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Publishing

The Spirit of the Times: A 19th Century Chronicle of American Sports

January 14, 2022 by Bill Orzell Leave a Comment

Title page of the September 1, 1894 issue of The Spirit of the Times, featuring an illustration by Henry Stull.In the early 1800s it was unusual for Americans to be interested in sporting matters on their own shores. News from Europe was the only sporting news of merit, and publishing an American sporting journal was considered a risky use of capital.

The first attempt along these lines may have been in 1829 Baltimore, where John S. Skinner published a monthly magazine which focused on race horse pedigrees called The American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine. Another early attempt was published in New York by the recognized writer and horseman Cadwallader R. Colden, whose organ was called The New-York Sporting Magazine and Annals of the American and English Turf, first published in 1833.

Among the most notable of the sporting press arrived in 1831, when William T. Porter and James Haw published the first issue of The Spirit of the Times, focusing on horse literature and sporting subjects. They had chosen the name for their broadsheet from a quotation in Shakespeare’s King John, “The spirit of the times shall teach me speed.” [Read more…] about The Spirit of the Times: A 19th Century Chronicle of American Sports

Filed Under: Arts, Capital-Saratoga, History, New York City, Recreation Tagged With: Baseball, Belmont Park, bicycling, Civil War, Cultural History, football, Gambling, Golf History, Horses, Journalism, Manhattan, New York City, Newspapers, Publishing, Saratoga Race Course, sports, Sports History

‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’: Harriet Jacobs in Orange County, New York (Conclusion)

January 6, 2022 by Paula Tarnapol Whitacre Leave a Comment

Gilbert Studios photograph of Harriet Jacobs 1894“The dream of my life is not yet realized…I still long for a hearthstone of my own.” (Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861).

In 1852, Harriet Jacobs became legally free, but not independent as she yearned. She continued her job as nursemaid for the family of Nathaniel Parker Willis, then editor of the trend-setting magazine Home Journal and one of the country’s most famous authors. The needs of the Willises usually took precedence over her own.

When the family moved to Cornwall, in Orange County, NY, she went too. There, in fits and starts, over the course of more than five years, she wrote the book about her life still read today – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. [Read more…] about ‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’: Harriet Jacobs in Orange County, New York (Conclusion)

Filed Under: History, Hudson Valley - Catskills, New York City Tagged With: Abolition, Black History, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Orange County, Publishing, Slavery, womens history

Two Capital Region Literary Orgs Merging Into Hudson Valley Writers Guild

December 24, 2021 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Hudson Valley Writers GuildAlbany Poets and the Hudson Valley Writers Guild have announced plans to combine organizations and operate as the Hudson Valley Writers Guild moving forward. [Read more…] about Two Capital Region Literary Orgs Merging Into Hudson Valley Writers Guild

Filed Under: Arts, Capital-Saratoga, Hudson Valley - Catskills Tagged With: Hudson Valley Writers Guild, Literature, Publishing, Writing

Saratoga’s ‘Fanny the Flower Girl,’ Gotham Book Mart Founder

December 14, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

Congress Spring, Saratoga, 1849Frances Steloff was the daughter of a Russian immigrant and itinerant rabbi who, in an age of rising anti-Semitism, was one of the early Jewish settlers in Saratoga Springs. The large family lived in dire poverty.

After the death of her mother, Frances was “informally” adopted by a wealthy Boston couple. Having run away from her foster parents, she made her way to New York, worked in a Brooklyn department store selling corsets, before establishing a tiny bookshop in Midtown Manhattan. On her death, after eighty-one years in the business, she was revered as one of America’s most influential booksellers and bibliophiles. Founder of the Gotham Book Mart, she turned her establishment into a center for avant-garde literature. [Read more…] about Saratoga’s ‘Fanny the Flower Girl,’ Gotham Book Mart Founder

Filed Under: Arts, Capital-Saratoga, History, New York City Tagged With: Immigration, Jewish History, Literature, Manhattan, Medical History, New York City, Publishing, Saratoga, Saratoga Springs

Charlie Pfaff, Walt Whitman and the King of Bohemia

October 6, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

Pfaffs advertisementDuring the 1830s, young Romantic poets in Paris were loud and rebellious. They raised the noise levels in literature. Pétrus Borel headed the “Petit Cénacle,” an eccentric group of writers who had declared war on Classicism.

Considered a social nuisance, their rowdy and unruly behavior led to arrests. A journalistic term of abuse was turned into a banner of pride. The group’s members adopted the name Les Bousingos (“faiseurs de bousin” = brawlers). [Read more…] about Charlie Pfaff, Walt Whitman and the King of Bohemia

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Cultural History, Literature, Mark Twain, New York City, Publishing, Walt Whitman

Nancy Cunard, Modernism and the Private Press Movement

September 29, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

The Kelmscott ChaucerThe history of the modern private press can be said to have started in early 1891 with William Morris’s foundation of the Kelmscott Press at 16 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, and the publication of his own work The Story of the Glittering Plain.

There had been forerunners of course. Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill Press, established in June 1757, set a precedent by producing splendid books, pamphlets, and ephemera, but it was Morris who succeeded in establishing a cost-effective press for high quality publications. His initiative gave birth to a host of similar undertakings. He initiated the Private Press Movement which was closely associated with the rise of modernist ideas. Morris also had a remarkable following in New York. [Read more…] about Nancy Cunard, Modernism and the Private Press Movement

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, Arts and Crafts Movement, Black History, Cultural History, Folk Art, French History, Furniture, Literature, modernism, Photography, Publishing, sculpture, womens history

NYS Conservationist Magazine Celebrates 75 Years

August 29, 2021 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

1946 NYS Conservationist MagazineAugust 2021 marks the 75th anniversary of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) Conservationist magazine.

First published in August 1946 by DEC precursor, the New York State Conservation Department, Conservationist magazine sought to spread its message of stewardship using photography to highlight New York’s world-class fishing streams, crystal clear lakes, lush forests, and spectacular high peaks. [Read more…] about NYS Conservationist Magazine Celebrates 75 Years

Filed Under: History, Nature, Recreation Tagged With: conservation, DEC, Environmental History, nature, Publishing, Wildlife

The Palatine Printer & Three Scots Behind The First Amendment

June 20, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Inscription of the First AmendmentCensorship is the official prohibition or restriction of any type of expression conceived as a threat to the sociopolitical or moral order. Attempts by the authorities to suppress freedom of the press in the American colonies were recurrent. These efforts would eventually lead to a confrontation at the Supreme Court in the case of New York v. John Peter Zenger in August 1735. [Read more…] about The Palatine Printer & Three Scots Behind The First Amendment

Filed Under: History, Hudson Valley - Catskills, Mohawk Valley, New York City Tagged With: First Amendment, German-American History, Germantown, Immigration, Legal History, Newspapers, NYS Constitution, Palatines, Political History, Publishing, Queen Ann, Saugerties, Schoharie Valley, Ulster County

Arthur Szyk: The Artist As Soldier

June 8, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

Model for Trylon and PerisphereOn April 30th, 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt opened New York’s World’s Fair with an address in which he praised the commercial festival as a “symbol of peace.” An idea dreamed up at the height of the depression, the theme of the Fair was “The World of Tomorrow.” Its opening slogan was an inspiring “Dawn of New Day.” [Read more…] about Arthur Szyk: The Artist As Soldier

Filed Under: Arts, History Tagged With: art, Art History, Brooklyn Museum, Cultural History, French History, Jewish History, modernism, New York City, Polish History, Publishing, World War Two

John Hersey and the Hiroshima Cover-up

June 7, 2021 by Lawrence Wittner Leave a Comment

falloutIn Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World (Simon & Schuster, 2020), a crisply-written, well-researched book, Lesley Blume, a journalist and biographer, tells the fascinating story of the background to John Hersey’s path-breaking article “Hiroshima” and of its extraordinary impact upon the world.

In 1945, although only 30 years of age, Hersey was a very prominent war correspondent for Time magazine — a key part of publisher Henry Luce’s magazine empire — and living in the fast lane. That year, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, A Bell for Adano, which had already been adapted into a movie and a Broadway play. Born the son of missionaries in China, Hersey had been educated at upper class, elite institutions, including the Hotchkiss School, Yale, and Cambridge. During the war, Hersey’s wife, Frances Ann, a former lover of young Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, arranged for the three of them to get together over dinner. Kennedy impressed Hersey with the story of how he saved his surviving crew members after a Japanese destroyer rammed his boat, PT-109. This led to a dramatic article by Hersey on the subject — one rejected by the Luce publications but published by the New Yorker. The article launched Kennedy on his political career and, as it turned out, provided Hersey with the bridge to a new employer – the one that sent him on his historic mission to Japan. [Read more…] about John Hersey and the Hiroshima Cover-up

Filed Under: Books, History Tagged With: Books, Crime and Justice, First Amendment, Military History, Peace Studies, Publishing, Radio History, World War Two

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