The magazine contained many engravings by famous artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as articles by important authors of the time, including John Thomason, Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris, Clarence Cook, and President Theodore Roosevelt.

[1] Charles Scribner announced to a New York Times reporter that they would make a new monthly publication "as soon as the necessary arrangements could be perfected".

[6] An early morning fire in 1908 at the Charles Scribner's Sons offices heavily burned the third and fourth floors, where the magazine was produced.

[4] (Bridges was a lifelong close friend of President Woodrow Wilson ever since the two had met as students at Princeton University.

)[7] During the First World War, the magazine employed authors, Richard Harding Davis, Edith Wharton and John Galsworthy, to write about the major conflict.

[4] The June 1929 issue was banned in Boston, Massachusetts, due to the article A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.

The ban on the sale of the magazine in Boston is an evidence of the improper use of censorship which bases its objections upon certain passages without taking into account the effect and purpose of the story as a whole.

In 1938, the magazine was bought from Charles Scribner's Sons and started to be published by Harlan Logan Associates, who still retained an interest.

[4] Scribner's Commentator also ceased publication in 1942 after one of the magazine's staff pleaded guilty to taking payoffs from the Japanese government, in return for publishing propaganda promoting United States isolationism.

[9] The magazine was distinguished both by its images, which focused on engravings, and later color images by artists such as Leo Hershfield, Howard Chandler Christy, Walter Everett, Mary Hallock Foote, Maxfield Parrish, Ernest Peixotto, Howard Pyle, Frederic Remington, and Charles Marion Russell.

The magazine was also noted for its articles, including work by Jacob Riis such as How the Other Half Lives, and The Poor in Great Cities, as well as Theodore Roosevelt's African Game Trails, John Thomason, Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris and Clarence Cook.