The Harvard Monthly

cover-art of The Harvard Monthly 1903

The Harvard Monthly was a literary magazine of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, beginning October 1885 until suspending publication following the Spring 1917 issue.

Formed in the latter months of 1885 by Harvard seniors William Woodward Baldwin, Thomas Parker Sanborn, Alanson B. Houghton, George Santayana, William Morton Fullerton, and George Rice Carpenter, the magazine proposed to afford "...a medium for the strongest and soberest undergraduate thought of the college...".[1] These six men comprised the Monthly's initial staff, with Houghton as editor, Baldwin as business manager and the others acting as editors.[2] The initial October 1885 issue includes works by Sanborn, Santayana, Houghton, Fullerton the magazine's faculty adviser, Barrett Wendell, among others. Some of the essays in this issue which may have been felt controversial have no stated author. In regard to this issue, The Harvard Crimson observed that "The unique form and general typographical make-up of the new monthly is extremely pleasing; it is quite a departure from the form of any magazine we have seen. The table of contents consists of stories, sketches, criticisms, poems, editorials and book reviews, choice morsels for the most delicate palate. It was announced that a feature of each number would be an article from the pen of some prominent alumnus."[3]

The Harvard Monthly was born in George Santayana's room in Hollis Hall

The Monthly ceased publication in 1917, due to issues involving the First World War, and The Harvard Advocate, a literary publication of Harvard College since 1866, became the primary source of essays, fiction, and poetry for the Harvard community.

History

Founding and Subsequent Years

“ The aim of the Monthly is primarily to preserve, as far as possible, the best literary work that is produced in college by undergraduates. ”

For thirteen years, President Charles William Eliot had been attempting to transform Harvard from a provincially famous institution into a nationally-recognized and admired leader in higher education. He believed that to do so, Harvard needed to attract students who came from all over the country, not just from Boston—and not just the wealthy. The academic curriculum needed to cater not just students in the liberal arts, but also ones who saw higher education as a path towards upward mobility, and as a way to pursue non-humanist studies. "The 1880's was in a sense the 'last gasp' of the leisured gentlemen, the last time they would dominate the university's academic and social structure."[4] What seemed a mass movement toward practicality and specialization that would drain the university of the aestheticism and humanism frustrated the young men who would eventually found the Monthly; each was involved with one or more of the other Harvard literary publications—the Lampoon, the Advocate, and the Crimson, which didn't offer the creative outlet they felt necessary. Toward the end of their junior year, W.W. Baldwin and T.P. Sanborn brainstormed in the latter's room in Grays Hall, proceeding to A.B. Houghton's room in Holyoke and, after gathering W.M. Fullerton and G.R. Carpenter, assembling in Santayana's room in Hollis Hall, where they agreed to move forward with a plan for a true literary magazine. They vowed their work would not bespeak the scrupulous consciousness of John Bunyan's Puritan Pilgrim, but rather the doubting scrutiny of William Dean Howells' Silas Lapham who, in Howells’ story, prevails over the empty, hypocritical norms of proper Boston society.[5] Houghton was elected editor-in-chief. "The title, 'Harvard Monthly', was adopted... instead of 'Harvard Literary Monthly'... lest it might be called the Harvard Lit and thus bring us up for comparison with Yale's sombre-hued institution."[6]

First page of Vol.1 The Harvard Monthly, October 1885

The new magazine was announced in the Crimson as being published the third Wednesday of each month from October to July for the price of twenty-five cents. The second issue featured an article by Harvard alumnus, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, father of editor Thomas Sanborn, titled Harvard in the Struggle for Emancipation.;[7] The magazine continued to include the works of Harvard staff and prominent graduates including Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Phillips Brooks, Crawford Howell Toy, Albert Bushnell Hart and Andrew Preston Peabody[7] By its second year, the staff of the Monthly had grown from six to eleven, and included Bernard Berenson. The roots of what Santayana would later develop into a full-fledged philosophical disassociation with things American can be found in his undergraduate writings, particularly in those submitted to the Monthly[4] George Santayana would remain involved with the magazine while a professor at Harvard, submitting material until 1903.

On the magazine's second anniversary, the Boston Daily Advertiser recounted its brief history and proclaimed the magazine was "vastly superior to any other college journal", that the literature was "absolutely and inherently good," and that some articles had even garnered favorable comment from abroad.[8]

Poem by George Santayana from Vol.1, No.4 The Harvard Monthly, January 1886

Those who subsequently served the Monthly include Bernhard Berenson, William Vaughn Moody, Norman Hapgood, Henry Milner Rideout, Philip Henry Savage, Trumbull Stickney,[6] Robert Herrick, John Reed, Charles Macomb Flandrau, Pierre de Chaignon la Rose, Clifford Herschel Moore, Robert Morss Lovett, Hermann Hagedorn, M.A. DeWolfe Howe, Thomas W. Lamont,[9]Lucien Price, John Hall Wheelock, Bliss Carman, Edwin Arlington Robinson[10] Conrad Aiken,[11]Joseph Auslander, Malcolm Cowley, Scofield Thayer, Robert Hillyer, Gilbert Seldes, John Dos Passos, and E. E. Cummings.[12]

Demise

A final entry in the last issue of The Harvard Monthly; the author served in WWI and returned home

The Harvard Monthly ceased publication with Volume 64, in May 1917, with the following words within black bordering: "The editors of the monthly regret that existing circumstances compel the suspension of publication during the immediate future."[13] The "circumstances" involved World War I and a campus gearing-up for war, with passionate disagreements erupting among Monthly staff members, as described years later by Malcolm Cowley in an on-line biography of his friend, Monthly editor E.E. Cummings. "[Cummings] took no part in the debate over preparedness for war, one which shook the country in the winter of 1916-17 and which, as a minor effect, disrupted the board of The Harvard Monthly. Four of the editors were pacifists, the other four were superpatriots, all eight were impractical, and they couldn't agree on what to print. In April 1917, when Congress declared war, The Monthly disappeared from Harvard, but not from memory."[14] No clear reason for the journal's cessation was provided either by the Monthly itself or in the Crimson, where the May 5, 1917 issue states, "The present issue [of The Harvard Monthly] is of peculiar interest as it is the last number of the Monthly to appear before the temporary suspension of publication. This, to whatever "existing circumstances" it may be due, is a great misfortune.[15] The Monthly was never resurrected, and the Harvard Advocate became Harvard's only literary publication, possibly subsuming the sort of material which had differentiated it from its sister-journal, which may have been due to a tradition of being different. Monthly alumnus Malcolm Cowley offered the following insight in his biography of E.E. Cummings: "There were two such magazines at Harvard in those days [just prior to WWI], The Monthly and The Advocate, and they looked down on each other—-or, to be accurate, they nodded to each other coldly from the facing doors of their respective sanctums on the dusty third floor of the Harvard Union. The Monthlies thought that the board of The Advocate, which then appeared fortnightly, was composed of journalists, clubmen, athletes, and disciples of Teddy Roosevelt, a former editor, with not a man of letters among them. The Advocates suspected that the Monthlies were aesthetes (as indeed most of them came to be called), scruffy poets, socialists, pacifists, or worse. It was for The Monthly that Cummings chose to write."[14]

Significance

The Harvard Monthly met the intentions of its founders and within ten years was said to have improved the quality of writing and thereby strengthened the English Department at Harvard. "The Monthly has always had a close relation to the English department, the growth of which was the direct cause of its appearance, and it furnishes the best record of the literary standards and ambitions of the undergraduates who make English their chief interest. It is the expression of the growth of a special academic tendency towards the study of literary form and of literary and general criticism."[16] Within ten years of its beginning, The Monthly was known to have published the best literary work done by undergraduates; its series of graduate articles has included many of exceptional value and interest; its influence in the college world has always been in the direction of earnestness and seriousness. Seeking only to reflect "the strongest and soberest undergraduate thought", The Monthly provided "a medium of communication between students and graduates" which had not existed in any other of Harvard's periodicals.[17] By the magazine's twenty-fifth anniversary, it was described as "proof... of the undergraduate cultivation of creative, critical and persuasive letters that still distinguishes the university...from most other in America."[9] That "proof" may best lie in the fact of The Harvard Monthly's many graduates, who went on to make significant contributions to the world.

The Harvard Monthly ceased publication in 1917. For more than thirty years, the monthly journal was produced in accordance with the original plans of six enthusiastic young men who brainstormed in George Santayana's room in Hollis Hall: a medium for undergraduate thought, issued monthly from October to July, the significance of which could not be denied. The Harvard Crimson, in reporting the suspension of the Monthly, opined that the journal, "... has filled to a certain extent the important post of Devil's Advocate amid the blatant orthodoxy of undergraduate life... Harvard sorely needed the Monthly. In the world outside it was looked on as one of the proofs of Harvard's difference from other colleges. The existence of such a magazine indicated... a desire to think things through, to reject ready-made opinions for the mere reason that they were ready-made, to hold a little aloof from current lanes of thought. Such a spirit, only too rare in our land of gigantic uniformities, and almost non-existent in our colleges, gave one hope that here at least a leaven was working which would ultimately transform American thought from the flabby courageless thing it is into something new and liberating."[15] In the forward to an autobiography of former Monthly editor John Hall Wheelock, literary historian Jay B. Hubbell is quoted as saying, "prior to World War I the history of American Literature was the history of Harvard College."[18] The Harvard Monthly belonged to that time.

Dingbat from Volume 52

Staffs of The Harvard Monthly

Volume 1: October 1885 to February 1886[7]

Volume 2: March 1886 to July 1886[7]

Volume 3: October 1886 to February 1887[19]

Staff of the Monthly, 1888

Volume 5: October 1887 to February 1888[20]

Volume 6: March 1888 to July 1888[21]

portion of an article in Vol. 7 titled "Why I Am Not a Republican" by L.M. Garrison (1867-1900), son of Wendell Phillips Garrison and grandson of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

Volumes 7-8: October 1888 to February 1889, March 1889 to July 1889[22][23]

Volume 9: October 1889 to February 1890[24]

Volume 10: March 1890 to July 1890[24]

Volumes 11-12: October 1890 to February 1891, March 1891 to July 1891[25]

Volumes 13-14: October 1891 to February 1892, March 1892 to July 1892[26]

*Volumes 15-16: October 1892 to July 1893, March 1893 to July 1893[27][28]

Volume 17: October 1893 to February 1894[29]

Volume 18: March 1894 to July 1894[30]

Volume 19: October 1894 to February 1895

Volume 20: March 1895 to July 1895[31]

advertisement in Vol. 21 of the Monthly

Volume 21: January 1896 to February 1896[32]

Volume 22: March 1896 to July 1896[33]

Volume 23: October 1896 to February 1897[34]

Volume 24: March 1897 to July 1897[35]

Volume 25: October 1897 to February 1898[36]

Volume 26: March 1898 to July 1898[37]

Volumes 27-28: October 1898 to February 1899, March 1899 to July 1899'[38] [39]

Staff of the Monthly, 1900

Volumes 29-30: October 1899 to February 1900, March 1900 to July 1900[40]

Volume 31: October 1900 to February 1901[41]

Volume 32: March 1901 to July 1901[42]

Staff of the Monthly, 1902

Volumes 33-34: October 1901 to February 1902, March 1902 to July 1902[43][44]

Volume 35: October 1902 to February 1903[45]

Volume 36: March 1903 to July 1903[46]

Volumes 37- 38: October 1903 to February 1904, March 1904 to July 1904[47]

Volumes 39-40: March 1905 to July 1905, October 1904 to February 1905[48][23]

Volumes 41-42: October 1905 to February 1906, March 1906 to July 1906[49]

Volumes 43-44: October 1906 to February 1907, March 1907 to July 1907[50]

Volume 45: October 1907 to February 1908[51]

Volume 46: March 1908 to July 1908[52]

Volumes 47-48: October 1908 to February 1909, March 1909 to July 1909[53][54]

Volumes 49-50: October 1909 to February 1910, March 1910 to July 1910[55] [56]

Volume 51: October 1910 to February 1911[56]

Volume 52: February 1911 to July 1911[57]

Volume 53: October 1911 to February 1912[58]

Volume 54: March 1912 to July 1912[59]

Volume 56: March 1913 to July 1913[60]

Volume 57: October 1913 to February 1914[61]

Volume 59-60: October 1914 to February 1915[62]

Volumes 63-64: October 1916 to May 1917 (suspension of production)[63]

Harvard Monthly Dingbat, vol. 52

See also

References

  1. ↑ The Harvard Crimson, October 22, 1885, is available on line at
  2. ↑ Baldwin, W.W. The Founding of the Harvard Monthly, The Harvard Monthly, Vol. 21, October 1895.
  3. ↑ The Harvard Crimson October 22, 1885, is available on line at
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Miller, Dan, Harvard, We Have a Problem: Santayana and the New University is on line at
  5. ↑ Clark, Tom Foran, The Significance of Being Frank: The Life and Times of Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, (Kindle Location 4323),
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Baldwin, W.W., The Founding of the Harvard Monthly, The Harvard Monthly, Vol.21, October 1895.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Harvard College (1780- ) (1885). The Harvard Monthly. Harvard College. p. 43.
  8. ↑ Matthews, Jeffrey J. (1 January 2004). Alanson B. Houghton: Ambassador of the New Era. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8420-5051-7.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 The Cambridge Tribune Vol 23, Number 18, July 2, 1910 is available on line at
  10. ↑ Morison, Samuel Eliot, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636-1936, Harvard University Press, p.430.
  11. ↑ Butscher, Edward, Conrad Aiken: Poet of White Horse Vale, University of Georgia Press, pp. 82-83.
  12. ↑ Kirsch, Adam, The Rebellion of E.E.Cummings, The Harvard Magazine, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March–April 2005 is available on line at
  13. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1916. p. 25.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Cowley, Malcolm, E.E. Cummings: Poet and Painter, "Notable American Unitarians", is available on line at
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 No Timidity in Current Monthly, The Harvard Crimson, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 5, 1917 is available on line at
  16. ↑ The Harvard University Register, 1911.
  17. ↑ Orcutt, William Dana and William Lurns Wolffe, The Harvard Club Book 1894-95.
  18. ↑ John Hall Wheelock (2002). The Last Romantic: A Poet Among Publishers : the Oral Autobiography of John Hall Wheelock. Univ of South Carolina Press. pp. 136–. ISBN 978-1-57003-463-3.
  19. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1887.
  20. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1888.
  21. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1888.
  22. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1889.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Harvard University (6 March 2012). The Harvard Monthly, Volume 8... Nabu Press. ISBN 978-1-277-16030-7.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1890.
  25. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1891.
  26. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1892.
  27. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1892.
  28. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1893.
  29. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1894.
  30. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1894.
  31. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1895.
  32. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1896.
  33. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1896.
  34. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1896.
  35. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1897.
  36. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1897.
  37. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1898.
  38. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1899.
  39. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1899.
  40. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Harvard College. 1900.
  41. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Harvard College. 1900.
  42. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1901.
  43. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1902.
  44. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1902.
  45. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1902.
  46. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Harvard College. 1903.
  47. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Harvard College. 1903.
  48. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1905.
  49. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Harvard College. 1906.
  50. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Harvard College. 1906.
  51. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Harvard College. 1907.
  52. ↑ Students of Harvard University 1908 The Harvard Monthly].
  53. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1908.
  54. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1909.
  55. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1910.
  56. ↑ 56.0 56.1 The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1910.
  57. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1911.
  58. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1885.
  59. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Harvard College. 1912.
  60. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1913.
  61. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1914.
  62. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1914.
  63. ↑ The Harvard Monthly. Students of Harvard College. 1916.