The Atlantic Heritage

WITH this issue the Atlantic embarks upon its second century of continuous publication. Few magazines have attained such an age here or abroad, and there will be fewer still in the future as the competition for the reader’s time becomes more ruthless. We have behind us a record of 1200 issues containing in toto well over 100 million words. To anyone reviewing this large body of writing, it will be seen that the Atlantic has been a discoverer and a champion of new authors; since our resources were limited, we had to find new people of promise. It has endeavored to be a liberal and unorthodox exponent of American ideas, and, although its roots were grounded in New England, its concern from the first has been for the Union. The fact that today we have more readers in California than in any other state is evidence that our readership has outgrown the Northeast.

Perhaps in part our longevity is attributable to a refreshment in leadership, for we have changed editors more frequently than any other magazine in our field; whenever the circulation began to sag, a younger mind was brought in. Of the nine editors, six were New Englanders: James Russell Lowell, James T. Fields, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Horace Scudder, Bliss Perry, and Ellery Sedgwick. William Dean Howells, the third in succession, came from what was then the West — Columbus, Ohio; Walter Hines Page was a native of North Carolina; and the present incumbent was born in New Jersey. Each of them before assuming office had been grounded in the Atlantic’s policy; each knew that in the words of our founders he would be expected “to concentrate the efforts of the best writers upon literature and politics, under the light of the highest morals.” Pause over those Victorian words for a moment. In the modern idiom they mean that the magazine can be divided evenly between matters of history, economics, and politics on the one hand, and belles lettres on the other. And those words also recognize that the more thoughtful element in the Atlantic’s audience is its permanent and valuable core.

The aims of the magazine were clearly defined in the first issue. It was to be primarily an American undertaking. “ The publishers wish to say,” so runs the prospectus, “that while native writers will receive the most solid encouragement, and will be mainly relied on to fill the pages of the Atlantic, they will not hesitate to draw from the foreign sources at their command, as occasion may require, relying rather on the competency of an author to treat a particular subject, than on any other claim whatever.” In this way they hoped to make their periodical “welcome wherever the English tongue is spoken or read.” We have from the first relied upon “the competency” of our authors; we have not tried to water down what they wrote but have given them the latitude to express conflicting and at times highly controversial opinions, for we still believe, as did our founders, that the free competition of ideas has made this country what it is.

“In Politics,” so runs our charter, “the Atlantic will be the organ of no party or clique, but will honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea. . . It will not rank itself with any sect of anties, but with that body of men which is in favor of Freedom, National Progress, and Honor, whether public or private.” To the founders the Union was sacred, and ever since the Reconstruction we have held to the pledge that the magazine would be nonpartisan. At the time of national elections, as tempers have risen, we have had to resist the pressure of well-meaning friends who would have us become a Republican or a Democratic organ. Our refusal to do so has sometimes cost us readers and advertising, but we believe that it has increased our sense of responsibility and our value.

In this Centennial issue we have held to our traditional aims. Instead of reprinting some of the famous pieces from our past, we found it a fresher incentive to bring together an exceptional selection of the more distinguished writers of our time, the men and women whose poems, stories, essays, and articles taken together would best represent the aspirations, the amenities, and the apprehensions of the Western world at this turn in history. This would be a magazine which, were it found in a cornerstone opened in 2007 A.D., would tell our grandchildren what we were like.

It was with thoughts such as these that we began our preparation. The challenge of slavery was the issue which weighed most heavily on the conscience of Mr. Lowell and our charter contributors in 1857. Today that same issue in a new and threatening form, the slavery enforced by Communism, presses hard upon the nerves. How far is the Kremlin prepared to go in its quest for empire, and what are its designs on Western Europe? For the answer to those questions on which may turn the peace of the world, we called on an English authority, Edward Crankshaw.

For the salt and savor of New England, it was natural that we should invite Robert Frost, our foremost poet; Samuel Eliot Morison, our ranking historian; and John P. Marquand, who knows how to light up the New England character.

The most original journalist of our time was Harold Ross, the founding editor of the New Yorker, and we were fortunate in persuading James Thurber to tell of their years together.

For our short stories we began with Ernest Hemingway. The Atlantic was the first to publish him in this country, and we were delighted when we learned that he was writing again for our Anniversary. From Denmark came a new Gothic tale from Isak Dinesen; and from a young writer, Brian Moore, in Montreal, as unknown as Hemingway was in the 1920s, came a narrative that is gay and touching.

In the professions it was the top men we sought for: in the analysis of the self‚ Dr. Jung; in higher education, Dr. Conant, freshly returned from Germany; in the classics. Sir Richard Livingstone; in economics, Sumner H. Slichter; in the ministry, Reinhold Niebuhr; and in art, Bernard Berenson — and the not-to-be-forgotten Sir Max Beerbohm.

So the issue grew, and as it was building we realized we had outgrown our old format, and we asked Gyorgy Kepes, professor of visual design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to design a new one. The Atlantic is not an illustrated magazine, but Mr. Kepes believed that our text could be made much more inviting, and that by the use of symbols or characterization our title pages could convey at a glance the nature of what was to come. We think he has provided for the Atlantic an open sesame.

In 1857 the printed word was unopposed. Books and magazines were a necessity for the thoughtful, and reading aloud was an evening pastime. At the end of its first year the Atlantic numbered 15,000 regular readers; today that number is rising a quarter of a million; it has doubled since 1944, and this despite the competition with radio, television, the picture book, and — a new and demanding rival — the long-playing record. Since Atlantic readers have the habit of passing on their copies to other members of the family and friends, we are now reaching an audience of a million or more, people to whom the printed word is still the most powerful medium for imparting the truth and for penetrating to the heart. Over the years, nine editors in succession from their vantage point in Boston have maintained a policy and developed a readership vital in American letters. We are confident that those who come after us in our second century will do no less.