Moses Dresser Phillips (May 15, 1813 - August 20, 1859) was an American publisher of books and magazines [1] [2] best known for creating The Atlantic Monthly .
Moses Dresser Phillips (May 15, 1813 - August 20, 1859) was an American publisher of books and magazines [1] [2] best known for creating The Atlantic Monthly .
Phillips was born in Charlton, Massachusetts. At age 18 he moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, where he served as a bookstore clerk in the shop of Clarendon Harris. [3] In 1835 he established his own bookstore in partnership with William Lincoln, and around 1843, in partnership with Charles Sampson, he founded the Boston publishing house of Phillips & Sampson (later Phillips, Sampson & Company). Phillips told an anecdote, recounted by Edward Everett Hale, [4] of their first orders from San Francisco during the Gold Rush year of 1849: "So many hundred packs of 'Highland' cards, so many of the 'True Thomas' cards, and so on till the box was nearly full, and then 'one dozen Bibles.'" This was seed corn, as he said. By 1852 or 1853, the orders were for "Four hundred Byron's Poems, four hundred Scott's Poems, one hundred Cowper's Poems" and so on in large shipments.
In the autumn of 1857, Phillips and Sampson determined to create and publish The Atlantic Monthly . Their plan was launched in a dinner-party, as described in a letter by Phillips: [5]
I must tell you about a little dinner-party I gave about two weeks ago. It would be proper, perhaps, to state the origin of it was a desire to confer with my literary friends on a somewhat extensive literary project, the particulars of which I shall reserve till you come. But to the Party: My invitations included only R. W. Emerson, H. W. Longfellow, J. R. Lowell, Mr. Motley (the 'Dutch Republic' man), O. W. Holmes, Mr. Cabot, and Mr. Underwood, our literary man. Imagine your uncle as the head of such a table, with such guests. The above named were the only ones invited, and they were all present. We sat down at three P.M., and rose at eight. The time occupied was longer by about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time intellectually by all odds that I have ever had. Leaving myself and 'literary man' out of the group, I think you will agree with me that it would be difficult to duplicate that number of such conceded scholarship in the whole country besides.... Each one is known alike on both sides of the Atlantic, and is read beyond the limits of the English language.
At that dinner he announced his idea for a magazine: [6]
Mr. Cabot is much wiser than I am. Dr. Holmes can write funnier verses than I can. Mr. Motley can write history better than I. Mr. Emerson is a philosopher and I am not. Mr. Lowell knows more of the old poets than I. But none of you knows the American people as well as I do.
The first issue of The Atlantic was published in November 1857, and quickly gained fame as one of the finest magazines in the English-speaking world.[ citation needed ]
Phillips died at age 46 in his house in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Friedrich Nietzsche considered him "the most gifted of the Americans", and Walt Whitman referred to him as his "master".
The Atlantic is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1857.
John Lothrop Motley was an American author and diplomat. As a popular historian, he is best known for his works on the Netherlands, the three volume work The Rise of the Dutch Republic and four volume History of the United Netherlands. As United States Minister to Austria in the service of the Abraham Lincoln administration, Motley helped to prevent European intervention on the side of the Confederates in the American Civil War. He later served as Minister to the United Kingdom during the Ulysses S. Grant administration.
James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the fireside poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets that rivaled the popularity of British poets. These writers usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside.
The Boston Brahmins or Boston elite are members of Boston's traditional upper class. They are often associated with a cultivated New England or Mid-Atlantic dialect and accent, Harvard University, Anglicanism, and traditional British American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English colonists are typically considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins. They are considered White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. Grouped among the fireside poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He was also an important medical reformer. In addition to his work as an author and poet, Holmes also served as a physician, professor, lecturer, inventor, and, although he never practiced it, he received formal training in law.
Edward Everett Hale was an American author, historian, and Unitarian minister, best known for his writings such as "The Man Without a Country", published in Atlantic Monthly, in support of the Union during the Civil War. He was the grand-nephew of Nathan Hale, the American spy during the Revolutionary War.
James Thomas Fields was an American publisher, editor, and poet. His business, Ticknor and Fields, was a notable publishing house in 19th century Boston.
The Porcellian Club is an all-male final club at Harvard University, sometimes called the Porc or the P.C. The year of founding is usually given as 1791, when a group began meeting under the name "the Argonauts", or as 1794, the year of the roast pig dinner at which the club, known first as "the Pig Club" was formally founded. The club's motto, Dum vivimus vivamus is Epicurean. The club emblem is the pig and some members sport golden pigs on watch-chains or neckties bearing pig's-head emblems.
Southworth & Hawes was an early photographic firm in Boston, 1843–1863. Its partners, Albert Sands Southworth (1811–1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808–1901), have been hailed as the first great American masters of photography, whose work elevated photographic portraits to the level of fine art. Their images are prominent in every major book and collection of early American photography.
The fireside poets – also known as the schoolroom or household poets – were a group of 19th-century American poets associated with New England. These poets were very popular among readers and critics both in the United States and overseas. Their domestic themes and messages of morality presented in conventional poetic forms deeply shaped their era until their decline in popularity at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Fly Club is a final club, traditionally "punching" male undergraduates of Harvard College during their sophomore or junior year. Undergraduate and graduate members participate in club activities.
John Amory Lowell was an American businessman and philanthropist from Boston. He became the sole trustee of the Lowell Institute when his first cousin, John Lowell Jr. (1799–1836), the Institute's endower, died.
Julia Caroline Ripley Dorr was an American author who published both prose and poetry. Although she wrote a number of novels and works on travel, she was best known for her poetry. Her work was conservative; she did not write anything that she felt was improper for children to hear, and was described as consisting of "respectable but not highly distinguished or passionate phrases to the conventional wisdom of her time and place". She had a keen sense of form and, working as she did in several mediums, to her belonged the distinction of never attempting to say in verse what might better find expression in prose. To her sense of form she added a clear-seeing eye, and the ability so to fit words together as to make others see what she saw.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858) is a collection of essays written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. The essays were originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1857 and 1858 before being collected in book form. The author had written two essays with the same name which were published in the earlier The New-England Magazine in November 1831 and February 1832, which are alluded to in a mention of an "interruption" at the start of the first essay.
Thomas Parker Sanborn was an American poet. The eldest son of abolitionist, social scientist, and memorialist of American transcendentalism Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Thomas became a close friend of philosopher George Santayana and was a food model for the protagonist in Santayana's only novel, The Last Puritan. With five college friends, Thomas founded The Harvard Monthly.
The Saturday Club, established in 1855, was an informal monthly gathering in Boston, Massachusetts, of writers, scientists, philosophers, historians, and other notable thinkers of the mid-19th century.
The Massachusetts Bible Society is a Christian, ecumenical organization founded on July 6, 1809 at a ceremony in the Representatives Chamber of the Massachusetts State House. It was formally incorporated on February 10, 1810 and is the third oldest Bible Society in the United States, following the Philadelphia society, founded December 12, 1808, and the Connecticut society, founded in the Spring of 1809. The offices of the society are located in Newton Centre, Massachusetts on the campus of Andover Newton Theological School.
The "Commemoration Ode" is an 1865 poem by James Russell Lowell. It was written for Harvard's Commemoration Day. Though the Ode received a lackluster reception when Lowell first delivered it on July 21, 1865, after it was republished later that year it gained a more positive reputation. By the 1870s the poem was very highly thought of, an opinion which gradually shifted in the mid-20th century, and it has since been less popular or praised.
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