Southern Literary Messenger
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The first notice of The Southern Literary Messenger with Thomas Willis White as publisher appeared in the Daily National Intelligencer in Washington on May 15, 1834. The Messenger was a periodical published in Richmond, Virginia from 1834 until June 1864. The owner and publisher was Thomas Willis White (1834-1843). When he died in 1843 his son and others took over. Edgar Allan Poe was an early and influential editor. Poe edited some of Matthew Fontaine Maury's USN articles on United States Naval Reform. Another editor was Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury USN from 1840 to 1843. Still another was Maury's first cousin, Benjamin Blake Minor, a _publisher_ from August 1843 - October 1847. The periodical was published approximately monthly, and it initially had subscribed mostly readers in the north but it picked up southern readers and writers over time as more southerners wrote articles to be published as is stated in the Messenger's 1840 issue.
It was a high risk business venture and especially for picking up subscriptions in the south although it was originally created for the Virginia Historical and Philosophical Society. The Southern Literary Messenger featured poems, fiction, non-fiction, translations, reviews, legal articles, and Virginia historical notes.
James A. Heath, the Southern Literary Messenger's first editor wrote: From our Northern and Eastern friends we have received more complimentary notices than from any of our Southern brethren without the limits of our own State. We say this not in a reproachful spirit, but in a somewhat sad conviction of mind, that we who live on the sunny side of Mason and Dixon's line are not yet sufficiently inspired with a sense of importance of maintaining our just rights, or rather our proper representation in the Republic of Letters. Each issue carried the subtitle "Devoted to Every Department of Literature and the Fine Arts."
[edit] External links
- Complete Archives at:University of Michigan
