Fiction & Non-Fiction

The Saturday Evening Post was begun by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1821. In 1897 it started as a weekly magazine which became the most widely circulated magazine in America. In addition to fiction, non-fiction, features and cartoons it also employed the best artists of the golden age of illustration. An early favorite was Joseph C. Leyendecker (who originated the New Year’s Baby covers), quickly joined by his friend and colleague Norman Rockwell starting in 1916 creating 322 classic covers over the next fifty years.

Cover artists included John Clymer, John Falter and many others and among many noted authors were Jack London (whose The Call of the Wild was serialized beginning in1903), Sax Rohmer,  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Agatha Christie, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Louis L’Amour and Ray Bradbury. Weekly issues ceased in 1963 followed by less frequent appearances as American styles and tastes changed.

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The New Yorker is an iconic American magazine featuring fiction, essays, criticism, poetry, satire and cartoons. It was started in 1925 by journalist Harold Ross and his wife Jane. He remained editor for 26 years until his death in 1951.

Among many famous authors whose work appeared in the magazine are James Thurber, Alexander Woollcott (who once said Ross resembled “a dishonest Abe Lincoln”), Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Vladimir Nabokov and J.D. Salinger. Among artists and cartoonists whose work enlivened the magazine are Charles Addams, George Price, George Booth, Saul Steinberg and Gahan Wilson. In more recent years Robert Crumb has also contributed. Issues from the 1920s are becoming very scarce and are highly collectible.