When editors were gods

On this day...

... in 1990, Norman Cousins, longtime editor of The Saturday Review and famous proponent of humor's curative powers, died at age 75. 

On this day...

... in 1934, Willie Morris, who would grow up to be the youngest-ever editor of the U.S.'s oldest magazine (Harper's), as well as the author of "My Dog Skip" and other books, was born in Jackson, Mississippi.

Quote

'[A]void all misunderstandings with editors; pocket their checks and kicks with equal equanimity." — Eugene L. Didier in his article "Confessions of a Literary Quill-Driver," published in The Bookman magazine, 1903.

Quote

"All young poets hate editors. And they are right." — Alice Corbin Henderson, associate editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, 1916.

The editor we can thank for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving might not be a national holiday but for the efforts of Sarah Josepha Hale (1788 to 1879), longtime editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, who persuaded Abraham Lincoln to back it. The old New England tradition became an official, coast-to-coast overeating orgy in 1863. When she was not editing magazines or lobbying Presidents, Hale was also a poet, novelist, and author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”   

On this day...

... in 1913, Herman D. Umbstaetter, founder and editor of The Black Cat, a popular fiction magazine at the turn of last century, died in Maine of a self-inflicted but apparently accidental gunshot wound. According to a newspaper account, "as he was climbing a wall his rifle was discharged and the bullet penetrated his body just below the heart." Umbstaetter's magazine gave many well-known writers of that era their start, most notably Jack London, who paid tribute to the editor, and his prompt payments, in an introduction to "The Red-Hot Dollar and Other Stories from The Black Cat" (1911). 

On this day...

... an unlikely pair of editors, each influential in his own way, were born. In 1916 it was Forrest J. Ackerman, founding editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine; in 1925, William F. Buckley, founding editor of National Review. Buckley died in February 2008 at age 82, Ackerman in December 2008 at 92. 

On this day...

... in 1936, Life magazine officially made its debut as a picture weekly (November 23 was the cover date). What are said to be millions of photos from Life's archives are searchable here. 

Quote

"Many times the editor in his efforts to assist an author succeeds only in embarrassing him." — author Robert N. Reeves writing from personal experience in The Editor magazine, 1898.

On this day...

... in 1941, William Carman Roberts, an editor of The Literary Digest for close to 40 years and managing editor for 30 of them, died in a Connecticut state police car taking him to the hospital after a heart attack. He was 64. His wife, Mary Fanton Roberts, was also a prominent editor of magazines such as Arts and Decoration. 

On this day....

... in 1939, Oscar Graeve, fiction editor of Liberty Magazine as well as a former (and the final) editor-in-chief of The Delineator magazine, dropped dead in Liberty's 42nd Street offices while watching a teletype machine. Graeve was also a prolific short-story writer and novelist. He was 56.

On this day....

... in 1978, newspapers announced the closing of Viva, launched five years earlier as a women's counterpart to Penthouse. Another five-year-old magazine had called it quits earlier that week, New Times, a lively but now all but forgotten news biweekly. One of its signature features was a list of the "10 Dumbest Congressmen."