Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/815

 THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 799

the young publishers by surprise. It seemed to them an acci- dent. They, however, grasped the situation and pushed their effort with enthusiasm. Before the three months of its publica- tion at Cambridge had ended, the Chap-Book had found an audi- ence and was to be seen regularly on the news-stands not only of Boston and the East, but throughout the country.

The local situation was not very encouraging for the Chap- Book, when in the summer of 1894 its publishing headquarters were removed to Chicago. It became a Chicago publication for the greater part of its existence chiefly through the accident that Mr. Stone's home was here, and that for personal and social reasons he decided, upon graduation from college, to carry on a professional and business career as a publisher in this city. Mr. Harrison Garfield Rhodes, a Cleveland man, came with him to be associate editor of the Chap-Book. Mr. Stone found the resi- dents of Chicago suffering under a reaction which came after the World's Fair. Mr. Stone says that an avalanche of criticism from discerning visitors here the year before to see the "White City" had temporarily overwhelmed the thinking people of the smoke- covered, overgrown business town, which stood out unfavorably by contrast with the beautiful Fair. But he was nevertheless firm in the belief that an essentially cosmopolitan magazine could be published successfully in Chicago and the West.

Attention to new and curious developments in foreign artistic groups, particularly among the men of letters in England, which had been one of the unique features of the Chap-Book in its earliest issues, was continued and increased. Mr. Stone was in close touch with Aubrey Beardsley and the "Yellow Book" coterie of London, and from time to time made trips to London and Paris in quest of manuscripts. In a partial summary of authors who sent contributions from abroad, the following were listed :

From England: William Sharp, Edmund Gosse, Kenneth Grahame.I. Zangwill, John Davidson, "Q", William Ernest Henley, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. B. Marriott Watson, William Canton, Norman Gale, Max Beerbohm, F. Frank- fort Moore, Arthur Morrison, H. G. Wells, S. Levett Yeats, Katherine Tynan Hinkson, W. B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy, E. F. Benson, William Watson, Henry Newbolt, and Andrew Lang. From France: Paul Verlaine, among others.