Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/803

 THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 787

to the illustrations. The most important of these periodicals were Halligan's Illustrated World's Fair, Campbell's Illustrated Columbian, and the Graphic.

The first number of Halligan's Illustrated World's Fair, put out for promotion, appeared in 1890. Mr. Jewell Halligan, its originator, came to Chicago from Denver, and in this advance issue announced plans for a most pretentious publication. The second number was published in August of the next year, and the periodical was issued monthly until December, 1893.

"To carry the undeniable news of the eye to the ends of the earth," was one phase of the publishing policy announced by Hal- ligan's paper. Its pages were of unusually large size. Most of them were filled with half-tone illustrations. An advertisement, in 1893, said that the magazine was "the first to exclude all other forms of picture save photographs on copper called half-tones." Undeniably the illustrations, done by the new process and printed on extra-fine paper, were well executed. The journal's pictorial record of the Fair was so complete that two editions of extra copies were printed for sale in bound volumes. In this form the magazines made such an attractive World's Fair picture-book that one set was added to the collection of volumes in the art- room of the Chicago Public Library.

A distinct literary flavor was to be found in the printed material on the pages containing the smaller illustrations. This was due to the fact that Mr. John McGovern was the editor. Of an ebullient, imaginative turn of mind, a reader who has roamed over many fields of world-lore and literature, Mr. McGovern was spurred to most characteristic endeavors by the spirit of the World's Fair times, when all the currents of thought ran large. Having graduated into newspaper work and letters from the printer's case, he had written ten volumes of essays, poems, and novels. All of these had been published at Chicago. And some of the exposition directors who had been patrons of these pro- ductions had urged him to take the editorship of Halligan's Illus- trated World's Fair. Always an advocate of "western litera- ture," he spoke of editor and publisher as "western men," and