[8] The magazine featured both political and literary content, publishing serialized novels-in-progress, a chapter at a time.

In this way, McClure's published writers including Willa Cather, Arthur Conan Doyle, Herminie T. Kavanagh, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Lincoln Steffens, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mark Twain.

Examples of its work include Ida Tarbell's series in 1902 exposing the monopoly abuses of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, and Ray Stannard Baker's earlier look at the United States Steel Corporation, which focused the public eye on the conduct of corporations.

From January 1907 to June 1908, McClure's published the first detailed history of Christian Science and the story of its founder, Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) in 14 installments.

[9] The articles were later published in book form as The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1909).