The
first edition of the Saturday Evening Post was published by
Atkinson & Alexander on 4th August, 1821. Initially it was four
page newspaper with no illustrations. Although the owners described
it as a newspaper, the editor promised that all "political controversy"
would not be avoided.
In 1839, George Rex Graham was employed as editor of the Saturday
Evening Post. With the help of Charles J. Peterson, Graham turned
it into one of the country's most interesting papers. It now advertised
itself as "A Family Newspaper, Neutral in Politics, Devoted to
Morality, Pure Literature, Foreign and Domestic News, Agriculture,
the Commercial Interests, Science, Art, and Amusement". By 1855
the Saturday Evening Post had a circulation of 90,000.
By the late 1890s the Saturday Evening Post was in serious
financial difficulties. In October, 1897, the newspaper was purchased
for $1,000 by Cyrus H. Curtis, the owner of the Ladies' Home Journal.
The Saturday Evening Post was redesigned and on January, 1898,
reappeared as a journal. Emphasis was placed on three topics: business,
public affairs and romance. Great care was taken with illustrations
and they now appeared on every page of the journal.
In 1899 Curtis hired George Horace Lorimer
as literary editor. Curtis was so impressed with Lorimer that within
a few months he had become editor-in-chief. Curtis gave Lorimer total
control over running the Saturday Evening Post. On one occasion
Curtis told Lorimer that his wife did not like like an article that
was in the journal. Lorimer replied that "I'm not editing the
Post for your wife." Curtis made no further comment and
soon afterwards increased Lorimer's salary to $250 a week.
Lorimer commissioned top journalist such as Frank
Norris, David Graham Phillips,
Willa Cather, Jack
London, and William Stead to write articles
for the journal. In 1903 the Saturday Evening Post spent $700
for the rights to publish London's Call of the Wild. Other
writers whose stories appeared at this time included Rudyard
Kipling, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair
Lewis, G. K. Chesteron, H.
G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, John
Galsworthy, Gilbert Parker and Stephen
Crane.
George Horace Lorimer held conservative
views and this was reflected in the articles he published in the magazine.
Upton Sinclair wrote that the material in
the Saturday Evening Post was as "standardized as soda
crackers; originality is taboo, new ideas are treason, social sympathy
a crime, and the one virtue of man is to produce larger and larger
quantities of material things." However, Lorimer did employ the
radical David Graham Phillips, who
wrote over fifty articles criticizing the rich and power.
By December, 1908, Lorimer was able to announce in the Saturday
Evening Post that for the first time the journal was selling over
a million copies a week. Under Lorimer's stewardship circulation continued
to increase and by the end of 1913 had reached 2,000,000.
In March 1916 Lorimer agreed to meet Norman
Rockwell, a 22 year old artist from New York. When Lorimer saw
his work he immediately accepted two front covers he had produced
and commissioned three more. This was the start of his long-term relationship
with the magazine that was to last over 45 years. Other illustrators
who produced front covers during this period included Joseph
Leyendecker, Charles Marion Russell
and Walter Everett.
The Saturday Evening Post continued to grow in size. On 22nd
November, 1919, the first 200 page issue came out. This included 111
pages of advertising, a third of which was for the car industry. Sales
also increased and by the 1937 had reached 3,000,000.
When President Franklin Roosevelt
made his 1941 address to Congress setting out the "four essential
human freedoms" Rockwell decided to paint images of those freedoms
for the Saturday Evening Post.
These paintings were finished and published in 1943. The paintings
portrayed Freedom of Worship, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Want and
Freedom from Fear. These pictures became extremely popular and reprints
of the covers were sold in vast quantities.
During the Second World War the federal government
decided to take the original paintings of the Four Essential Human
Freedoms on a national tour to help sell war bonds. Over the next
few weeks the paintings were seen by 1,222,000 people and were instrumental
in selling $132,992,539 worth of bonds.
In 1947 it was estimated that each copy of the Saturday Evening
Post was costing thirty cents to produce. This was double the
cost of its cover price. Advertising revenue was therefore essential
to its economic survival.
Norman Rockwell had the last of his
317 covers for Saturday Evening Post
in December, 1963, when the magazine decided to abandon paintings
on its front cover. This attempt to update its image was not successful
in significantly increasing circulation or advertising revenue and
the journal ceased publication in February, 1969.
Norman
Rockwell, Saturday Evening
Post (1951)
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
