Introduction to The Youth's Companion.
When The Youth's Companion first appeared in 1827, it was a small
periodical with overtly religious and instructional aims. Founded by Nathaniel Willis, the
Companion initially established itself as spillover territory for material that
could not be contained in Willis's own Boston Recorder, also a religious
publication: "We could about half fill the Recorder with interesting selections,
adapted to our juvenile readers, from the various publications which we receive and
peruse," the prospectus claimed (April 16, 1827, p. 1). Rather than throw such
material away, the author continues, it could be collected in such a place as the Youth's
Companion.
Looking back on the contents of the early issues, scholars often have winced, finding it
to be dreary reading for children. Indeed, of the two other reasons that the prospectus
offers for starting the magazine--that children lacked such a publication and were
especially in need of instruction at that historical moment--the latter seems to overwhelm
the former. Early issues
offered a substantial amount of material on death, entertained solely for instruction, and
offered the instructions in a plain manner. But it is easy to forget that the movement of
publishing reading material strictly for children was young and that the Companion's
recognition of a separate audience in children was not simply a matter of course, but a
fairly novel concept. Accounts
of delight at even the earliest issues of the Companion, then,
should not be entirely surprising.
II.
By the time that Emily
Dickinson's poems appeared in The Youth's Companion, the
magazine's roots were still apparent, but its face had altered radically. The
instructional emphasis remained, but now its intent, according to R. Gordon Kelly,
"was to provide wholesome entertainment for the children of democracy" (Mother
Was a Lady, 4). That entertainment took place in an attractive and substantial
package. Illustrations now appeared throughout the publication and it had expanded from as
few as three pages to at least eight pages, but commonly twelve including advertisements.
The small magazine, circulation 4,800 at the time that Daniel Sharp Ford and John W.
Olmstead assumed ownership, had grown one-hundredfold to 480,000 by the mid-1890s. It had
moved from having a "circulation [that] was doubtless local and Congregational"
(Mott II 264) to having the largest circulation of any publication in the United States,
with the exception of some mail order catalogs (Mott III 6). To say something about some
of the reasons commonly
offered for this increase is also to say something about the magazine's
appearance at this time.
III.
Perhaps the most commonly offered reason for the change in the Companion's
fortune is a change in attitude toward marketing. Scholars consistently have noted the
successful premiums campaign waged by Daniel Sharp Ford, who assumed sole ownership in
1867 and exercised a dominant influence over the magazine until his death in 1899. Early
issues might have appealed to children's missionary sensibilities for the periodical's
dissemination: "We want you too, if you like it [the Companion] yourselves,
to show it to your little cousins and mates; and talk about what you read in it when you
see them," Nathaniel Willis wrote in the second issue (June 6, 1827, p. 7). No such
goodwill recruiting was relied upon now, however: the premiums campaign instead offered
more tangible rewards to those who gathered subscriptions. Richard D. Cutts, compiler of The
Youth's Companion Index, lists some of those rewards and their monetary value in his
description of an 1872 "Premiums Issue":
A book slate ($1.00), a box of initialed stationary [sic] (83 cents), a set of
stereoscopic views (15 cents each, any five for one subscription), a brace of miniature
steam engines ($1.12), a hair brush and rubber comb (92 cents), or any of dozens of other
items could be had for soliciting a single subscription. (vii)
As your efforts grew, so too did your reward: the person who "sent in the most
subscriptions" in the 1872-73 year would win "A Chickering piano worth
$535.00" (Cutts viii). So The Youth's Companion recruited its own who in
turn recruited others--and the world became the limit. Furthermore, you need not have been
a recruiter to be rewarded. Prizes were available for everyone, and the magazine directly
offered incentives both to new subscribers--calendars,
free issues of the Companion--as well as those who participated
in "officially sanctioned" Companion activities, like the celebration
of Columbus Day.
IV.
But the Companion not only changed how it sold itself; it also altered
what it sold. Concurrent with the magazine's campaign to recruit more readers was an
effort to retain those that it already had, a task not all too simple for any magazine
with children as its target audience. So rather than bill the Companion as a
children's magazine, which might be dispensed with when one "did away with childish
things," the Companion offered itself by 1897 as "An
Illustrated Family Paper" (November 11, 1897, p. 566).
Material directed specifically to children, the magazine's departmental structure implied,
could be found on the children's page, which featured poems, short stories illustrations,
and "Nuts to Crack," which were "enigmas, puzzles, and charades."
Older readers, by contrast, might turn to the weekly medical column,
read about the life of a prominent public figure of the day, or share the excitement their
children had for one of the magazine's serials.
The paper sought not only to provide variety, but quality too. While the magazine still
heavily borrowed material from others, the label "For the Companion",
signifying original contributions to the magazine, often was featured now next to the
bylines of "Statesmen," "Eminent Writers," Men of Science,"
"Men of Action," and "Prominent Journalists," as an announcement for
forthcoming 1898 material boasted.
But perhaps even more important than quality was the safety of what the Companion
offered to its family readers. The magazine kept its pages free from mention of tobacco
and alcohol, according
to Anne Eaton (285), and was cautious about controversial issues, billing
itself, Frank Luther Mott notes, as "'Devoted to Piety, Morality, Brotherly Love. No
Sectarianism, no controversy'" (II 265). Although that pledge should be seen as
solidly grounded in the politically-charged pre-Civil War era, the time of its inception,
later issues would skirt controversy too--it seems no coincidence that so many items in
the issues we examined were intended to be humorous ("Companion
Table of Contents"). In articles that did touch on
politically-charged topics like currency "experiments" and futures trading, the Companion
cloaked itself in the
guise of objective reporting.
But the Companion also was safe in that it adhered to a particular formula,
offering contents upon which readers could count. Kelly quotes Ray Stannard Baker, a
writer for The Youth's Companion, as saying that a leaflet sent out to
writers offered them a formula for writing Companion stories that Baker says was
"'the chart for sure-fire success; which is to be sedulously followed. Don't
experiment. Don't originate; repeat!'" (Mother, 33).
V.
We always say 'If it is from The Youth's Companion, it's nice,' just as we say
"If it's in The Youth's Companion, it's good.'
These words, from a reader's letter reprinted in a Companion ad for new
premiums offers, illustrate the difficulty of separating The Youth Companion's
contents from its marketing strategies. The above letter, with its grammatical and logical
parallelism, encourages us to connect the "goods" the Companion offers
with the "good" quality of the publication.
By the 1890s, the Companion offered its readers plenty of "goods"
beyond the premiums. Ford's act of soliciting advertisements, something his predecessor
did not do (Kelly, Mother, 13), meant that readers had a consumer's paradise
before them every time they opened the magazine. Libby's
Extract of Beef, The Famous
Plymouth Rock $3 Pants, Edwards'
Orange Spoon, Smith's
Vegetable Compound (see
also Companion Gallery)--all paraded their merits before the reader
in a dazzling array of font types and illustrations. Promising cures for everything from
hernias to rheumatism, careers in telegraphy and law, nutritious food for those who would
"demand it," and attractive and practical garments, the advertising pages
offered the world to readers in the comfort of their own homes. Daydreaming and
decision-making could take place as you looked through the Companion. All the
consumer was left to do was seek out a grocer
"scrupulous" enough to carry the item or send directly to the
company for it.
Those same pages also might offer readers their favorite anecdotes from the Companion.
For Ford integrated advertisements into the magazine in a way that pleased all. He
provided pages additional to a core amount always guaranteed to readers; and the pages,
rather than simply providing advertisements, worked in articles and other material from
the magazine. Readers got more pages than they had paid for; advertisers could be assured
that, with articles woven throughout, readers would see the ads (Cutts xii); and The
Youth's Companion benefited from the financial and cultural success of using this
formula. Everybody was happy.
On such pages, the Companion made it easy for readers to associate the
"goods" of its pages with the "good"-ness of its contents. Transition
pieces often existed between "content" and advertisements in the form of
print-only ads. Such ads were in nearly the same font as the preceding material and were
brief like the anecdotes and quips that came before: "Premature Loss of the Hair, which is so common nowadays, may be
entirely prevented by the use of Burnett's Cocoaine," one such ad reads
(September 8, 1892, p. 445). The only visual differences?: Bold text at the opening of
such ads and the tell-tale tag of "[Adv." that always appeared in the
lower right-hand corner. For those ads that appeared in the same column as the
"content," a double rule also might precede them.
But to move further into the realm of those ads that visually asserted themselves as such
is to find still more evidence of blurred boundaries. Those who sought visual excitement
could find it in the elaborate illustrations that accompanied ads for the Spencerian Pen Co. and the California Fig Syrup Co. Those who
sought narratives would find promise of them in the
Alfred Dolge & Son Autoharp ad, where readers were instructed to
"Write for Illustrated Catalogue and story 'How the Autoharp Captured the
Family'" (November 11, 1897, p. 567). News stories? Try the column-long ad for the World's Fair, which
is comprised of an essay about Captain Andrews's voyage. Stories from "real"
people? Look for the testimonials
offered in any number of ads. In the end, the advertising pages, which promised the world,
offered at least continued entertainment.
VI.
Such, then, were the surroundings of the Dickinson poems that we provide in this site.
Here she competed with the popular serials for readers' attention, found herself
surrounded by anecdotes, and brushed elbows with Mellin's Food and Pears' Soap. Here too
she reached several hundred thousand homes. What is the effect of placing in such
surroundings the poet who claimed "Publication -- is the Auction / Of the Mind of
Man--" and who warned "Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you know!" as she
assumed the guise of "Nobody"? What is the effect of reading that poet from our
peripheral vision and hearing her voice as part of a larger chorus of what might be called
textual noise? We have only begun to imagine possible answers and further questions.