 | |
 Boston Evening Transcript, November 5, 1903 | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | The Boston Transcript Company |
| Founded | July 24, 1830 [1] |
| Language | English |
| Ceased publication | April 30, 1941 |
| Headquarters | 324 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
The Boston Evening Transcript was a daily afternoon newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts, published for over a century from July 24, 1830, to April 30, 1941. [2]
The Transcript was founded in 1830 by Henry Dutton and James Wentworth of the firm of Dutton and Wentworth, which was, at that time, the official state printer of Massachusetts. [3] and Lynde Walter who was also the first editor of the Transcript. [4] Dutton and Wentworth agreed to this as long as Walter would pay the expenses of the initial editions of the newspaper. [4]
In 1830, The Boston Evening Bulletin, which had been a penny paper, ceased publication. Lynde Walter decided to use the opening provided to start a new evening penny paper in Boston. Walter approached Dutton and Wentworth with the proposal that he would edit the paper and that they would do the printing and circulation. [4]
The Transcript first appeared on July 24, 1830, [1] however after three days Walter suspended publication of the paper until he could build up his patronage. After Walter canvassed the city to better develop the paper's business The Transcript resumed publication on August 28, 1830. [5]
After Lynde Walter died, his sister, Cornelia Wells Walter, who had been the Transcript's theatre critic, became editor of the Transcript at the age of 29, [6] the first woman to be appointed editor of a major American daily newspaper. Cornelia Walter served as the editor of The Transcript from 1842 to 1847. [7]
The Transcript's offices were destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1872. After the Great Fire, The Transcript's offices on Washington Street were rebuilt and expanded. [8]
In 1847, the poet Epes Sargent became editor of the paper. Many literary and poetic works debuted in the Transcript's pages. William Stanley Braithwaite was an influential literary editor from 1906-31. He elevated the works of contemporary American poets and wrote an annual survey of poems published in American magazines.
An early version of "America the Beautiful" by Katharine Lee Bates first appeared in The Boston Evening Transcript on November 19, 1904. [9]
Hazel Hall (poet)'s first published poem "To an English Sparrow", first appeared in The Transcript in 1916. [10]
T. S. Eliot wrote the poem "The 'Boston Evening Transcript" referencing the newspaper in 1915.
Features and columns included: "Suburban Scenes", "The Listener", "The Nomad", "The Librarian", "Saturday Night Thoughts", and an extensive book reviews and music criticism. The Transcript also had a Washington, D.C. bureau, college sports pages, and a department of Bridge. In addition, The Transcript had a well known genealogy column.
Harvard Medical School's first U.S. animal vivisection lab raised concern from then editor-in-chief Edward Clement, and the paper subsequently ran a series of anti-vivisection editorials. [11]
In the summer of 1940, as Britain faced invasion in World War II, children were being evacuated overseas under a British government scheme known as the Children's Overseas Reception Board. The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript readily responded and agreed to sponsor a group of children. A group of 48 children left England on RMS Scythia from Liverpool on 24 September 1940 bound for Boston. [12]
Because of the genealogy column, The Transcript is of value to historians and others. Gary Boyd Roberts of the New England Historic Genealogical Society noted:
The Boston Evening Transcript, like the New York Times today, was a newspaper of record. Its genealogical column, which usually ran twice or more a week for several decades in the early twentieth century, was often an exchange among the most devoted and scholarly genealogists of the day. Many materials not published elsewhere are published therein. [13]
The Boston Evening Transcript is the title of a poem by T. S. Eliot, which reads:
The Boston Post was a daily newspaper in New England for over a hundred years before its final shutdown in 1956. The Post was founded in November 1831 by two prominent Boston businessmen, Charles G. Greene and William Beals.
Katharine Lee Bates was an American author and poet, chiefly remembered for her anthem "America the Beautiful", but also for her many books and articles on social reform, on which she was a noted speaker.
Howard Mumford Jones was an American intellectual historian, literary critic, journalist, poet, and professor of English at the University of Michigan and later at Harvard University.
Jeannette Leonard Gilder was an American author, journalist, critic, and editor. She served as the regular correspondent and literary critic for Chicago Tribune, and was also a correspondent for the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, Boston Transcript, Philadelphia Record and Press, and various other papers. She was the author of Taken by Siege; Autobiography of a Tomboy; and The Tomboy at Work. Gilder was the editor of Representative Poems of Living Poets ; Essays from the Critic ; Pen Portraits of Literary Women; and The Heart of Youth, an anthology; as well as the owner and editor of The Reader: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine.
Madison Julius Cawein was a poet from Louisville, Kentucky.
Nathan Haskell Dole was an American editor, translator, and author. A writer and journalist in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, he translated many of the works of Leo Tolstoy and books of other Russians; novels of the Spaniard Armando Palacio Valdés (1886–90); a variety of works from the French and Italian.
Albert Perkins Langtry was an American newspaper editor and publisher, politician, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, and a member of the Republican Party.
William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite was an African-American writer, poet, literary critic, anthologist, and publisher in the United States. His work as a critic and anthologist was widely praised and important in the development of East Coast poetry styles in the early 20th century. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1918.
The Boston Daily Advertiser was the first daily newspaper in Boston, and for many years the only daily paper in Boston.
Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff Sr. was an American politician, serving as the twentieth mayor of Boston, Massachusetts from January 6, 1868, to January 2, 1871.
Epes Sargent was an American editor, poet and playwright.
Henry Taylor Parker, "known for many years largely by his initials H. T. P.", was an American theater and music critic. Time said Parker's "reviews were famed" and for "29 years he had been Boston's oracle on theatre and music." The magazine also said Parker was a "great critic" as was Philip Hale who died around the same time. Parker was "one of the most distinguished critics of his era, respected for his long, thoughtful, and open‐minded reviews." His biographer said “This remarkable little man of fine perceptions, with his dark eyes burning quizzically in a head bent forward with a sleuthing thrust and emphatic in its nods, was a giant among critics.”
Francis Henry Jenks was a 19th-century theater critic in Boston whose work appeared in the Boston Globe, The Boston Daily Advertiser, The Boston Courier and The Boston Evening Transcript newspapers, The New England magazine, Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and other publications.
William Foster Apthorp was an American writer, drama and music critic, editor and musician.
Louise Townsend Nicholl was an American poet, and editor.
Allan Edward Doucette was an American football player. He played at the center position for Harvard and was a consensus All-American in 1897.
Frank Irving Cobb was an American journalist, primarily an editorial writer, from 1896 to his death. In 1904, he succeeded Joseph Pulitzer as editor of the latter's New York World newspaper. He became famous for his editorials in support of the policies of liberal Democrats, especially Woodrow Wilson, during the Progressive Era.
Frederick Josiah Bradlee Jr. was an American football player. He was a first-team All-American while attending Harvard University in 1914. He was the father of American journalist Ben Bradlee.
Cornelia Wells Walter is generally considered to have been the first woman editor of a major newspaper in the United States.
Joseph Edgar "J. E." or "Ed" Chamberlin was an American journalist, columnist, essayist, and editor whose work appeared in newspapers in Chicago, Boston, and New York, as well as in national magazines and journals, beginning in 1871 and continuing until his death in 1935. Beginning in the late 1880s, he wrote a popular column for the Boston Evening Transcript called "The Listener" and thus became known throughout New England as "The Listener of the Transcript." He was a friend and mentor to many aspiring writers, photographers, musicians, and artists, and maintained a close friendship with Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan for over 40 years. He died in South Hanson, Massachusetts in 1935 and is buried in his birthplace of Newbury, Vermont.
