Massachusetts Magazine

Engraving by Samuel Hill, published in Massachusetts Magazine, 1790

The Massachusetts Magazine was published in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1789 through 1796.^[1] Also called the Monthly Museum of Knowledge and Rational Entertainment, it specialized in "poetry, music, biography, history, physics, geography, morality, criticism, philosophy, mathematics, agriculture, architecture, chemistry, novels, tales, romances, translations, news, marriages, deaths, meteorological observations, etc. etc." It was intended as "a kind of thermometer, by which the genius, taste, literature, history, politics, arts, manners, amusements and improvements of the age and nation, may be ascertained."^[2]

Founded by Isaiah Thomas, the magazine was also published by Ebenezer T. Andrews (1789-1793), Ezra W. Weld (1794), Samuel Hill (1794), William Greenough (1794-1795), Alexander Martin (1795-1796), Benjamin Sweetser (1796), and James Cutler (1796). The magazine was edited by Isaiah Thomas, Thaddeus Mason Harris (1795-1796), and William Bigelow (1796).^[3]

Contributors included Joseph Dennie (as Socialis), William Dunlap, Benjamin Franklin, Sarah Wentworth Morton (as Philenia), Judith Sargent Murray (as Constantia), Christian Gullager.^[4]. Sheet music was published with some issues, including compositions by Hans Gram.

References

1. ^ Paul Leicester Ford. Check-list of American magazines printed in the eighteenth century. 1889.
2. ^ The Massachusetts Magazine, VIII (1796).
3. ^ Frank Luther Mott. A history of American magazines, 1741-1850. Harvard University Press, 1930.
4. ^ Eve Kornfeld. Creating an American culture, 1775-1800: a brief history with documents. Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.

Image gallery

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  View of Boston, published in Massachusetts Magazine, 1790

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  View of Boston, published in Massachusetts Magazine, 1791

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  Charles Bulfinch's plan for the Tontine Crescent, Boston, 1794

Further reading

• Herbert R. Brown. Elements of Sensibility in The Massachusetts Magazine. American Literature, I (1929).
• Herbert R. Brown. Richardson and Sterne in the Massachusetts Magazine.The New England Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jan., 1932), pp. 65-82.
• Beverly Jean Reed. Reading the traveling exhibition show: "Massachusetts Magazine" and the visual/verbal construction of the American woman (dissertation). Purdue Univ., 2000.

External links

• http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/acrostics/a_4.html