Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/409

 THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 393

In an introductory editorial salutation he called attention to the springtime advent of the birds, and asked for this journal a wel- come like that given to the April songsters. With artistic Old English lettering in its title, the Chicago Record was consecrated to literature and the arts, and, although conducted by a layman, was also " devoted to the church." It was an example of engraft- ing, the literary interest being made dependent on the interests of the Chicago diocese of the Protestant Episcopal church. It may perhaps be significant that, along with the advertising notices of books and reading which it contained, there were advertisements of stained-glass windows. The contents of the Record's neatly printed pages were, however, distinctly literary in character, and of excellent quality, having a polish which the news of the Epis- copal church only helped to emphasize, as one can readily see on looking at the file which the founder presented to the Chicago Historical Society. The articles were written in pleasing essay style. The editor himself contributed "Wanderings in Europe," narrative accounts of experiences in the summer of 1855. Another series of papers told of " Painters and Their Works " in a manner that was interesting, although the journal had no illus- trations. Poetry and "miscellanea" were interspersed. Among the poems " Written for the Record " were several by Benjamin F. Taylor; and of those evidently reprinted were many from the pen of William Cullen Bryant. All of the literary periodicals of the pioneer period, excepting the Chicago Magazine: The West as it Is, which was undertaken contemporaneously with Mr. Wil- son's first effort in March, 1857, had already died, or else lost their character and identity, by the time of his arrival. There- fore, General Wilson is under the impression that the Chicago Record " was the first literary periodical to appear in Chicago."

While still bringing out the Chicago Record, Mr. Wilson became the editor of the very best magazine among those which have left merely first-number mementoes in the library of the Chicago Historical Society. This was the Northwestern Quar- terly Magazine, a volume of 104 pages in thick paper cover, which was published by Rufus Blanchard, the cartographer and historian whose death occurred in 1904. It was a heavy maga-