Boston Evening Transcript

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Boston Evening Transcript was a daily afternoon newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts during the later part of the 19th century and much of the 20th century. The WBET Radio Station takes its call letters from the Boston Evening Transcript as they shared a common owner.

An early version of America the Beautiful by Katharine Lee Bates first appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript on November 19, 1904. Many other literary and poetic works debuted in its pages as well.

The paper is of value to historians and others. Gary Boyd Roberts of the New England Historic Genealogical Society notes:

"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."^[1]

The Boston Evening Transcript is also the title of a poem by T.S. Eliot which reads:

The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript

Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.

When evening quickens faintly in the street,

Wakening the appetites of life in some

And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,

I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning

Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld,

If the street were time and he at the end of the street,

And I say, "Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript.