The New York Public Library Humanities and Social Sciences ...

The New York Public Library Humanities and Social Sciences Library

Manuscripts and Archives Division

The New Yorker Records

Compiled by Francine Tyler Library Technicians Sandra Carpenter Jeremy Megraw Gregory Poole Alexander Thurman

1994

Text by William Stingone

1996

SUMMARY

Main Entry: The New Yorker Records Title: Records ca. 1924-1984 Size: 875.8 linear feet Access: Two boxes, # 1302-1303, labeled "Eccentrics, 1969-1975," are restricted until 2050; otherwise access is unrestricted. Source: Gift of The New Yorker, 1991. Historical Statement: The New Yorker magazine began publication on February 21, 1925. Description: Included are general and editorial correspondence; editorial memoranda; holograph and edited non-fiction, fiction and verse manuscripts; critical notes on writings and ideas for articles; files, called "Copy and Source," containing materials to be published in each week's issue; reprint and permissions requests; letters to the editor; press releases and newsclippings; original art work called "spots" and tearsheets of thousands of cartoons; photographs, posters, and sound recordings. Copyright information: See Notice of Conditions and Restrictions at end of inventory. Related resource: For a list and description of the John Cheever materials in The New Yorker Records, see Botha, Francis J., "The John Cheever Papers at the New York Public Library's Manuscripts and Archives Division," Resources for American Literary Study, Vol. 27, No.1 and No. 2, 2001. [Online access via Project Muse available for NYPL onsite users].

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HISTORICAL NOTE

Harold Ross and the Founding of The New Yorker

Harold W. Ross was born in 1892 in Aspen, Colorado to George Ross, an Irish immigrant, and Ida Ross, a school teacher from Kansas. Ross dropped out of high school after his sophomore year. His first job as a newspaper man was in Salt Lake City, at The Tribune. He became a tramp newspaperman, working at 23 newspapers in 6 years. In 1917 he enlisted in the Army. During World War I he was a staff member and then editor of Stars & Stripes.

On returning from the war Ross launched the Home Sector, a continuation of the Stars & Stripes published for returning veterans. In 1920 Ross married Jane Grant whom he had met in France during the war through a friend and colleague at the paper, Alexander Woollcott. By the time of his marriage Ross had become editor of American Legion Weekly (which had absorbed Home Sector). It was soon apparent that Ross was not satisfied working for a house organ.

For some time the couple lived on Grant's salary from The New York Times and saved Ross's salary towards his dream publication. He believed there was a gap in the magazine industry, that there was room for a sophisticated, funny, urbane, upscale weekly. He found contemporary magazines (i.e. Judge, Life, Saturday Evening Post) either sophomoric, or middlebrow. Furthermore these national magazines were not suited to upscale advertising because they had to appeal to readers spread throughout the country and of all levels of sophistication and income. For Ross, the number of people reading his magazine would not be as important as who was reading it. Ross's audience would be educated, cosmopolitan New Yorkers, who spent money in fine restaurants and storesthe kind of audience advertisers would pay to target.

In 1924 Ross was still shopping his dummy of what would become The New Yorker around when he accepted the position as editor of Judge. While this publication embodied the stale humor for Mid-Americans to which Ross's magazine would reply, Ross hoped to experiment with some of his editorial ideas in its pages. Ross left Judge after 5 months.

Later the same year, Ross succeeded in selling his idea to Raoul Fleischmann, the yeast-fortune heir; Fleischmann supplied an initial investment of $25,000 that was matched by Ross and Grant. Fleischmann ended up investing another $700,000 in the magazine over the next three years. (At one point during the first year, Ross and Fleischmann actually decided to cease publication but changed their minds only days later). Their partnership was often rocky: Ross always suspected he was being worked to death for Fleischmann's economic benefit. Nevertheless, Fleischmann spent the rest of his life, until 1969, as vice president, president, chairman, and publisher of The New Yorker; Ross spent the rest of his as its editor. While it exacerbated his ulcers, Ross's suspicion of his publisher helped to establish the unique editorial autonomy at the magazine, an autonomy Fleischmann, and his son Peter, would respect even after Ross's death.

NEW YORKER RECORDS GUIDE

NOTES

Early Years

The first issue of the New Yorker appeared on February 17, 1925. The first few issues were editorially and financially unsuccessful, and Ross was forced to include a lot of poor material to fill unsold advertising space. These lean months led to Ross's (and later William Shawn's) infamous habit of stockpiling manuscripts against a day when there might be no good copy to publish. For several years, departments were constantly switched in and out of the magazine until a proper mix was established; yet, even as the magazine's format gelled, the execution still suffered. Only artcartoons, covers, illustrationsworked from the beginning, thanks to the influence of the art director, Rea Irvin. Irvin not only created the layout, typeface, and symbolEustace Tilley of the magazine, but taught Ross about art.

After a large promotional push orchestrated by John Hanrahan, a man disliked by Ross because he was brought in by the panicked Fleischmann, Fall 1925's ad pages were up. By the spring of 1926 The New Yorker was making money and by the next year it was in the black. Of course, it was not only Hanrahan's promotion which helped the magazine onto its successful path. The magazine's content had improved considerably with the addition of several pivotal staff members who helped Ross define his magazine's voice much as Irvin had helped establish its look.

Katharine Angell (later Katharine S. White) was hired in the summer of 1925 as a part-time reader of manuscripts; almost immediately she became a full-time worker and a principal factor in the magazine's maturation. Ross used White as the final word on "sophistication," on taste and style, and she was involved with every aspect of the magazine. The two fed on each other's energy. In 1927 E.B. White, James Thurber, and Wolcott Gibbs all came aboard. Besides friendship and support, these writers provided the clear, precise, and imaginative prose about urbane topics for which the New Yorker became famous.

In 1929, hot on the heels of the stock market crash, the magazine announced it would appear in two editions: one for New York City (to appeal to advertisers targeting its inhabitants only) and one for the rest of the country.1 Somehow, The New Yorker was able to sustain its success throughout the thirties. It remained aloof from the Depression, maintaining its ironic, whimsical, and casual tone. According to William Shawn, at that time the staff was "actually proud of being apolitical and socially detached." The magazine had yet to establish its reputation for analytical journalism: it remained primarily a humor magazine.

Even as the magazine flourished and the staff solidified, Ross's frenetic panic-ridden management style lingered. It was difficult for him to delegate authority: his vision and investment were at stake. Ross knew he could not continue his attempts to do it all (without driving himself and his staff crazy), yet, rather than dividing responsibilities sensibly, Ross

1 In April of 1960, its national audience grown sizably, the magazine dropped its city edition.

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NEW YORKER RECORDS GUIDE

NOTES

searched for the man or woman who could do it all. For years he sought someone who could head the editorial department, keep all departments on schedule, and get the magazine out each week. He called this savior a "managing editor', but to everyone else he was known as "Ross's Jesus." There were as many as 30 of these figures, all failures.

Finally in the 1936, with Ik Shuman floundering much as his predecessors had, the Jesus parade ended. Ross offered St. Clair McKelway, who was then a reporter and editor of non-fiction (or Fact) pieces, this "managing editor" position. McKelway accepted on the condition that Factjournalismeditorship be separated from Fictionfiction, verse, arteditorship. Not only would this division create more manageable parts, but would free fiction editors, such as Wolcott Gibbs and Katharine White, from the responsibility of editing journalism. Ross accepted this deal: McKelway became editor of Fact, taking Sanderson Vanderbilt and William Shawn as his assistants; White became Fiction editor; and Shuman was left with the remaining administrative duties.

In McKelway's three year tenure as editor (1936-1939) he developed a group of young writers who would establish the magazine's standards of literary journalism. This group of writers included Joseph Mitchell, A.J. Liebling, Brendan Gill, E.J. Kahn Jr., Emily Kahn, and Philip Hamburger.

Fiction, on the other hand, was slower to develop. Ross was less predisposed to fiction than his successor Shawn, and, especially in the beginning, the magazine's low pay made it impossible to compete for the works of Hemingway or Fitzgerald. Ross could not get the big names, but felt he could still find good writing. He made his fiction editorsKatharine White, then Gus Lobranokeep lists of promising young writers and stay in touch with them. He also insisted that his editors tend to these writers with the utmost care and attention by providing prompt readings, responses, and payment. Editors became the writers' friends and support.

This treatment helped compensate for the magazine's famous low pay. (Unlike Fact writers, who had the luxury of accumulating debt from the magazine's drawing accounts, fiction writers lived from sale to sale.) It was one reason writers continued to publish their work in The New Yorker even after it had helped them achieve renown.

The War Years

McKelway resigned in 1939 and returned to writing and reporting exclusively. William Shawn became editor of Fact. One of his first acts as editor was to convince Ross that the magazine should seriously commit to covering the coming war, in contrast to its near obliviousness to the Depression.

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