Its excellence was due almost entirely to its inspired editorial team: George Ripley, a former minister and excellent writer; Charles Dana, later the influential editor of The New York Sun; and John Sullivan Dwight, America’s first great musical critic and future editor of the seminal Dwight’s Journal of Music. Though The Harbinger was the literal successor to Arthur Brisbane’s Fourierist publication, The Phalanx, it was the spiritual successor to Emerson and Fuller’s late, great Dial, for, as one historian has noted, “it eschewed dogma and promoted radical inquiry of whatever stripe.” It was pro-socialist, anti-slavery, anti-war, and an advocate for woman’s suffrage. Aside from its heroic political stances, it published the best musical criticism in America, thanks to the fluent pen of John Sullivan Dwight. Contributors to the weekly included, in addition to the three editors, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, George W. Curtis, Christopher Cranch, and many others. Though it achieved a circulation of more than 1,000, it was never a paying proposition, depending instead on the largess of wealthy men like Horace Greeley and Arthur Brisbane to stay afloat. In the fall of 1847, these men decided to move the journal to New York. There, with the November 6, 1847, issue, it was enlarged to a small folio and put into the hands of a new editor, who was instructed to tone down the magazine’s radicalism in a bid for wider popularity. The result was predictable: old subscribers fell away and new ones did not materialize. The Harbinger published its last issue February 10, 1849. A great piece of radical Americana. Scarce.

Illustrated New York/American News (New York)

Vol. 1, No. 1, June 7, 1851, to No. 24, November 15, 1851, plus two supplements, a complete run, bound in the publisher’s cloth. Binding fair, worn, front board detaching. Contents VG, foxed. Folio.  $800

This is the first periodical published by T. W. Strong, later of Yankee Notions. It was his audacious effort to publish an American equivalent to the Illustrated London News. There was no way he would succeed. He had neither the money nor the talent to do that. Nevertheless, his experiment was not entirely in vain. The first four issues bear the name Illustrated New York News, the remaining twenty enlarged issues were retitled Illustrated American News. Along the way, Strong issued two ambitious supplements, one a scenic tour of the Erie Railway line and the other a guide to the New York Agricultural Society Fair in Rochester. The weekly was suspended in November (as Strong was preparing to launch Yankee Notions) and merged with Gleason’s Pictorial. This edition is the publisher’s collected edition, issued in March of 1852, which he offered for sale for $1.25 in his general list of publications for several years. This collected edition features second printings of three (nos. 5, 6, and 9) of the twenty-four issues.

The Manhattan (New York)

Vol. 1, No. 1 (January 1883) to Vol. 4, No. 3 (September 1884), comprising a total of twenty-one issues, twelve of which are bound in two volumes of black leather and cloth and nine of which are in original wrappers. Octavos. Bound issues: VG+ bindings with near fine contents. Title pages bound in. Index to volume 2 bound in. Wrappered issues: VG+ wrappers with near fine contents. Darkening to most spines. $400

The Manhattan was begun by the venerable New York printer John Orr as an umbrella literary organ for fraternal societies — the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Knights of Honor, the Royal Arcanum, and others — and the first issue devoted two dozen pages to them. However, when the societies did not respond with the enthusiasm that Orr had hoped for their place in the contents shrunk and by the fifth issue was abandoned entirely. From then on The Manhattan was a general interest monthly in the mold of its fat and prosperous competitor, The Century. It published high quality period fiction and poetry and had a very respectable critical department. Highlights from these issues include “Artemus Ward in New Orleans,” “The Noble Red Man in Brazil,” travelogues of the St. Johns and Hackensack rivers, a serialized novel by Julian Hawthorne, an article by Cornelius Mathews chastising Charles Dickens as a shameless self-promoter, an article on Western Scenery illustrated by Thomas Moran, and more. The issues grew in size through the run and the magazine appeared to be prospering. But that was not the case. The competition was simply too great. The Manhattan ceased publishing with the September 1884 issue.

[Craig] The Mask (Florence, Italy)

Vol. 1, No. 1 (1908) to Vol. 6, No. 4 (April 1914), comprising 12 monthly issues and 20 quarterly issues, bound in three folio volumes and three quarto volumes in the publisher’s binding of cloth-covered spines and paper-covered boards. Bindings fair/VG, with wear and soiling, especially to the first volume, which has been rebacked in cloth with the original spine label laid down. Bookplate to front pastedown and embossing stamp to first title page of each volume. All covers and advertising pages bound in. $1,800

Theater historian Olga Taxidou has written: “No study of modern theater is complete without a thorough understanding of the enormous influence of visionary genius Edward Gordon Craig. Born in England in 1872, Craig went on to become famous world-wide as an actor, manager, director, playwright, designer, and most importantly an author and theorist, whose books were translated into German, Russian, Japanese, Dutch, Hungarian, and Danish.” The Mask, Craig’s most important sustained work (1908-29) was used by him to attack commercial theater and to articulate a modern theater rooted in aesthetics. At its most elemental, Craig advocated for a theater that combined innovative staging and lighting with acting to project a new form of art that would change the audience’s experience from one that was primarily audible to one that was more holistic. He chose the title of his magazine to evoke classic theater. But it was also intended as a wink to his readership because most of the articles were written by Craig using as many as sixty pseudonyms, which he did not admit to until 1962. This then makes the magazine a tour-de-force. While all of the volumes of The Mask are handsome productions, the first three volumes are the only ones in folio, making them especially appealing, with their wide margins, elegant typography, and sumptuous Italian paper. Of all the volumes, the pre-war years show Craig in his most active fertile period.

The Old Guard (New York)

Vol. 1, No. 1 (January 1863) to Vol. 5, No. 12 (December 1867), comprising 57 issues (several are combined monthly issues), bound in five volumes. Octavos. Vols. 1 and 2 in the black cloth publisher’s binding, with wear to top and bottom of spine and tips. Vols. 3 through 5 in mismatching half-leather and marbled boards, with generalized rubbing all around. Contents VG, with the usual foxing. $1,250

The Old Guard was the only consistently anti-Lincoln Copperhead publication of the Civil War. It began erratic publication in 1862, but it was suppressed by the Federal Government during a general crackdown on the press in 1862. When those restrictions were eased at the end of the year, editor Chauncey Burr resumed publication in January of 1863. (The first two numbers of the 1863 volume are identified as Vol. 2, nos. 1 and 2. But then Burr decided to consider the January 1863 issue the true first issue of volume 1, so the March issue bears the Vol. 1, No. 3 designation, subsequent issues are numbered accordingly, and most of the editorial matter from the first (suppressed) volume is reprinted in the latter half of the 1863 volume.) These two Civil War volumes bristle with astounding, angry diatribes against the war effort in general, and abolitionism and Lincoln in particular. Mott tells us, “The Old Guard defended slavery and the right of secession, attacked President Lincoln violently in every number, and urged the cessation of the war. It was, it claimed ‘the only magazine published in the United States which is devoted to the fearless and uncompromising exposure of the monstrous crimes and frauds of the party in power.'” Each volume is illustrated with engravings of anti-Lincoln political leaders (eight in volume 1, ten in volume 2). We hear a good deal about the opposition Lincoln faced within the North during the Civil War, but that opposition was, in fact, poorly organized and largely inarticulate. The press, by and large, supported the Union effort, even while it argued over tactics. These volumes then constitute an extraordinary historical document, preserving a largely unrecorded point-of-view. Scarce and desirable.