Editor | Ella Farman Pratt, Charles Stuart Pratt, Elbridge Streeter Brooks |
---|---|
Categories | Children’s magazine |
Frequency | Monthly |
Publisher | D. Lothrop Company |
First issue | July 1875 |
Final issue | August 1893 |
Country | United States |
Wide Awake was a monthly American children's magazine, founded in 1875 by Daniel Lothrop. It published stories written by Margaret Sidney, Edward Everett Hale, Sarah Orne Jewett, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, and Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman. [1] Wide Awake was illustrated by many well known artists including Howard Pyle, William Thomas Smedley, Sol Eytinge Jr. and Frank T. Merrill. [2] The magazine was based in Boston. [3]
Wide Awake merged with St. Nicholas Magazine in 1893.
Daniel Lothrop, founder of the Boston publishing firm of D. Lothrop Company, started Wide Awake, intended for a readership of children between ten and eighteen years of age. Lothrop was a publisher with an evangelical viewpoint. He wanted a magazine that "shall help to make the boys and girls of America broad-minded, pure-hearted, and thoroughly wide awake." [4]
The first issue was dated July, 1875 and in it readers were informed "Magazines like Wide Awake are good for young folks, and contain nothing of the 'run-away-to-sea' style for boys, or the 'elope-and-be-happy' incentive for girls, which are greatly cried against by parents now-a-days." [5]
Ella Farman, author of several children's books published by Lothrop, was chosen as the magazine's first editor. For several months she edited Wide Awake from her home in Battle Creek, Michigan with the assistance of her friend Emma L. Shaw, before Farman and Shaw moved to Boston. [6] Charles Stuart Pratt was the art editor. Farman and Pratt married in 1877, [2] and Shaw returned to Michigan soon after the wedding. [7] Ella Farman Pratt remained as editor until December, 1891. [8]
Wide Awake's final editor was Elbridge Streeter Brooks, who had been an associate editor at St. Nicholas Magazine from 1884 through 1887. He was a prolific writer of more than thirty non-fiction children's books. [9]
Early issues contained between 60 and 72 pages of well-illustrated short stories, articles, poems, and serialized stories. [2] There were word puzzles on a page entitled Tangles. Readers' letters about their homes and families were printed in a section called Wide Awake Post Office. Wide Awake Athletics told children about playing team sports and exercising at a gymnasium.
Later issues had an average of 92 pages, not counting advertising pages. No advertising appeared amongst the magazine's stories, it was all within special sections at the front and back of the issues, as well as on the inside front cover, and on the back cover. [10]
Wide Awake never built its circulation above 25,000 subscribers, [5] but its reach extended beyond those who received it monthly through the mail. Twice a year six issues (minus covers and advertising pages) were bound into attractive hard covers and marketed as gifts books. For many years these volumes were titled Wide Awake Pleasure Book.
Serialized stories were planned so that they began in the first of the bound issues, and ended in the last one. [11] Some of the serialized stories were later published as novels by D. Lothrop Company.
From the 1880s until 1893 cost of Wide Awake was 20 cents per issue and $2.40 per year. [12] [13] The cost of a hardcover six issue Wide Awake Pleasure Book was $1.50
The most popular of the Wide Awake serialized stories were ones that told of the Five Little Peppers . They were written by Harriet Mulford Stone, under her pen name of Margaret Sidney.
In 1877 Miss Stone's first published story, Polly Pepper's Chicken Pie, appeared in Wide Awake. Phronsie Pepper's New Shoes was published in 1878. Due to positive reader response editor Ella Farman Pratt asked Stone to write a series of stories about the Pepper family. The new stories were published in the 1880 issues of the magazine. [14]
Publisher Daniel Lothrop enjoyed reading the Pepper stories and wondered what the author was like. He had to go to New York on business and decided to stop in New Haven and call on Miss Stone. For a time Lothrop made biweekly trips to call upon the author, and in 1881 Lothrop and Stone were married. During that same year D. Lothrop Company published an expanded version of the serialized stories as the novel Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. [1]
Until the demise of Wide Awake all of the Five Little Peppers novels were first serialized in the magazine, and later published in book form by D. Lothrop Company.
Daniel Lothrop had an interest in the Chautauqua Institution, which started as a summer school for Sunday School teachers, and expanded to include educational lectures and courses in self-improvement. In 1882 Wide Awake began adding a 16-page Chautauqua Young Folks' Reading Union (CYFRU) Supplement to each issue. All of the books listed in the supplement's reading course were published by D. Lothrop Company. [2]
The CYFRU supplements were not included in the bound volumes marketed as Wide Awake Pleasure Books, and they were discontinued in 1888.
On March 18, 1892, Daniel Lothrop died unexpectedly, and for a time his widow set aside her writing career and took on the responsibilities of being a book and magazine publisher. She experienced financial difficulties [1] and none of the Lothrop magazines lasted long after Mr. Lothrop's death.
The final Wide Awake issue was dated August, 1893. It was 144 pages long and contained all remaining chapters of the two stories that were being serialized. An article on the life of Daniel Lothrop stated that new lines of book publishing would be taken up, and thought and labor could not be diverted into publishing magazines. Readers were told:
"So, to make a long story short, with this August number Wide Awake ceases to be a separate publication. From this time it is merged into St. Nicholas, and becomes St. Nicholas. And every friend of Wide Awake who has been its loyal, devoted and steadfast supporter through all its years of life, is urged to still remain loyal, devoted and steadfast by following the dearly-loved magazine into its new home, and to love St. Nicholas just as strongly and just as dearly as Wide Awake has been loved." [15]
A two-page announcement from St. Nicholas informed subscribers that they would receive St. Nicholas during the balance of their subscription. [16]
Cricket is an illustrated literary magazine for children published in the United States, founded in September 1973 by Marianne Carus whose intent was to create "The New Yorker for children."
St. Nicholas Magazine was a popular monthly American children's magazine, founded by Scribner's in 1873. The first editor was Mary Mapes Dodge, who continued her association with the magazine until her death in 1905. Dodge published work by the country's leading writers, including Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Mark Twain, Laura E. Richards and Joel Chandler Harris. Many famous writers were first published in St. Nicholas League, a department that offered awards and cash prizes to the best work submitted by its juvenile readers. Edna St. Vincent Millay, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. B. White, and Stephen Vincent Benét were all St. Nicholas League winners.
Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge was an American children's author and editor, best known for her novel Hans Brinker. She was the recognized leader in juvenile literature for almost a third of the nineteenth century.
Harriett Lothrop was an American author also known by her pseudonym Margaret Sidney. In addition to writing popular children's stories, she ran her husband Daniel Lothrop's publishing company after his death. After they bought The Wayside country house, they worked hard to make it a center of literary life.
Anne Carroll Moore was an American educator, writer and advocate for children's libraries.
The Brownies is a series of publications by Canadian illustrator and author Palmer Cox, based on names and elements from English traditional mythology and Scottish stories told to Cox by his grandmother. Illustrations with verse aimed at children, The Brownies was published in magazines and books during the late 19th century and early 20th century. The Brownie characters became famous in their day, and were the first North American comic characters to be internationally merchandised.
Elbridge Streeter Brooks was an American author, editor, and critic. He is chiefly remembered as an author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction for children, much of it on historical or patriotic subjects. His byline for most of his writing was Elbridge S. Brooks.
Daniel Lothrop was an American publisher.
Our Young Folks: An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls was a monthly United States children’s magazine, published between January 1865 and December 1873. It was printed in Boston by Ticknor and Fields from 1865 to 1868, and then by James R. Osgood & Co. from 1869 to 1873. The magazine published works by Lucretia Peabody Hale, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Horatio Alger, Oliver Optic, Louisa May Alcott, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Frances Matilda Abbott.
The North American Review(NAR) was the first literary magazine in the United States. It was founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale and others. It was published continuously until 1940, after which it was inactive until revived at Cornell College in Iowa under Robert Dana in 1964. Since 1968, the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls has been home to the publication. Nineteenth-century archives are freely available via Cornell University's Making of America.
Eliza Anna Farman Pratt (1837–1907) was an American writer of children's literature, best known for editing Wide Awake magazine for 16 years, starting in 1875.
Clara Doty Bates was a 19th-century American author who published a number of volumes of poetry and juvenile literature. Many of these works were illustrated, the designs being furnished by her sister. Her work was published in St. Nicholas Magazine, The Youth's Companion, Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Wide Awake, Godey's Lady's Book, and Peterson's Magazine. During the World's Columbian Exposition, she had charge of the Children's Building. Bates died in 1895.
Emma L. Shaw, an American Nonconformist, was a tailor and a farmer before becoming a juvenile literature book editor and associate editor of Good Health in Battle Creek, Michigan. In about 1870, Shaw began her literary work in Michigan. With her friend, Ella Farman, Shaw purchased a small farm near Battle Creek and here, for several years, Farman wrote juvenile books that were edited by Shaw, and published by D. Lothrop & Co. In 1875, Shaw and Farman began editing Wide Awake in their sitting-room. The growing needs of this periodical caused the editors to move to Boston, but Shaw soon returned to Michigan and became a charter member of the Michigan Woman's Press Association. She worked on several journals published by the Good Health Publishing Company of Battle Creek, where she was an editor for many years.
Amanda Bartlett Harris was an American author and literary critic best known for her work in children's, educational, and nature literature.
Charles Stuart Pratt (1854–1921), who sometimes wrote under the pen names of C. P. Stewart and C. P. Stuart, was an American writer of children's literature, best known for being the art editor of Wide Awake magazine for 16 years, starting in 1875. He edited children’s magazines for 30 years, and for most of that time he worked with his wife, Ella Farman Pratt.
Little Folks was a monthly United States children's magazine for young readers from three to twelve years-old. It was founded by publisher Samuel E. Cassino, and was published between November 1897 and 1926 – originally in Boston, but was later relocated to Salem, Massachusetts.
Maria Louise Kirk, usually credited as M. L. Kirk or Maria L. Kirk, was an American painter and illustrator of more than fifty books, most of them for children.
Elizabeth Bullock Humphrey, also credited as Lizbeth, Lizzie, or L. B. Humphrey, was an American illustrator active in the 19th century. Humphrey and other women from Cooper Union are considered some of the first women to receive recognition as illustrators in the United States.
The Little Corporal was a monthly children’s magazine published in Chicago Illinois from 1865 to 1875 and became the first children's periodical in the United States to gain a nation-wide readership. The magazine had a strong emphasis on patriotism and had the motto "Fighting against Wrong, and for the Good and the True and the Beautiful."
Elizabeth Cumings Pierce was an American author. She published stories and books for children under her maiden name, Elizabeth Cumings. She also published a series of humorous stories about ministerial life as the Rev. Uriah Xerxes Buttles, D.D.