The Stylus
The Stylus, originally intended to be named The Penn, was a would-be periodical owned and edited by Edgar Allan Poe.
It had long been a dream of Poe to establish an American journal with very high standards in order to elevate the literature of the time.
Though Poe thought of creating the journal as early as 1834, he first announced his prospectus in June 1840 immediately after leaving Burton's Gentleman's Magazine.
"[2] Many were looking forward to the magazine, including Connecticut-born journalist Jesse Erskine Dow, editor of the Index, who wrote: "We trust that he will soon come out with his Penn Magazine, a work which, if carried out as he designs it, will do away with the monopoly of puffing and break the fetters which a corps of pensioned blockheads have bound so long around the brows of young intellects who are too proud to pay a literary pimp for a favorable notice in a mammoth six penny or a good word with the fathers of the Row, who drink wine out of the skulls of authors and grow fat upon the geese that feed upon the grass that waves over their early tomb stones".
[3] Poe soon realized he needed to "endeavor to support the general interests of the republic of letters, without reference to particular regions — regarding the world at large as the true audience of the author".
"[8] In a letter to James Russell Lowell dated March 30, 1844, Poe outlined the kind of journal America needed: How dreadful is the present condition of our Literature!
It should be, externally, a specimen of high, but not too refined Taste:-I mean, it should be boldly printed, on excellent paper, in single column, and be illustrated, not merely embellished, by spirited wood designs in the style of Grandville.
[15] George Rex Graham offered financial support and hired Poe as an editor for his magazine, suggesting he would help with The Penn after six months.
Chivers at the time believed Poe was under-appreciated, especially for his work with Graham's Magazine, but was concerned with his harsh literary criticism.
[23] In February 1848, Poe presented a lecture titled "On The Cosmography of the Universe" (later printed as Eureka: A Prose Poem) at the Society Library in New York.
The severe difficulties with which Mr. Poe has been visited within the last year, have left him in a position to devote himself, self-sacrificingly, to his new task... he will doubtless give it that most complete attention which alone can make such an enterprise successful.
A list of potential subscribers he kept included Nathan C. Brooks, William Cullen Bryant, Sarah Josepha Hale, Charles Fenno Hoffman, John Pendleton Kennedy, George Lippard, James Russell Lowell, Anna Cora Mowatt, Frances Sargent Osgood, James Kirke Paulding, Thomas Mayne Reid, Jeremiah N. Reynolds, and Nathaniel Parker Willis.
He was planning on setting standards very high, anticipating finer quality paper, superior woodcuts, sharper criticism, and bolder original fiction.
[1] Early in its planning stages, he promised financial backers that he would start with 500 subscribers - a number which he expected to be 5,000 before the end of its second year.
