Scene in Nineteenth-Century American Art,” American Art Journal 18,
no. 4: 51–75. Also, see Hills, The Painter’s America, especially discussion of Matteson’s
Now or Never, 1849; William Sidney Mount’s The Sportsman’s Last Visit, 1835; and Francis
William Edmonds, The City and the Country Beaux, 1840. Also see Francis William
NOT E S 195
Edmonds’s The Bashful Cousin, 1841—42, in Franklin Kelly, American Paintings of the
Nineteenth Century, Part I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
67. I am indebted to Janice Simon for pointing out to me these details, and suggesting
their link to a long tradition of western iconology around issues of male virility and
female virginity (and the loss thereof). For more on this iconology, see Kathleen Russo, “A
Comparison of Rousseau’s ‘Julie’ with the Heroines of Greutze and Fuselli,” Woman’s Art
Journal 8, no. 1 (1987): 3–7.
68. See Roberts, “Letters,” 268. For an additional discussion of Kirkland’s problems
with Sartain, see Nichols, The Fashioning of Middle-Class America, 24–26.
69. See Nichols, The Fashioning of Middle-Class America, 24.
CHA PT ER 6
1. Godey’s office was located first at 212, then 101 Chestnut, also referred to as
Publisher’s Hall. Graham’s and Peterson’s were located at 98 Chestnut, in a building owned
by Peterson’s brother, the book publisher and seller. The Art-Union of Philadelphia
opened an office at 160 Chestnut Street.
2. Just to take several recent examples, see Isabel Lehuu’s Carnival on the Page: Popular
Print Media in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000);
and Okker, Our Sister Editors. Okker’s sole use of images of women in the Lady’s Book is
perhaps understandable, as her focus is on “women’s reading” and how it was pictured in
the book. However, Lehuu’s book purports to cover “popular print media in antebellum
America,” yet she, too, focuses almost solely on images of women in the illustrated
annuals and monthly magazines. Most historians of all ilk (literary, cultural, art) have
allowed these sentimental images of women and children to stand in for the whole of
the “art” in these magazines, and that oversight colors most previous treatment of these
magazines.
3. For a discussion of the popularity of similar images of idealized womanhood in
British illustrated periodicals of the same era, see Anderson, The Printed Image and the
Transformation of Popular Culture 1790–1860.
4. Graham seems particularly concerned with maintaining the male readerships he
inherited with the purchase of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. For more on the articles
targeting Burton’s male readers, see Robert S. Hughes Jr., “Burton’s Gentleman’s
Magazine,” in Chielens, ed., American Literary Magazines, 90–94.
5. Both Godey and Sartain featured columns devoted to coverage of the arts and art
criticism, but that is not the primary focus of this analysis. For an excellent overview of
the contribution of Sartain’s Union Magazine to the promotion of the arts, see Nichols, The
Fashioning of Middle-Class America, chapter 3.
6. Scholars generally refer to this line of inquiry as analysis of audience address or
audience interpolation. See Williamson, Decoding Advertisements, and Jhally, The Codes of
Advertising.
7. On Stephens’s serialized fiction, see Okker, Social Stories.
8. Obviously, all the magazines in this study targeted a white, upwardly mobile
reading audience. For ladies’ magazines targeting African American women readers,
196 N OTE S
see Noliwe M. Rooks, Ladies’ Pages: African American Women’s Magazines and the Culture
That Made Them (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004).
9. Peterson astutely points out that this annual provides twelve engraved steel plates,
like similar English annuals, and yet is priced well below the $8.00 English competitors. In
bundling the annual with his magazine, he offered his readers more engraved matter, at a
lower cost, than they could possibly secure elsewhere.
10. For a discussion of the serialized novel Palaces and Prisons, and the connection
between serialized fiction and American national identity, see Okker, Social Stories,
especially chapter 3.
11. For a discussion of this issue, see Ellen Gruber Garvey’s foreword to Sharon
M. Harris, ed., Blue Pencils and Hidden Hands: Women Editing Periodicals, 1830–1910
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), xi. Also see Jennifer Scanlon, Inarticulate
Longings: The Ladies’ Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture (New
York: Routledge, 1995); and Helen Damon-Moore, Magazines for the Millions: Gender and
Commerce in the Ladies’ Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post 1880–1910 (Albany:
State University of New York, 1994), note 15, 213.
12. See Mott, I, 580–82. On Hale’s editorial voice, see Okker, Our Sister Editors,
particularly 31–33.
13. See Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 111, 228.
14. See, for example, Denning, especially page 27; and Felicia L. Carr, “All for Love:
Gender, Class, and the Woman’s Dime Novel in Nineteenth-Century America” (Ph.D.
diss., George Mason University, 2003).
15. In announcing his return to ownership of his magazine in July 1850, Graham
reveals that “Jeremy Short” is, in fact, his old publishing pal, Charles Peterson (44).
16. See Anna Wells Rutledge, Cumulative Record of Exhibition Catalogues: The
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 1807–1870; the Society of Artists, 1800–1814; the
Artists’ Fund Society, 1835–1845 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1955),
Foreword, 1.
17. The Art-Union appears to have formed as early as 1843. Peterson’s May 1843 issue
contains a column, “The Fine Arts,” that reviews the Eighth Annual Exhibition of the
Artists’ Fund Society, which had opened April 5. Peterson plugs the Art-Union, hoping for
the association “to receive a crowd of members” (Peterson’s, May 1843, 160)
18. The January 1848 issue of Graham’s Magazine includes a full-page ad at the
rear of the issue announcing the “American Art-Union of Philadelphia” and offering
memberships at $5.00. Sartain and Graham are prominently listed as “managers” of the
new organization. Godey, Graham, and Sartain are listed as members of the New York-
based American Art-Union. See Cowdrey, American Academy of Fine Arts and the American
Art-Union 1816-1852.
19. See “Editors’ Book Table,” Godey’s, December 1850, 385. In his June 1850 “Editor’s
Book Table,” Godey reports having printed 68,500 copies of the January 1850 number
to date (421). By December 1850, his “Editors’ Book Table” notes that he printed 70,000
copies of both the November and December 1850 issues, and surmises editions of
100,000 for 1851 (386).
20. Sully exhibited this painting at the 1844 Artists’ Fund Society Exhibition, where it
was listed in the catalogue as belonging to “G. R. Graham. See Rutledge, Cumulative Record
of Exhibition Catalogues, 223.
NOT E S 197
21. Although most of the major surveys of nineteenth-century American art feature at
least one painting from both Sully and Leutze, these surveys largely overlook Rothermel,
Conarroe, and Croome. In addition, previous scholarly treatment of these artists has been
problematic. Art historians like James Thomas Flexner are haughtily dismissive of the
work of Sully and Leutze. Following the lead of Sully biographers (as discussed in chapter
2), Flexner blames Sully’s weakening vision for his “nauseous sentimentality.” Flexner
finds most of Leutze’s paintings “repulsive” (except Washington Crossing the Delaware) and
complains that he used a “too facile brush and too bombastic temperament.” See James
Thomas Flexner, Nineteenth Century American Painting (New York: Putnam, 1970), 34
(Sully), 143 (Leutze). Other art historians less dismissive of Leutze nonetheless mention
only his historical paintings. See Hills, The Painter’s America, 25. Joshua Taylor features
only Leutze’s 1861 Westward the Course of Empire Its Way, the other Leutze painting
generally mentioned, if Leutze is mentioned at all. See Taylor, America as Art, 134. Barbara
Novak features another historical painting, Washington Rallying the Troops at Monmouth,
pronouncing it “highly theatrical.” See Barbara Novak, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection:
Nineteenth-Century American Painting (New York: Vendome Press, 1986), 198. Elizabeth
Johns talks only about Sully’s paintings of mothers, children, and “rural pleasures,” and
claims these were themes “popular in England,” but makes no attempt to assess their
popularity in America. See Johns, American Genre Painting, 4, 44. None of these surveys of
nineteenth-century art discusses Rothermel, Conarroe, or Croome, and all seem equally
dismissive of “popular” taste, when they discuss the subject at all.
Several more recent articles and monographs begin to redress this imbalance. For
example, in addition to the work of William Truettner on Leutze, noted elsewhere, see
Jochen Wienrich’s dissertation, which includes a chapter on Leutze: “The Domestication
of History in American Art: 1848–1876.” Ph.D. diss., The College of William and Mary,
1998. In Dissertations & Theses: A&I [database on-line]; available from www.proquest.
com (publication number AAT 9936911; accessed June 29, 2009). Rothermel’s relationship
with the engraver John Sartain is the subject of a chapter by Mark Thistlethwaite in
Katharine Martinez and Page Talbott’s wonderful compilation; see Martinez and Talbott,
eds., Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape: The Sartain Family Legacy, 39–50. More recent
surveys provide richer social and cultural contexts for American art. See, for example,
Pohl, Framing America, and Craven, American Art. However, even these survey texts fail
to adequately address art engravings in the nineteenth century. Given the importance of
these magazines to the circulation of American art, this would seem to be an oversight.
22. Because the primary focus of this chapter is the relationship between these
illustrated magazines and the larger Philadelphia art community, I do not here include
statistical data on the work of these artists exhibited in other cities, such as New York,
Baltimore, Boston, and the like.
23. See Rutledge, Cumulative Record of Exhibition Catalogues, entries on Sully,
Rothermel, Leutze, Conarroe, and Croome.
24. See Godey’s column on “THE FASHION PLATES” in the April 1843 issue, 204.
Godey boasts, “Formerly the proportions of the figures were somewhat disregarded in
exhibiting the dress; but since we have obtained the valuable aid of Mr. Croome, the
claims of good taste and artistical [sic] fidelity in drawing the figure are fully recognized.”
25. Rutledge, Cumulative Record of Exhibition Catalogues, entry on Thomas Sully. Sully’s
Register of Paintings for 1842 includes a listing for a “bust of Mrs. Graham.” See AAA, Reel
D18, listings for 1842.
198 N OTE S
26. See Rutledge, Cumulative Record of Exhibition Catalogues, 349. Read would go on
to prepare the 1849 Female Poets of America anthology, containing engravings of original
portraits of the poets painted by Read and engraved by Joseph Ives Pease. Pease also
engraved for Godey and Graham in this decade.
27. For the information on Graham’s ownership of paintings, including one listed
as “Portrait of a Lady by Thomas Sully,” see Rutledge, Cumulative Record of Exhibition
Catalogues, 321. J. Albert Robbins dates the painting of this portrait to 1842. See J. Albert
Robbins, “George R. Graham, Philadelphia Publisher,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History
and Biography 75 (1951): 286.
28. See Thomas Sully, “Register of Paintings 1801–71,” in Thomas Sully Papers, AAA,
Reel D18.
29. See Thomas Sully, “Journal of Thomas Sully,” in Thomas Sully Collection, AAA, Reel
A18 frames 1792ff.
30. See Sully, “Register of Paintings 1801–71,” AAA, Reel D18.
31. Mary Chester Sully was the daughter of Sully’s wife, Sarah Annis Sully, and Sully’s
brother, Lawrence. Thomas Sully married his brother’s widow, took in their children, and
then he and Sarah had children of their own. The Sully features are distinctive in both the
portrait of Mary Chester Sully and The Rose & The Lily.
32. For a brief biography of Leutze, see Groce and Wallace, The New-York Historical
Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America 1564–1860, 395–96. For more about relationships
between the artists living on “Art Row” see Mark Thistlethwaite’s chapter “John Sartain
and Peter F. Rothermel,” in Martinez and Talbott, eds., Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape:
The Sartain Family Legacy, 40. For Leuzte’s addresses during the 1840s see Rutledge, 128.
33. These “Our Artist” columns went unsigned, and until this project, scholars had not
discovered that they were written by Henry T. Tuckerman. However, a careful comparison
of these columns against Tuckerman’s 1847 Artist-Life: or Sketches of American Painters,
reveals them to be the work of Tuckerman. This fact places Tuckerman’s art writings at
an earlier date than previously noted by art historian David Dearinger. See Dearinger’s
chapter “Annual Exhibitions and the Birth of American Art Criticism to 1865” in
Dearinger, ed., Rave Reviews, 76.
34. See Rutledge, Cumulative Record of Exhibition Catalogues, 358.
35. For similar embellishments and accompanying illustrations in Graham’s, see The
Penitent Son, August 1841; The Young Shepherd, July 1845; The Young Deserter, October
1845; The Young Cavalier, July 1845; and The Young Astronomer, February 1846.
36. See 1844 Artists’’ Fund Society Exhibition Catalogue and Rutledge, 51–52.
37. The engraving is by William A. Wilmer, a line and stipple engraver who was a
pupil of James Barton Longacre and had done work for Longacre on the National Portrait
Gallery. “Portrait of Mother and Child” was listed in 1848 as one of the “Stationary
Paintings” on display at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. See Groce and Wallace,
692; Rutledge, Cumulative Record of Exhibition Catalogues, 52.
38. Rothermel and Sartain also collaborated on illustrations for the gift books. See
Mark Thistlethwaite, “John Sartain and Peter F. Rothermel,” in Martinez and Talbott, eds.,
Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape: The Sartain Family Legacy, 39–50.
39. The 1844 Artists’ Fund Society Catalogue indicates that the painting was owned by
“E. Clarke.”
40. For more on these idealized portraits of women in the gift books, see Lehuu,
Carnival on the Page, particularly chapter 4.
NOT E S 199
41. A very small number might be termed “historical,” such as engravings depicting
Pocahontas or Powhatan, but I have discovered fewer than a handful of these. For a
discussion of images of Native Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, see Truettner,
ed., The West as America; Vivien Green Fryd, Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the
United States Capitol, 1815–1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Pohl, Framing
America, particularly 152–63; and Taylor, America as Art, particularly chapter 4.
42. For additional background on the McKenney expedition, see Carolyn Kinder
Carr and Ellen G. Miles, A Brush with History: Paintings from the National Portrait Gallery
(Washington: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 30; Reaves,
ed., American Portrait Prints, 110; Conn, History’s Shadow, particularly chapter 2; and
Wainwright, Philadelphia in the Romantic Age of Lithography, 30. For more on Bodmer’s
sketches for the Prince Maximilian expedition, see William Truettner’s introduction to
George Catlin, George Catlin’s Souvenir of the North American Indians, a Facsimile of the
Original Album, with an Introductory Essay and Chronology by William H. Truettner (Tulsa:
Gilcrease Museum, 2003). Also see Novak, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, 190–94; and
Pohl, Framing America, 155–63.
43. For a reading of Godey’s “textual” Indians (as opposed to his engraved Indians),
see Linda M. Clemmons, “‘Nature Was Her Lady’s Book’: Ladies’ Magazines, American
Indians, and Gender, 1820–1859,” American Periodicals 5 (1995): 40–58.
44. Darley is best remembered today for his book illustrations, particularly for
Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. However, he was an
active member of the Philadelphia art community, serving on Artists’ Fund Society Board
of Control, and worked in a variety of media. See the 1845 Artists’ Fund Society Exhibition
Catalogue; Taylor, America as Art, particularly 72–82; James F. O’Gorman, “The Poet and
the Illustrator: Longfellow, Billings and The ‘Disproportion between Their Designs and
Their Deeds’ in the 1840s,” in Aspects of American Printmaking, 1800–1950, ed. James F.
O’Gorman (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1988), 31.
45. Graham expressly praised the work of Darley in a notice of his book Scenes in
Indian Life, Drawn and Etched on Stone in Graham’s “Review of New Books” column for
September 1843. He praised the “youthful artist” for capturing “a most singular people
rapidly passing from about us, and soon to become extinct,” vouching “we have never
seen any thing more historically truthful than these sketches” (164).
46. The fictional sketches accompanying the images of Indian maidens are nearly
always suggestive of Indian polygamy and sexual promiscuity. Additionally, “captive tales”
nearly always raise issues of interracial mating and miscegenation.
47. Although the Indian couple depicted in the engraving is clearly from one of the
Plains tribes, Hale (or whichever writer composed this textual illustration) either had
greater knowledge of the lives of the “forest” Indians indigenous to Pennsylvania and the
eastern states, or simply glossed over any differences between forest and plains Indians’
lifestyles.
CHA PT ER 7
1. The leading contemporary authorities on these engravers vary in the information

they provide. Although Mantle Fielding is often cited as an authority, Groce and
200 NOT ES
Wallace provide fuller entries, including first and sometimes middle names, but give no
information on specific works executed by individual engravers. William Spohn Baker
provides more biographical detail and often discusses the single-print works of some
of the engravers. However, Baker makes little to no mention of the periodical work
of these engravers, and completely fails to mention Henry S. Sadd, Jacob D. Gross,
Francis Humphreys, Ralph and Freeman Rawdon, Neziah Wright, William Croome, and
Frederick Quarre, all of whom contributed substantially to the Philadelphia pictorials. I
have chosen to cite most of my information from Groce and Wallace. See William Spohn
Baker, American Engravers and Their Works (Philadelphia: Gebbie & Barrie, 1875); Groce
and Wallace, The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America 1564–1860;
Mantle Fielding, Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers (New York:
James F. Carr, 1965).
2. Groce and Wallace, The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists, 525.
3. Ibid., 33.
4. Ibid., 520.
5. Godey’s editorial columns at the end of 1842 and throughout 1843 reflect the
ongoing debate over “dress reform.” Godey selected and published letters from readers
in support of his “Americanized” fashions, and these letters highlight the healthful
improvements for women of avoiding fashions requiring tight lacing. See, for example, an
excerpt from a letter purported to have been from Harriet Beecher Stowe published in a
column “OUR FASHION PLATES” in the January 1843 issue, 58.
7. Rutledge, Cumulative Record of Exhibition Catalogues, 170.
8. For an interesting reading of these thematized fashion plates in terms of “female
types” offered to women readers in the mid-nineteenth century, see Monika M. Elbert,
“Striking a Historical Pose: Antebellum Tableaux Vivants, “Godey’s” Illustrations, and
Margaret Fuller’s Heroines,” The New England Quarterly 75, no. 2 (2002): 235–75.
9. Interestingly, some of Pease’s thematized fashion plates can be found on Internet
sites selling both original and reproductions of Godey’s fashions.
10. Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, later purchased by George Graham, noted favorably
Tucker’s engraving The Farmer’s Boy, done for the 1839 volume of The Gift. See the “Review
of New Books” column, September 1838, 210.
11. In an initial study done on these images, I catalogued approximately 150 full-page
engravings depicting idealized womanhood in these magazines during the latter part of
the 1840s, out of approximately 1,000 featured engravings.
12. See similar arrangements for: “Alice Linly” (August 1848); “The Belle of the Fancy
Ball” (December 1848); “It is I” (June 1849); “Impending Mate” and “Mated” (November
and December 1849); “Edith” (June 1850); “Kate Manley” (September 1850); “Pray God
Bless Dear Mama and Papa” (January 1851); and “The Love Letter” (January 1852).
13. Like many of the engravings touted as mezzotints at decade’s end, this one appears
to combine mezzotint with line and stipple work. For a contemporary discussion of how
engravers combined these methods, see T. H. Fielding, The Art of Engraving (London: M.A.
Nattali, 1844), 58–61.
14. This would not be the last of Sartain’s battles with the larger art community.
On Sartain’s contentious role organizing the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, see Kimberly
Orcutt, “‘Revising History’: Creating a Canon of American Art at the Centennial
NOT E S 201
Exhibition” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 2005). Retrieved June 22, 2009,
from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text database (Publication No. AAT 3187359).
15. Mott reports that Sartain’s venture with Campbell’s Semi-Monthly had been
“unfortunate” and that it was with some reluctance that Sartain purchased the Union (his
share was $5,000) at the end of 1848 and relocated it to Philadelphia. Mott, I, 770.
16. See Dearinger’s essay “An Introduction to the History of American Art Criticism to
1925,” in Dearinger, ed., Rave Reviews, 17–29.
17. For more on Tuckerman, see Janice L. Edens, “Henry Theodore Tuckerman,” in
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 64: American Literary Critics and Scholars, 1850–
1880, ed. John W. Rathburn (Detroit: Gale Research, 1988), 236–41.
18. Sill’s diaries offer a fascinating behind-the-scenes peek into the many controversies
facing the Philadelphia art community in the 1840s. See the Joseph Sill collection, AAA,
reel P29.
19. On the question of Sartain’s use of his own printer, see Martinez, “John Sartain
(1808–1897): His Contribution to American Printmaking,” 4.
20. Better-known paintings in this vein include William Sidney Mount’s Dance of the
Haymakers, The Power of Music, and Rustic Dance, as well as John Lewis Krimmel’s Dance in
a Country Tavern. See Hills, The Painter’s America, 28; and Johns, American Genre Painting,
particularly chapter 4.
21. In addition to the cited notices in Godey’s, see Fielding, Dictionary of American
Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, 390.
22. According to Fielding, Warner was self-taught as a mezzotint engraver. See
Fielding, Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, 391; and Rutledge,
Cumulative Record of Exhibition Catalogues, 242.
23. Godey clearly read Sartain’s editorial matter carefully; in his “Editor’s Book
Table” for August of 1850, he tops Hart’s editorial puff by noting that his subscription
list increased by 20,000 in five months, gaining readers in numbers equal to the entire
subscription list of “another magazine” (125).
24. This debate over engraving from wood blocks can become confusing, because it
actually involves two different methods of engraving from wood: woodcuts and wood
engraving. Woodcuts is the term generally used for older methods of engraving on the
“softer” plank surface of wood. Wood engraving refers to a newer method perfected
in the late eighteenth century by English engraver Thomas Bewick. He discovered
that if he engraved across the end of a plank, against the grain, particularly of very
hard woods, he could achieve finer detail. See Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints, 6a.
In his “Index” to each volume, Sartain consistently separates his illustrations into
specific categories, although his designations for each category become more complex
in subsequent volumes. In the “Index” to volume 7 (July to December 1850), he
divides illustrations into “Plates” and “Wood-Cuts.” The plates he further identifies
as either “line,” “mezzotint” or “coloured print.” The latter suggests the possibility
of a lithograph. In the “Index” to volume 8 (January to June 1851), Sartain adds the
clarification of “lithograph” beside some plates (indicating that his embellishment was
printed from a stone), clarifies some plates as “stipple,” and further describes some
plates as “tinted” or “illuminated.” In the “Index” to volume 9 (July to December 1851),
under “Embellishments” he redesignates “Plates” as “Engravings on Steel” and now calls
the other category “Engravings on Wood.” Gone is any mention of engravings on stone
202 NOT ES
(lithographs). Perhaps Sartain’s categorization of his plates was one way he attempted to
claim artistic expertise over Godey.
25. For a different take on Godey’s illustrations and the tableaux vivants, see Elbert,
“Striking a Historical Pose,” 235–75. Elbert looks at later issues of Godey’s and misses his
1849–50 denouncements of “artist model” engravings that fueled this dispute.
26. Sartain Family Papers, AAA, Reel 4563.
CH AP TER 8
2. See Masten, “Shake Hands? Lilly Martin Spencer and the Politics of Art,” 358.
3.Ibid., 378 and note 105, 393.
4. Le Beau reports that some Currier & Ives prints achieved print runs in the hundreds
of thousands. See Le Beau, Currier & Ives: America Imagined, 22.
5. See Mott on the cessation of publication of Sartain’s Union (I, 769) and Graham’s (I,
543), and on the eventual demise of both Godey’s (I, 593ff.) and Peterson’s (II, 306ff.).
6. There is a study waiting to be done on the numerous dollar monthlies that sprang
up largely in the 1840s and early 1850s. Boston alone boasted some half-dozen that, as
noted in chapter 4, made use of recycled plates: The Father’s and Mother’s Manual, The
Ladies’ Album, The Ladies’ Magazine and Casket of Literature, The Lady’s Wreath, The Mother’s
Assistant.
7. On the collapse of the American Art-Union, see Rachel N. Klein, “Art and Authority
in Antebellum New York City: The Rise and Fall of the American Art-Union,” Journal of
American History 81:4 (March 1995): 1534–61. jstor.org/stable/2081648?origin=JSTOR-pdf,
accessed 6/7/2009.
8. See Klein, “Art and Authority in Antebellum New York City,” 1541–42.
9. Founded in 1827, Goupil, Vibert & Company set up a New York office in 1846.
See William H. Gerdts, “‘Good Tidings’ to the Lovers of the Beautiful”: New York’s
Dusseldorf Gallery, 1849—1862,” American Art Journal 30:1/2 (1999): 50–81. jstor.org/
stable/1594632?origin=JSTOR-pdf, accessed 6/7/09. For more on Lilly Martin Spencer’s
prints from the company, see Masten, “Shake Hands?” especially 377–78.
10. See LeBeau, Currier & Ives: America Imagined, especially the introduction.
11. Mott suggests as much when he notes that the arrival of Harper’s “banished
Godey’s to the boudoir, where it had probably always belonged” (Mott II, 30).
12. I examined numerous family manuscript groups at the Pennsylvania State
Archives, and several included estate documents and ledger books listing the family’s
goods and purchases, including prints of various sorts.
13. Scrapbooks, as a print media, are just beginning to receive serious scholarly
attention. See the excellent collection of essays, The Scrapbook in American Life, ed. Susan
Tucker, Katherine Ott, and Patricia P. Buckler (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
2006).
Index
Abbot, The, 64 artistic marketplace, 12, 14, 90, 118

Ackerman, James, 51 artistic production, 15, 17–31, 163
Affection of the Indians for Las-Casas, 100, artists, serious, 31, 128
102–3, 136 Artists’ Fund Society, 25–26, 36, 64, 127,
Allston, Washington, 26, 34 130–32, 134, 152, 196n17
American art, 4, 11–13, 15–16, 19–21, 31, Artists’ Fund Society Exhibition, 25–26, 36
36, 38, 41, 57, 81, 86, 88, 118, 120–21, Art-Union of Philadelphia, 26, 127, 195n1,
123, 127–29, 140–41, 142, 151, 162–64, 196n18
166–67, 169n1, 171n15, 193n56, 197n21 art-unions, 19, 110, 128, 164
American Art-Union, 12, 15, 76, 110, 122, artwork, 4, 11–13, 16–17, 20–22, 31–32, 36,
128, 162, 164, 196n182, 202n7 38, 64, 68–69, 88, 120–21, 123, 127–29,
American artists, 15, 19, 21, 35, 88, 127, 140, 163, 167, 171n15, 182n43
129–30, 158, 160, 164, 193n56 Atlantic Souvenir, 34
American artwork, original, 4, 11–12, 121, audiences, 9, 11–12, 15–16, 20, 36, 46, 56,
128, 163, 167 61, 86, 93, 113, 116, 119–27, 136–40, 165,
American authors, 15, 87, 91–118, 123, 159 169n1, 173n26
American Institute, 74–75, 185n40
American magazines, 38, 70, 158, 173n22 bachelors, 107–8
American Scenery, 63, 71, 143, 183n16, Bacon, Rev. Henry, 62–65
184n20 Bank Lick, KY, 82
Andre, Capture of, 59 Bartlett, William, 63, 71, 82, 143, 183n16
Andrews, Joseph, 61, 183n14 Beckman, Thomas, 53, 182n43
Apollo Association, 59 Belisarius, 52
aqua tint, 157 Belle of the Opera, The, 148
Arnold, Benedict, 59 Bellevue Springs, 82
Armstrong, W. G., 6–7, 42 Bellows, Rev. Henry and Eliza, 110, 114,
art: illustrated magazines of, 84, 86; 193n56
mechanical, 43, 74–75, 166 Beneficence of Washington, 152
art criticism, 150–51, 187n57, 188n2, 195n5 Benjamin, Park, 92
art engravings, 4, 15, 20, 57, 69, 71, 75–77, Bethune, George, 26–27, 64
79, 86, 118, 120, 163–64, 167, 169n1, Birch, Harvey, 77, 186n50
173n27, 186n50, 197n21; high-quality, Birch, Thomas, 71
59, 71, 79, 91, 112, 156, 167 Bishop White, 131
art historians, 13, 19, 24, 31–32, 36, 129–30, Blackfoot Indians on Horseback, 137
171n15, 174n2, 187n56, 197n21 Bodmer, Karl, 136–38, 140, 142, 199n42
Arthur, Timothy Shay, 41–44, 53, 157, Boston, Massachusetts, 4, 11, 15, 19, 24,
179n10 55–57, 59–66, 80–81, 86, 99, 125, 163,
Arthur’s Magazine, 53 202n6
Artist Life, or Sketches of the American Boston Artists’ Association, 59
Painters, 151, 198n33 Boston Highlands/From Bull Hill, 63
203
204 I NDE X
Boston Miscellany, 55–56, 59–62, 86 chromolithography, 51

bound volumes, 16, 45, 166 Cincinnati, Ohio, 11, 15, 56–57, 81–82, 86,
Bowen, Abel, 61 162, 187n64
Brackett, Edward Augustus, 63 circulation numbers, 4, 12, 34, 45, 56,
Bradbury, Soden & Co., 59, 61 59, 69, 81, 124–25, 127, 129, 156, 163,
Bremer, Fredrika, 159 170n11, 180n27
Bride of Ceylon, The, 96 cities, southern, 11, 22, 56–58, 93, 125
Bronson, Steven E., 32, 34 City Belle, The, 46, 48
Brooks, Rev. E. G., 62 Civil War, 19, 65, 125–27, 166
Brown, George Loring (Claude), 71 Cole, Thomas, 71
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 65 colors, printing with or adding, 49, 51,
Bud and the Blossom, The, 105–7, 155 131, 157
Bulwer Lytton, Edward, 134 Columbia Bridge/On the Susquehanna, 82
Bunker Hill Monument, 61 Columbian, The, 55–56, 66, 75–78, 80, 86,
Burial of De Soto in the Mississippi, 165–66 91
burin, 18, 50, 82, 144, 156 Coming to Get Married, 108
Burns, Robert, 71, 185n33 competition between magazines, 28, 47,
Burr, Rev. C. C., 155 50, 64–66, 73, 83, 85, 132–33, 140, 162,
Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, 9, 38, 50, 170–72, 174
93, 122, 127, 195n4 Conarroe, George W., 129, 132, 191n30,
Buttre, John, 27 197n21
Connecticut River/Near Vermont, 63
Campbell’s Magazine, 150–51, 201n15 connoisseurs, 121, 134, 150
careers, 31, 98 consumption of art, 12, 19–20, 38, 46, 49,
Carey, Edward L., 23, 27–29, 87, 173n27 53, 86, 123, 166
Carey, Henry, 41 Continental artists, 4, 164
Carey & Hart, 22, 37, 91, 104, 176–77n38 Conversion of St. Paul, The, 100, 103
Casket, The (Atkinson’s), 9, 122, 127, Cooper, James Fenimore, 77, 186n50
186n50 copyists, 21, 24
Catherine Seyton, 64 cost of artwork, 18, 20, 22–23, 29, 37,
Catherwood’s Diorama, 150 49–50, 52, 76, 89, 123–24, 129
Cave-in-Rock, 137 Croome, William, 3–4, 20, 35, 129–30,
Chamber of Representatives/From the Park, 144–46, 157, 197n21, 197n24
61 Cruikshank, George, 111–12, 194n64
Chapman, John G., 20, 29–31, 35, 71, Culture and Preparation of Tea, 72, 74
76–77, 137, 150 Currier & Ives, 163–64, 167, 169n1
Charge of Captain May, The, 79
Charleston, South Carolina, 11, 22, 57, 125 daguerreotypes, 15, 22–25, 32, 63, 84
Cheney, John, 24, 28, 35, 154, 175n14 Dance of the Mandan Indians, 137
Cheney, Seth, 92, 154 Darley, Felix Octavius Carr (F. O. C.), 91,
Chestnut Street, 39, 119, 170n9, 195n1 136–37, 139–40, 142, 199n44–45
Chief ’s Daughter, The, 136 Day in the Woods, A, 143
Child and Lute, The, 133–34 Dearinger, David, 151, 177n44, 187n57,
children, books for, 37, 41, 46, 148 198n33
Childs, Cephas, 24, 34, 51, 179n14 Deborah, 94
Chinese culture, plates of, 71–72, 74–76, designers, magazine embellishments, 19,
185n36, 185n38, 185n39 31, 53, 79
I ND E X 205
Dick, Archibald L., 69, 71–72, 74, 76, 82, 93, 24, 44, 132, 179n14, 198n37, 200n13,
142–44, 189n15 201n24; woodcut, 44–45, 66, 71, 77, 103,
distribution of art engravings, 12, 14, 19, 121, 126, 128, 130, 138, 150, 152, 157,
28, 34, 36, 38, 50, 69, 86, 125, 162–64, 162–63, 165, 201n24
167, 173n26, 179n4 European artists, 68, 127
Doctor Sian Seng, 73–74 Evening Star, 146
domestic economy, 41, 43 Exhibition Catalogues, 35, 130
Domestic Felicity, 162
Domestic Happiness, or Hush! Don’t Wake Fabian, Monroe, 32
Them, 162 Façade of the Great Temple, 75
Domestic Life Among the Indians, 139–40 Fall of Major Ringwold, The, 78–79
Dr. Johnson Rescuing Goldsmith from His Falls of Catskill, The, 71
Landlady, 69 Family Devotion, 144
Durand, Asher B., 24–25, 27, 175n16 Family Jewels, 144
Dreer, Ferdinand, 24, 33 fancy pictures, 32, 34–36, 59, 68, 96, 120,
Duval, Enna, 92 130–32, 134, 141, 156
Duval, Peter S., 51, 181n32 Fanshaw, Daniel, 32
Duyckinck, Evert, 110, 114 fashion plates, 37–38, 44, 51, 58–59, 76,
84, 120–23, 128, 165; “Americanized,”
Eclectic, The, 56, 66–69, 86 45–46, 130, 144, 146, 197n24, 200n5;
Edith, 9–10 and Sarah Hale, 19, 180n21; as
editorial matter, 15–16, 63, 121, 201n23 advertisement, 45–46; as art, 146,
editors, magazine, 12, 14–15, 21, 28, 31, 35, 150, 157; die-cut, 44, 46, 49; foreign,
41, 43, 53, 56, 61, 64, 75, 78, 81, 90–93, 45, 65; hand-colored, 18, 44–45; steel-
98, 107, 109–10, 118–19, 172n18, 180n17, engraved, 165; thematized, 145–46,
190n26 200n9
Effie Deans, 72 female authors and editors, 14, 104–5, 117,
Eichholtz, Jacob, 131 172n19
Ellet, Elizabeth F., 92, 136, 189n13 female Indians, 137, 140
embellishers, 14, 119–20, 141, 142–49, 154 female nudes, 100, 102–3, 136
embellishments, as term, 9, 11–15, 19–22, Filagree Worker, The, 134
29, 36–39, 44–46, 49–53, 55–56, 58, 63, First Ear Ring, The, 144
66, 68, 71–72, 76–78, 82, 88, 90–92, 99, First Music Lesson, The, 132
111, 114, 120–21, 123, 129, 132, 136, 140, Florence, 143
144, 150, 157, 159–60, 163, 166, 186n49, Florentine Girl, The, 104
191n36, 201n24 Flower Girl, The (Pease), 146
embossed medallion seals, 52–53 Flower Girl, The (Spencer), 162
Embury, Emma C., 92 Forest Queen, 136
Emperor Justinian, 52 Forester, Frank, 96
English nobility, 96, 98 Fort MacKenzie, 137–38
engravings: mezzotint, 9, 11, 24, 25–26, Fountain of Valcluse, The, 157
29, 38, 44, 49–52, 63, 66, 68, 77, 84, Frankenstein family, 82–84, 187n64
88–91, 96, 99, 103, 123, 128–29, 131, Frankfort, KY, 82
134, 142, 148, 152, 154–56, 160, 163, Franklin Institute, 15, 44, 47, 179n13,
187n67, 200n13, 201n24; model artist, 182n44
157; original, 21, 89, 110, 128; single, frontispiece, 3, 9, 35, 77, 129–34, 137, 144,
64, 163–64, 167, 169n1, 200n1; stipple, 148, 152, 156
206 I NDE X
frontispiece engraving, hand-colored, 3 104–5, 107–8, 130, 178n55, 189n15,

Fuselli, Henry, 32 190n16, 190n26, 191n29, 191n33
Gross, Jacob D., 142, 148–50, 152
Gems of Art & Beauty, 124 Gypseying Party, The, 68
Gen. Marion Inviting a British Officer to
Dinner, 59 Hale, Nathan, Jr., 55, 61–62
Gen. Scott & John Brant, 76–77 Hale, Sarah Josepha, 4, 6, 19, 65, 89, 92,
genres, artistic, 19, 22, 24, 71, 76, 86, 94–95, 109, 123, 140, 170n4, 172n19,
120–21, 152, 171n14 180n17, 182n3, 189n12–13, 199n47
genres, literary, 94 Halpin, Frederick F., 84
Gentle Warning, The, 69 Hamilton, James, 130, 152, 165
Gift, The, 11, 28–29, 34–35, 37, 87, 104–5, Happy Hours, 156
176n38 Harding, Chester, 27
gift books, 11–12, 14–15, 19, 22, 28, 31, Harper Brothers Publishers, 11, 29
35, 46, 95, 150, 166, 169n1, 173n26–27, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 160, 166,
198n38 202n11
Gift from Heaven, A, 134 Hart, Professor John, 94, 100, 103–4, 117,
Gimber, Steven, 24 156, 191n33, 191n36, 193n56, 201n23
Girl & Birds, 35 Heart of Mid Lothian, 71–73
Godey, Louis A.: as art patron, 4, 19–21, Herbert, William Henry, 92–94, 96, 98–99,
35, 128–30, 137, 142–48, 150–70, 196n18; 190n22, 190n26
editorial columns, 3, 18–19, 45, 49, Heroic Women of America/The Rescue,
53, 120, 124–27, 141, 155–56, 189n13, 134–36
197n24, 200n5, 201n23; editorial highbrow New York magazines, 122–23
persona, 4; and Morton McMichael, Highland Sport, 143
39–41, 42, 170n8; as publisher, 4–5, History of the Indians of North America,
13–14, 22 The, 136
Godey’s assistant editors, 43 Hoffman, Charles Fenno, 93, 189n15
Godey’s Lady’s Book, 4, 37, 66, 88, 182n3 Hope Leslie, A Scene from, 78
Gould, Hannah, 94–95 Horse-Racing of Sioux Indians, 137
Goupil, Vibert & Co., 162–64, 167, 169n1, Howitt, William and Mary, 159
202n9 Hudson Highlands, 62
Graham, A. W., 130, 146 Hullmandel, engraver, 51
Graham, George Rex, 7–9, 20–22, 38, Hunting Buffalo, 137
189n11, 190n2, 195n4; as art patron, Huntington, Daniel, 24, 26–28, 77, 104,
35, 45–46, 88, 122, 128–43, 146, 148, 151, 173n27
154; editorial columns, 90–91, 126–27,
148, 159–60; negotiations with artists, I Am Sorry You Can’t Go, 146
29–31, 89; pay to contributors, 14, 105 idealized womanhood, images of, 34, 70,
Graham’s American Monthly Magazine, 122 96, 98, 105, 120–21, 131–32, 136–38,
Graham’s Magazine, 20, 122, 165 140–41, 143, 148, 171n14, 190n25, 195n3
Grandpapa’s Pet, 51 Illman & Sons, 139
graphic arts, 4, 44, 53, 127, 142, 155, 156, illustrated magazines, 4, 35, 38, 44, 50, 58,
171n15 62, 71, 84, 86, 93–94, 96, 109, 121–22,
Gravity and Gaiety, 144 163, 169n1, 170n9, 173ch1n26, 173ch2n1,
Griswold, Rufus S., 30, 92–93, 96, 98, 100, 183n10, 183n16, 197n22
I ND E X 207
imitators, regional, 15–16, 54–86, 94, 163 Leslie, Thomas, 41

income: artists’, 22–25, 31; authors’, 94, Leutze, Emanuel, 20, 35–36, 129, 131–34,
98; subscribers’, 125–26 197n21
Indian Captive, The, 137 literary magazines, 11, 55–58, 62, 160
Indian Fruit Seller, The, 136 literary matter, 19, 21, 50, 61, 87–89, 110,
Indian Maid, The, 137 130, 180n17
Indian Toilette, The, 71 Literary Party at Sir Joshua Reynolds, A, 69
Indians, 49, 76, 134, 136–40, 199n43; literature, magazine, 94
female, 78, 102, 136–40, 199n46–47 lithographs, 9, 23–24, 163–64, 179n14,
Ingham, Charles, 76 201n24
Ingraham, Joseph H., 87, 95 lithography, 23–24, 38, 49, 51, 157
ink, blue, 49, 53 lithotint, 44, 51
Inman, Henry, 24, 76, 104 Littell’s Living Age, 68
Inman, John, 55, 75–77, 79 Little Nell in the Storm, 132
innovations, artistic, 4, 15, 30, 37–54 Little Red Riding Hood, 99, 191n31
institutions, domestic, 58 Lobster Sauce, 156
It Is I, 148–49 Longacre, James B., 24, 27–28, 198n37
Lost Glove, The, 153–54
Julia, 143 Love Letter, The, 144
Julia Warren, 124
Maennitarri Warriors in the Costume of the
Kemble, Fanny, 35 Dog Dance, 137
Kirkland, Caroline, 14, 64, 91–92, 98, magazine publishers, 125, 134
108–17, 156, 191n36, 194n60 magazine publishing, 11, 151
Knickerbocker, The, 66, 123 magazines: high-toned, 21; middle-
class, 4, 11–12, 15, 22, 36, 49, 109, 158;
La Esmerelda, 157 southern, 57–58; three dollar, 9, 70, 128
Ladies’ Companion, 56, 66, 68–69, 72, male reader(s), 14, 112, 115–16, 120–21,
75–76, 86, 91, 186n59 127, 131, 137, 166, 171n16, 193n57, 195n4
Ladies’ Magazine, 4, 19 Mandan Chief, 138
Ladies’ National Magazine (Peterson’s), 122 Mandan Women, 137–38
Ladies’ Repository, Boston, 56, 62–65, market stratification, 163
184n28 marriage tales, 105
Ladies’ Repository, Cincinnati, 56, 81–86 Masten, April, 162
Lady Reading in Bed, 35 mathematics, 82, 84
Lady’s Book, 3–4, 13, 45, 88, 108, 151, 158, Matteson, Tompkins H., 77–80, 110–16,
183n10, 195n2 153–54, 186n54, 193n53, 193n57, 194n58
Lady’s World, 127, 144 Maverick, Peter, 24
Lambdin, James, 23, 152, 174n8, 175n11 May Day Morning, 144
Landseer, Edwin, 50 McKenney, Thomas L., 136, 140, 142
Last Visit, The, 134, 137 McMichael, Morton, 11, 37, 39, 41, 43–44,
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 96–98, 191n30 49–50, 52–53, 165–66, 170n8, 178n2,
Leslie, Charles, 11, 37, 65, 68 180n17
Leslie, Eliza, 11–14, 37, 39–44, 50, 130, McMurtrie, James, 24, 26
170n8, 180n17 medal engraving, 52
Leslie, Patty, 41 Melancholy Jacques, 100
208 I NDE X
Mermaid on a Wave, 35 Old Guard State Fencibles, 166

Methodist Book Concern, 56, 81 Opal, The, 94
Mexican War, 76, 78–80, 110, 124, 193n57, original art, 16, 19–20, 31, 88, 119–21,
194n58 127–38
mezzotint engravers, 155 Ormsby, Waterman Lilly, 76–77, 80
mezzotint portraits, 66, 68, 84 Osgood, Frances S., 14, 92, 98–104, 108,
mezzotints, 25–26, 38, 50, 52, 68, 90, 123, 176n38
148, 152, 154, 156, 163, 200n13 Osgood, Samuel, 76, 99
middle-class audiences, 11, 36, 122, 136, Our Artists column, 131, 152
163
Mifflin, John Houston, 22–24 PAFA (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Milton Dictating to His Daughters, 68 Arts), 127, 130, 132, 134, 137, 146, 152
minister, image of, 108–10 painters, 16, 21, 24, 26–28, 31, 41, 50;
Minor, Benjamin Blake, 182n9 genre, 114; itinerant portrait, 23, 174n9;
Mirror of Life, 132 Philadelphia, 31, 152
Miss Leslie’s Magazine, 9, 11, 37, 41, 43, 46 paintings: genre, 110, 191n57, 194n58;
Morris, George Pope, 80–81 historical, 103, 120, 197n21
Morton, John L., 76–77, 79 Palaces and Prisons, 124
mother, images of, 26, 35, 45, 68, 96–97, Pardon Refused, The, 69
112, 120, 134, 156 Pastor’s Visit, The, 144
Mott, Frank Luther, 9, 29, 69, 88–89, patrons, art, 25, 35–36, 121, 127, 150
186n56, 188n2 Pavilion and Gardens of a Mandarin, 76
Mount, William Sidney, 28, 87 Peasant Girl, 35
Mountain Airs and City Graces, 145–46 Pease, Joseph Ives, 142, 146, 148, 177n38
Mrs. Shubrick Protecting an American Pelton, Oliver, 63, 154
Soldier, 134–35 Penobscot Belle, 83–84, 86
Mrs. Washington Potts, 41 Peterson, Charles, 11, 22, 37–38, 47–49, 96,
Murray, Rev. John, 64 119, 121–27, 130, 132, 142, 144, 158–59,
Musidora, 35 196n9; as art patron, 88–89, 130, 132,
144; as Godey imitator, 9, 37–38, 46,
National Academy of Design, 32, 76, 151 122–23; as “Jeremy Short,” 92, 126;
Neagle, John, 24, 131, 154, 174n8 preference for mezzotints, 9, 90–91,
Neal, Alice B., 41 123, 148; promotional ploys, 124
Neal, Joseph, 91, 188n4 Peterson’s Ladies’ National Magazine, 10
negotiations, 22, 26–31 Peterson’s Magazine, 37, 46
New Mirror, 66, 80, 94, 96, 187n56, 187n59 Pets, The, 50
New Orleans, Louisiana, 11, 57 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: art
Newsam, Alfred, 51 community, 24, 26, 34, 121, 127–28, 152;
News Boy, The, 104 artists, 43, 139, 146, 148, 164, 172; as
Niagara Falls, 144 publishing center, 4, 11, 22, 55, 66
Nineteenth Century, The, 155 Philadelphia Art Union, 38, 174
Novel Reader, The, 112–13 Philadelphia Lyceum, 43
novels, and artwork, 9, 64, 71–72, 76–77, Pic-Nic, The, 144
90–91, 186n50 picture, illustration of a, 89–90
Pierson, Mrs. Lydia J., 92
Oakes Smith, Elizabeth, 14, 65, 91–92, 98, Pilot’s Boy, The, 92
104–9 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 23
I ND E X 209
plates: belles lettres, 64, 71, 75, 77, 91; Sadd, Henry S., 77–80, 88, 96–98, 111, 113,
colored, 146, 157; copper, 50, 154; 115, 142, 153–55
match, 120; metal, 50, 52; original, 45; Safford, Truman Henry, 84
recycled, 38, 45, 77, 80, 89, 163, 187n58; Sargent, Epes, Jr., 93
steel-engraved, 163, 165 Sartain, John, 11, 22, 24–26, 29, 33, 38, 50,
Pocahontas, 77, 79, 199n41 59, 66, 68, 90, 99, 101, 103, 110, 116–17,
Poe, Edgar Allan, 57, 99, 102, 119–20 121–23, 128–34, 136, 141–42, 144, 146,
poetry in magazines, 11, 62, 72, 82, 87, 148, 150–52, 154–59, 162–63, 165
94–95, 105, 165, 188n2 Sartain, Samuel, 158
portrait painter, 23–24, 31–34, 50 Sartain’s Union Magazine, 11, 92, 94, 100,
portrait painting, 22, 24, 35–36 154, 165
portraits: daguerreotype, 22–25, 32, 63, 84; Savannah, Georgia, 11, 57
engraved, 12 Scene on the Schuylkill, 130
Post, Israel, 76–77, 79–80, 109, 186n50 scenery, American, 63, 71, 75, 82
Potter’s Meeting House, 64 Schuylkill Water Works, 144
Pratt, Miss Anne C., 192 science, 56, 62, 65, 73–74, 82, 182n3
Prince Maximillian of Weid, 136, 142 Scott, Sir Walter, 64, 71–72
printing innovations, 4, 11, 15, 38, 45, 120 scrapbooks, 165–66
production of art, 12, 14–15, 17, 19–26, 38, Sentry Box, The, 64–65
44, 51, 53, 86, 90, 163, 167 Serenade, The, 156
Proferred Kiss, The, 92 Short, Jeremy, 92, 126, 196n5
proof sheet, 94, 96, 190n26 Sickness and Health, 144
Publisher’s Hall, 39 Sidney, E. M., 92
Publisher’s Table, 43, 50, 88, 123 Sigourney, Lydia Huntley, 92, 191n36
Silk Culture in China, 74–75
Quarre, Frederick, 144 Sill, Joseph, 36, 152, 201n18
sisters, images of, 105–8
Raree Show at Lin-Sin-Choo, The, 76 Skin Lodge of an Assinboin Chief, A, 137
Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Smillie, 25, 30, Sleeping Girl, 35
60, 77, 137–38, 142 Sloanaker, William, 29
Read, Thomas Buchanan, 7, 35, 63, 130–31, Smillie, James, 24, 60, 77, 89, 137–38, 142,
146 154
Reconciliation, The, 69 Smith, Elizabeth Oakes, 14, 65, 91–92, 98,
Register of Paintings, Sully’s, 32, 130–31 104–5, 107–9
review, art, 32, 64, 131, 151 Smith, Russell, 150
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 32, 69, 101 Smith, Seba, 104, 109
Richards, John H., 51 Snake in the Grass, 100–3, 157
Richmond, Virginia, 11, 57 Snowden, William, 69–75, 77
Robb, David M., 32, 34 South, magazines of, 11, 56–58
Rolph, John A., 61, 139 Southern and Western Monthly Magazine,
Rosalie, 132 57
Rose, The, 146 Southern Literary Messenger, 57–58
Rose and Lily, The, 131–32 Southern Quarterly Review, 57, 93
Rothermel, Peter, 20, 129–31, 134–35, 137 Spanish Gitar & Mantilla, 35
Runaway Match, 49 Spencer, Lilly Martin, 162, 164
Rustic Maid, The, 46–47 Spencer, Asa, 52
Ruth and Boaz, 63 Sportsman, The, 143
210 I NDE X
Spring Flower, A, 131 View on the Delaware, 130, 152, 154

St. Louis, View of, 82 View on the Ohio/Near Cincinnati, 82
Stephens, Ann, 9, 122, 124 Views of Philadelphia, 34
Steps to Ruin, 111–12, 154 Viola, 134, 155
stone, prints from, 23, 51, 157 visual material, 13–14, 16, 86
Storming of Palace Hill, The, 78–79
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 91, 180n21, 200n5 Wagner, Henry S., 161–62
Strawberry Girl, 35 Walter, Adam B., 167
Stray Kitten, The, 144 Warner, William, 168
subscribers: offers to, 4, 49–50, 53, 61, Washington, George, images of, 53, 89,
68–73, 76, 110, 124, 152, 164, 180n27, 164
187n59; statistics on, 56, 69, 126, Webster, Daniel, 24
183n17, 184n30 Welch, Thomas B., 36, 144, 154, 167, 187
Sully, Mary Chester, 131 West, magazines of, 11, 55–56, 81–84
Sully, Thomas, 20, 22–25, 31–36, 41, 59, West, Robert A., 77–80
68, 129–32, 134, 177n41, 191n31, 197n21, White, John B., 59
198n31 White, Thomas Willys, 57–58
Sully’s fancy pictures, 32, 34 widow, images of, 65, 68, 156
Sully’s paintings, 35, 131 Widow’s Hope, 156
Sully’s Register, 130–33 Willis, Nathaniel P., 63, 71, 80–81, 94, 96,
Swiss Girl, The, 143 98, 143
Woman and Her Needs, 65, 109
Taking the Advantage, 114–16, 154 women, images of, 34, 108, 112, 119–21,
Taking the Queue, 161–62 130, 136, 140, 143, 190n25
taste, artistic, 3, 46, 52–53, 58, 73, 127, 144, women writers, 15, 91–93, 95, 99, 117
150–51, 162 wood engraving, 103, 152, 201n24
Taylor, Bayard, 110 woodcuts, 38, 44–45, 66, 71, 77, 103, 121,
Tefft, Rev. B. F., 81–82, 84 126, 128, 130, 150, 152, 157, 162–63, 165
Tennyson, 68 Woodworth, Samuel, 80
textual illustrations, 80, 88–96, 98–99, Wordsworth, 68
107, 117, 132, 138, 154 Wreck, The, 150
themes, sentimental, 99 Wrecked Mariner, The, 71
Thomson, Rev. E., 81 Wright, J. M., 71
Tompkins, Abel, 64 Wright, Neziah, 142
Tooley, J., 42 writers, 3, 14–15, 20–21, 87–88, 90–95, 98,
Train Is Coming, The, 146 107, 117, 122, 128, 158–60
Tristram Shandy, 65
Tucker, William E., 142, 146–48 Young Vermont Mathematician, The, 84–85
Tuckerman, Henry T., 81, 93, 131, 151–52,
154–55, 189n15, 198n33
Undine, 157
Union Magazine of Literature and Art, The,
11, 80, 122, 154
Universalism, 64–65
Universalist, 63–66, 81
PLATE 1 Croome’s Vase, frontispiece, Godey’s Lady’s Book, January 1844. Designed by William
Croome, drawn on stone by Alfred Newsam, printed by Peter S. Duval. Courtesy of the University
of South Florida Libraries Special and Digital Collections Department.
PLATE 2 Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art, title cover, July 1850. Lithographed by
James Ackermann.
PLATE 3 Fashions for November 1841, frontispiece, Graham’s. Courtesy of the Smithsonian
Institution Libraries, Washington, D.C.
PLATE 4 The Pets, frontispiece, Miss Leslie’s, March 1843. Painted by Edwin Landseer, engraved by John Sartain.
Courtesy of the Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection.
PLATE 5 Grandpapa’s Pets, frontispiece, Miss Leslie’s, April 1843. Drawn and lithotinted by John H. Richards,
expressly for Miss Leslie’s Magazine: the 3rst specimen of this art ever produced in the United States. Lith. of
P. S. Duval, Philadelphia. Courtesy of the Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection.
PLATE 6 Belisarius, frontispiece, Miss Leslie’s, August 1843. A. Spenser. Courtesy of the Winterthur
Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection.
PLATE 7 Thirty-one Coloured Embossed Medallion Seals, frontispiece, Godey’s, December 1843.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, D.C.
PLATE 8 Lace and Birds, frontispiece, Graham’s, January 1842.

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Art For The Middle Classes - America's Illustrated Magazines of The 1840s

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CYNTHIA LEE PAT TERSON

Art for the Middle Classes

UNIVERSIT Y PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI / JACKSON

Funding for the color illustrations provided by the

The University Press of Mississippi is a member

Copyright © 2010 by University Press of Mississippi

First printing 2010

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

vii LIST OF FIGURES

ix LIST OF COLOR PLATES

18 2. “From the Burin of an American Artist”

55 4. “The Fluttering Host of Many-Colored Competitors”

119 6. “Engravings from Original Pictures”

142 7. “A Mezzotint in Every Number”

1.1 Editor of the Lady’s Book, frontispiece, Godey’s, February 1850 5

6.4 Fort MacKenzie, frontispiece, Graham’s, November 1847 138

Plate 1 Croome’s Vase, frontispiece, Godey’s, January 1844

Winterthur collections spurred me to create my own digital databases of the

In January 1844, publisher Louis A. Godey oﬀered to his “fair patrons” of

In 1839, twenty-six-year-old George R. Graham (see ﬁg. 1.3), newly admit-

on printed text. Although some of the illustrated periodicals—Godey’s for

subtle diﬀerences between them. To do so, I focus on the strategies employed

their regional imitators. Chapters 6 and 7 examine the heated competition

The leading embellishment in the January Number was from an original

By “properly appreciated,” George Graham alludes to the problem inherent

THE ECONOMICS OF ARTISTIC PRODUC TION

As several scholars of periodical literature have noted, echoing the publishers

uncle, Lloyd Miﬄin, he ventured into daguerreotype portraits in the summer

Lambdin relocated to Philadelphia in 1837 and continued to struggle as a por-

value of their labor, and negotiated artistic undertakings in an eﬀort to be

NEGOTIATIONS BE T WEEN ARTISTS,

ENGRAVERS FOR THE PHILADELPHIA PIC TORIALS

The three examples detailed above—Huntington, Longacre, and Mount—

I am somewhat at a loss to understand, precisely, your meaning . . . If I

THE INFLUENCE OF PERIODICALS ON ARTISTS:

art historians refer to as “fancy pictures.” And, unfortunately, their work,

First, let us examine Bronson’s assertion that Sully “thought of himself”

quickly befriended engravers, editors, and publishers.55 Sully’s work appeared

In January 1843, an upstart little monthly entitled Miss Leslie’s Magazine:

to Godey’s. Peterson hoped his $2.00/year subscription fee would undercut

FIGURE 3.1 Morton McMichael. Courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia.

surrounding it. Thomas Beckman, an expert on this engraving style, reports

the demand for literary production in this country, especially in the

Cincinnati, the “Athens of the West,” proved to be the prominent western

As noted above, several southern cities—such as Richmond, Charleston,

audience; on the other hand, he wished the Southern Literary Messenger to

THE BOSTON MONTHLIES:

Moreover, unlike the Philadelphia pictorials, the engravings are presented as

American landscapes also proved a favorite with the Repository, as with

the wry, self-deprecating tone characteristic of Bacon’s editorials, he writes of

expatriate artist Charles Leslie, living in London. Bacon’s textual accompani-

audience anywhere near that of the Philadelphia pictorials, the Repository

NEW YORK MONTHLIES:

Although Philadelphia proved to be the primary publishing center for illus-

speciﬁcally to capitalize on the faltering of The Ladies’ Companion, which

NOTICE.—It is requisite that it should be distinctly understood that

These three strategies—dunning delinquents on the magazine’s cover, send-

ladies in peril—within a few years, the scope of the magazine’s embellish-

ﬂedgling American growers shared strategies for increasing production and

routinely featured “historical” subjects and portraits of well-known states-

THE LADIES’ REPOSITORY, CINCINNATI

ten—these details likely resonated with the magazine’s primary audience of