Originally published from 1883 to 1936 as a general-interest and humour publication, it featured contributions from many important writers, illustrators and cartoonists of its time including Charles Dana Gibson[1] and Norman Rockwell.

[6] Life was founded on January 4, 1883, in a New York City artist's studio at 1155 Broadway, as a partnership between John Ames Mitchell and Andrew Miller.

"[8] The new magazine set forth its principles and policies to its readers: We wish to have some fun in this paper...We shall try to domesticate as much as possible of the casual cheerfulness that is drifting about in an unfriendly world...We shall have something to say about religion, about politics, fashion, society, literature, the stage, the stock exchange, and the police station, and we will speak out what is in our mind as fairly, as truthfully, and as decently as we know how.

Rea Irvin, the first art director of The New Yorker and creator of the character "Eustace Tilley", began his career by drawing covers for Life.

Gibson drew the Kaiser as a bloody madman, insulting Uncle Sam, sneering at crippled soldiers, and shooting Red Cross nurses.

A little more than three years after purchasing Life, Gibson quit and turned the property over to publisher Clair Maxwell and treasurer Henry Richter.

It also tapped the humorous writings of Frank Sullivan, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Franklin Pierce Adams and Corey Ford.

Among the illustrators and cartoonists were Ralph Barton, Percy Crosby, Don Herold, Ellison Hoover, H. T. Webster, Art Young and John Held, Jr. Life had 250,000 readers in 1920,[citation needed] but as the Jazz Age rolled into the Great Depression, the magazine lost money and subscribers.

"[citation needed] For Life's final issue in its original format, 80-year-old Edward Sandford Martin was recalled from editorial retirement to compose its obituary.

He wrote: That Life should be passing into the hands of new owners and directors is of the liveliest interest to the sole survivor of the little group that saw it born in January 1883 ... As for me, I wish it all good fortune; grace, mercy and peace and usefulness to a distracted world that does not know which way to turn nor what will happen to it next.

Convinced that pictures could tell a story instead of just illustrating text, Luce launched the new Life on November 23, 1936, with John Shaw Billings and Daniel Longwell as founding editors.

Life magazine was to be the first publication, with a focus on photographs, that enabled the American public, To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things—machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man's work—his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed... Luce's first issue cover depicted the Fort Peck Dam in Montana, a Works Progress Administration project, photographed by Margaret Bourke-White.

By 1944, of the 40 Time and Life war correspondents, seven were women: Americans Mary Welsh Hemingway, Margaret Bourke-White, Lael Tucker, Peggy Durdin, Shelley Smith Mydans, Annalee Jacoby, and Jacqueline Saix, an Englishwoman.

A veteran of Collier's magazine, Capa accompanied the first wave of the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, and returned with only a handful of images, many of them out of focus.

[30] In February 1953, just a few weeks after leaving office, President Harry S. Truman announced that Life magazine would handle all rights to his memoirs.

For his 1955 Museum of Modern Art traveling exhibition The Family of Man, which was to be seen by nine million visitors worldwide, curator Edward Steichen relied heavily on photographs from Life; 111 of the 503 pictures shown, constituting more than 20% as counted by Abigail Solomon-Godeau.

He searched through 3.5 million images, most in the form of original negatives (only in the last years of the war did the picture department start to print contact sheets of all assignments) and submitted to Steichen for selection many that had not been published in the magazine.

[citation needed] In 1957, R. Gordon Wasson, a vice president at J. P. Morgan, published an article in Life extolling the virtues of magic mushrooms.

The magazine continued to showcase the work of notable illustrators, such as Alton S. Tobey, whose contributions included the cover for a 1958 series of articles on the history of the Russian Revolution.

[citation needed] In the 1960s, the magazine was filled with color photos of movie stars, President John F. Kennedy and his family, the war in Vietnam, and the Apollo program.

[37] A June 1964 Paul Welch Life article, "Homosexuality In America", was the first time a national mainstream publication reported on gay issues.

Life lost credibility with many readers when it supported author Clifford Irving, whose fraudulent autobiography of Howard Hughes was revealed as a hoax in January 1972.

[citation needed] Industry figures showed that some 96% of Life's circulation went to mail subscribers, with only 4% coming from the more profitable newsstand sales.

[42] From 1972 to 1978, Time Inc. published ten Life Special Reports on such themes as "The Spirit of Israel", "Remarkable American Women" and "The Year in Pictures".

[44] On the 50th anniversary of the night Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday" to John F. Kennedy, Life.com presented Bill Ray's iconic portrait of the actress, along with other rare photos.

The top 100 list was criticized for mixing world-famous names, such as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur, and Leonardo da Vinci, with figures largely unknown outside of the United States (18 Americans compared to 13 Italian and French, and 11 English).

[49] In 2001, Time Warner began publishing special newsstand "megazine" issues of Life, on topics such as the September 11 attacks and the Holy Land.

It resumed weekly publication as a free supplement to U.S. newspapers, competing for the first time with the two industry heavyweights, Parade and USA Weekend.

Time Inc. made deals with several major newspaper publishers to carry the Life supplement, including Knight Ridder and the McClatchy Company.

The editorial content contained one full-page photo, of actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and one three-page, seven-photo essay, of Kaiju Big Battel.