Publisher's Synopsis
This ambitious project provides accurate records of the contents of scores of 18th and 19th century magazines for which no comparable catalogues have been attempted; to organize that data in various title, first-line, and subject listing; to report through innumerable annotations, what is discoverable of authorship, of editorial practices and principles in the gathering of materials, and of the specific facts of publication for sources used; and also to publish theme compilations that convey the range of interests (prejudices intact) of the magazines under investigation. While the over-riding objective is to establish an accurate record and useful file of information, one of the secondary purposes is to apply the information gathered on British magazines to distinguish reprinted from original materials in American magazines, and thereby contribute to the identification of an "American canon" of magazine literature in the century before Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe. The files also improve access to a body of literature which major authors read, absorbed, and exploited in their several unique ways. The Interesting Anecdotes by "Mr.;Addison" are generally identified as a multi-volume miscellany of prose and verse, collected in 1794-97, but the extant volumes dated 1797 are apparently reissues of volumes which appeared earlier. While the listings here usefully document specific borrowings, the data also suggest the way in which literary magazines had become a resource to spur growth in that part of publishing which provided miscellanies and 'judicious selections' to the common reader.
