The Stylus
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The Stylus was a would-be periodical owned and edited by Edgar Allan Poe. It had been a long dream of Poe to establish an American journal with very high standards in order to elevate the literature of the time.
Originally, Poe was to call the journal The Penn, as it would have been based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He soon realized he needed to "endeavor to support the general interests of the republic of letters, without reference to particular regions - regarding the world at large as the true audience of the author" [1]. It was renamed The Stylus, a pun on the word "Penn" ("pen").
Poe had lofty plans for the magazine. Early in its planning stages, he promised financial backers that he would start with 500 subscribers - a number which he expected to be 5,000 before the end of its second year. "There is no earthly reason why," he said, "such a Magazine may not, eventually, reach a circulation as great as that of Graham's at present - viz 50,000" [2].
Poe begun his plans as early as 1841 but never saw his dream come true despite having several published solicitations for subscribers. He came close, however, when he became the owner and editor of the Broadway Journal in October of 1845. It ceased publication shortly thereafter when its final edition appeared on January 3, 1846.
