When editors were gods

Louisa May Alcott declares victory over magazine editors

“It gives me a pleasant sense of victory to ransack the old trunks, and now and then fish out and sell a story that had been rejected over and over again, when I had not been heard of, and that goes readily enough now. I lately took delicious delight in replying to a request for a story from a magazine by sending it a story which its editor had rejected at least once, and I don’t know but twice. He took it, and paid me well for it. What a queer world this is, isn’t it?” — Louisa May Alcott, after the success of her book “Little Women,” as quoted by the author and editor W.A. Crofutt, 1882.

“Little Women” was first published 150 years ago today (September 30, 1868), an occasion marked by the recent book “Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters,” by Anne Boyd Rioux.

Editor or President? No contest, this famous editor said

“I felt that I would rather edit a magazine than be President of the United States a hundred thousand times over.” — S.S. McClure, editor of McClure’s magazine, on his youthful ambitions, 1897

Though McClure is barely remembered today, except perhaps for his close professional association with Willa Cather, his namesake magazine was one of the most successful of its era. Journalist and editor Mark Sullivan, in his wonderful six-volume U.S. history, "Our Times," calls McClure "the greatest magazine genius America has ever known."

The editorial hot seat, a warning from H.L. Mencken

“I hear you are going to be a big magazine editor. Let me warn you that it is an awful life. You will have a blow-torch against your rear all the time. You never could imagine what troubles you get into.”— H.L. Mencken to Burton Rascoe, 1927, according to a newspaper account by the latter.

Rascoe, a prominent literary critic of the day, became editor of The Bookman that year. As he describes the scene, Mencken was in a taxi at the time, with “two suitcases the size of steamer trunks. That is the way the famed editor carries manuscripts from New York down to his home in Baltimore to read.”

The editor as ‘absolute autocrat’ — 1931 and 2018

“The editor is — or ought to be — an absolute autocrat in the matter of accepting manuscripts. He studies the opinions of his subordinates carefully, using them to guide and check his own; but no such thing as a vote takes place. The editor often accepts a paper in defiance of the opinions of his staff.” — John Bakeless, in his 1931 book “Magazine Making.”

Bakeless’s view may have been widely held by editors in 1931, and for decades thereafter, but has recently been challenged in controversies at Harper’s and the New York Review of Books.

The man who edited women’s magazines

John Mack Carter, believed to be the only man (or woman) to edit three major women’s magazines — McCall’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Good Housekeeping — died on this day (September 26) in 2014.

Among his pithier quotes about keeping magazines fresh was, “If it ain’t broke, break it.”

Carter, whom I knew slightly (as did probably everybody in the magazine business at one time or other), was 86.

Why magazines are better than children

"Magazine work is the most fascinating and enthralling occupation of any that I know of, except that of raising a family of children. And the magazine has an advantage over that, as it doesn’t finally grow up and leave you to get married.” — Gertrude Battles Lane, editor of the Woman’s Home Companion magazine, in a 1926 interview

Lane, who edited the magazine for 30 years and was reportedly one of the highest-paid women executives in the U.S. at the time, died on this day (September 25) in 1941. She was 66.

High praise for editors — from the business side

“The success of magazines is clearly dependent on editorial competence. And that talent, the talent needed to edit a magazine, is one of the rarest of human talents.” — Albert Leslie Cole, longtime Reader’s Digest business manager, in a 1969 interview

An editor plays his last hand, 1941

It was on this day (September 23) in 1941 that Lee Foster Hartman, the editor of Harper's, dropped dead during an after-work game of bridge at his home in New York City. He was 61.

In a remembrance published shortly after the event, the writer Elmer Davis recalled that, "For years he had heart trouble; and his doctors of course advised him to take care of himself — to give up some of his pleasures, not to work so hard. For a while he dutifully tried it; but he liked good food and good whiskey and good cigars; above all, he liked his work. So eventually he concluded that it made more sense to stay alive for a few years longer than to stay half alive for a couple of extra decades."

Davis also contrasted the "unobtrusive" Hartman to other editors of his era: "In the booming twenties New York produced a type of magazine editor who considered himself a minor (or major) Medici, and regarded his publication as he regarded his car — as something that would carry him a long way in a short time. No editor of Harper's was ever of that type; but Lee Hartman, who knew these gentlemen and was wryly amused by them, was perhaps farther from the type than anyone else who ever directed this Magazine."

 

A famous editor calls it a career

It was on this day (September 23) in 1919 that newspapers announced the pending retirement of Edward Bok, editor of Ladies’ Home Journal for the previous 30 years and probably the most famous and influential editor of his era.

Asked what he planned to do in retirement, Bok said, “I am going to play,” but added, “I’m going to try that for 30 years, and if I find I like editing better, I’ll go back to it then. See?”

Bok published the first of his several memoirs, “The Americanization of Edward Bok,” the following year and won a Pulitzer Prize for it in 1921.

Editors vs. writers: It's the Wild West all over again

“The conflict between editors and undiscovered writers is age-old and irretrievable, like that of cattlemen and sheepmen.” — Henry Sydnor Harrison, 1914

Harrison was a novelist and magazine writer, whose best-known work is “Queed: A Novel,” published in 1911.

One editor’s trick for conquering worry

“I plan well. I work hard. I try to leave nothing to chance. I pray about things. Then, if someone disappoints me or if something goes wrong and things don’t work out the way I wish, I take a philosophical attitude toward it because I have done all I can do about it and I don’t let it worry me.” — an otherwise anonymous “distinguished magazine editor” quoted by Norman Vincent Peale in a 1951 newspaper column on “How to Take Things As They Come.”

In addition to being a bestselling author (“The Power of Positive Thinking,” etc.) and minister, Peale was also the founder of the magazine Guideposts.

The towering figure of the magazine editor

“The average magazine editor looms like a mountain upon the pathway of the inexperienced writer or illustrator. For the contributor’s work is only half done when he has written his story or painted his picture. He must then persuade an editor to view it as he does, and, if he is very inexperienced, it will be a labor of Hercules for him even to get past the office boy and into the sacred presence.” — Mary Ellen Sigsbee, 1918

Sigsbee was a painter and magazine illustrator, as well as a writer and social activist. Her second husband, Anton Otto Fischer, was also a prominent illustrator, known especially for his maritime scenes.