Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/813

 THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 797

cago during the years immediately following the World's Fair. The presence of a growing group of professional artists and liter- ary workers an artist class and an increase in the number of dilettantes account, in part, for the interest in this type of lit- erary medium at Chicago. Enthusiasm for individual expres- sion, and contempt for the inartistic, gave a tone to these minia- ture magazines. The Chap-Book, whose history has significance in a certain line of literary and periodical publishing develop- ment for the entire country, east as well as west, was the first and most notable of this class of literary media. Others at Chi- cago in the nineties were Four O'Clock, the Blue Sky, and the Scroll.

Before being transplanted to Chicago, in August, 1894, the Chap-Book had been issued for three months at Cambridge, Mass. Mr. Herbert S. Stone, a Harvard college man from Chi- cago, the son of Mr. Melville E. Stone, the journalist, was the chief originator and principal editor and publisher of the Chap- Book until its hundredth and last number appeared July 15, 1898. As an undergraduate he had been editor of the Harvard Crimson, had contributed sketches to the Lampoon, and had pre- pared a serious work of First Editions of American Authors, de- signed for collectors. In the autumn of his senior year, 1893- 94, at Cambridge, Mr. Stone had, with H. I. Kimball, establish- ed the firm of Stone & Kimball, for carrying on a small book- publishing business, which was later continued in New York by Mr. Kimball.

The periodical was put out to be an adjunct to this business. The ambitious undergraduate book-publishers needed a circular with which to advertise the books of fiction and verse bearing their imprint, and economy was to be exercised in having it cir- culated as second-class mail matter. Choosing a name which originated in the literary developments of England in the seven- teenth century, when small tracts or booklets containing ballads and stories of heroes, hobgoblins, and witches were issued inter- mittently, and were sold cheap, by chapmen or peddlers, they called their circular the Chap-Book a name which proved ad- mirably pat for the Cambridge-Chicago publication. This was