Everything about The Atlantic Monthly totally explained
The Atlantic Monthly (also known as
The Atlantic) is an
American magazine founded in
Boston in 1857. Originally created as a
literary and
cultural commentary magazine, its current format is of a general editorial magazine. With content focusing on "
foreign affairs,
politics, and the
economy [aswell as] cultural trends", it's primarily aimed at a target audience of "
thought leaders".
The magazine's founders were a group of writers that included
Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and
James Russell Lowell (who would become its first editor). The current CEO and group publisher is
John Fox Sullivan.
Format and periodicity
Originally a monthly publication, the magazine, subscribed to by 480,000 readers, now publishes ten times a year and features articles in the fields of
political science and
foreign affairs, as well as
book reviews. In 2005,
The Atlantic announced that it would cease including short stories in its regular issues, but rather put them in a single annual special edition.
Literary history
The Atlantic Monthly was the first to publish
Julia Ward Howe's "
Battle Hymn of the Republic" (on
February 1,
1862), and William Parker's "
The Freedman's Story" (in February and March 1866). It published
Charles W. Eliot's "The New Education" (a call for practical reform) that resulted in his appointment to Presidency of
Harvard University in 1869. It also published some of
Charles Chesnutt's tales before they were collected for
The Conjure Woman. The associative vision
As We May Think by
Vannevar Bush appeared in July 1945. The magazine published
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s defense of
civil disobedience in "
Letter from Birmingham Jail" in August 1963. The magazine was a point of connection between
Emily Dickinson and
Thomas Wentworth Higginson; having read an article in the
Atlantic by Higginson, Dickinson asked him to become her mentor. It has also published many of the works of
Mark Twain, including one that managed to escape publication until 2001. Its best known current writers are
James Fallows,
Mark Bowden,
Christopher Hitchens,
Andrew Sullivan, Corby Kummer, and
Caitlin Flanagan.
The magazine has also published speculative articles that inspired the development of whole new technologies. The classic example is the publication of
Vannevar Bush's essay "
As We May Think" in July 1945, which inspired
Douglas Engelbart and later
Ted Nelson to develop the modern
workstation and
hypertext technology.
In April, 2005, the
Atlantic editors decided to cease publishing fiction in regular issues in favor of a newsstand-only annual fiction issue edited by longtime staffer C. Michael Curtis.
On January 22, 2008, The Atlantic dropped its subscriber wall and allowed users to freely browse its site, including all past archives (see http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801u/editors-note).
Ownership
For all but its recent existence,
The Atlantic has been known as a distinctively
New England literary magazine (as opposed to
Harper's and later
The New Yorker, both from
New York), and by its third year was published by the famous Boston publishing house of
Ticknor and Fields (later to become part of
Houghton Mifflin). The magazine was purchased by its then editor,
Ellery Sedgwick, during
World War I, but remained in Boston.
In 1980, the magazine was acquired by
Mortimer Zuckerman, property magnate and founder of
Boston Properties, who became its Chairman.
On
September 27,
1999, ownership of the magazine was transferred from Zuckerman to
David G. Bradley, owner of the
beltway news-focused
National Journal Group. Although Bradley had promised that no major changes were in store, the magazine's publishers announced in April 2005, that the editorial offices would leave their long-time home at 77 North Washington St. in Boston to join the company's advertising and circulation divisions in
Washington, D.C. apparently due to the high cost of Boston real estate. Later, in August, Bradley told the
New York Observer, cost cutting from the move would amount to a minor $200,000–$300,000 and those savings would be swallowed by severance related spending. The reason, then, was to create a hub in Washington where the top minds from all of Bradley's publications could collaborate. Few of the Boston staff agreed to relocate, allowing Bradley to embark on an open search for a new editorial staff.
List of editors
- James Russell Lowell, 1857–1861
- James Thomas Fields, 1861–1871
- William Dean Howells, 1871–1881
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1881–1890
- Horace Elisha Scudder, 1890–1898
- Walter Hines Page, 1898–1899
- Bliss Perry, 1899–1909
- Ellery Sedgwick, 1909–1938
- Edward A. Weeks, 1938–1966
- Robert Manning, 1966–1980
- William Whitworth, 1980–1999
- Michael Kelly, 1999–2002
- Cullen Murphy, interim editor, never named editor-in-chief, 2002–2006
- James Bennet, 2006—
Further Information
Get more info on 'The Atlantic Monthly'.
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