For other authors named Susan Goodman, see the disambiguation page.
Author Interview
Susan Goodman is the H. Brown Fletcher Chair of Humanities at the University of Delaware. She is the co-author of William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life, and the author of Edith Wharton's Inner Circle and others. Her new book Republic of Words: The Atlantic Monthly and Its Writers, 1857-1925, was recently published by the University Press of New England.
The Atlantic Monthly's founders laid out quite an ambitious goal for themselves in 1857, "to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea." How did they manage to make a success of their magazine when so many similar ventures did not last?
As the country's most intellectual and literary city, Boston brought together men and women who from the beginning of the magazine made it a powerful voice in American politics as well as the arts. Its success depended on a loyal group of contributors, informed and curious readers, often intent on self-improvement, and good management. Luck also played a part. The first issue, for example, contained Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "Brahma", which provoked a craze of parodies and made readers eager for the next issue.
You've structured Republic of Words as a collection of short chapters, most of which revolve around one of the Atlantic’s writers and "feature an episode or phase" from the writer's life. These episodes all connect with the Atlantic, and allow each chapter to "speak in its way about the magazine's self-made responsibilities and the writer's sense of an underlying national consciousness." Tell us a bit about how the magazine managed to attract and retain such an impressive group of contributors, and why you think the writers played such a key role in the magazine's development.
I think your own fine laying out of this question really answers itself. People wanted to be associated with the Atlantic Monthly not only because it had a reputation for fair dealing but because it stood for the best in American arts and culture. It had, if not a snobbish appeal, an appeal to readers' intelligence and better nature. One Midwestern farm wife and mother wrote to say that reading the Atlantic made her feel more interesting to herself as well as others. From its beginning, writers hoped to make their reputations in the
Your book examines the ways in which each editor of the magazine molded it to his own style and preferences. Can you give us a few examples of the way these editorial practices shaped the Atlantic during its early decades?
Each editor left a stamp on the magazine. More than thirty years separated the editorships of James Russell Lowell and Walter Hines Page, but each weighted its pages more heavily toward politics. The third editor, William Dean Howells, worked to make the Atlantic—which readers associated with Boston and New England—more "southern, mid-western, and far-western" in its range of writers and topics, while his successor, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, emphasized poetry. Beyond all this, and however different their personalities and interests, every editor adhered to the magazine’s original principles, which included dealing "frankly with persons and with parties" and publishing the "best."
If you were to write a full-scale biography of an Atlantic editor, which would you pick, and why?
This book, in a sense, grew out of a Howells biography that I wrote with my husband, Carl Dawson. Howells edited the magazine for a decade and helped to shape much of the canon of American literature that continues today. I found it fascinating that one person could have such a profound effect on what and how we read more than a century later—and much the same can be said of the Atlantic.
One of your chapters, which I particularly liked, is titled "Harriet Beecher Stowe Tests the Magazine." Describe, if you will, what happened when the magazine published a particularly controversial Stowe essay.
All magazines have the difficult task of balancing readers' expectations with their responsibility to honest reporting, and though Atlantic editors were not averse to pushing the boundaries of good taste in fiction, they made a huge blunder with Stowe’s "True Story of Lady Byron's Life". Stowe's public revelation of Byron's incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh did untold damage at the time to her reputation and caused the magazine to lose almost a third of its subscribers. It's a miracle that Howells, who had been left in charge of the magazine while his boss, James T. Fields, was in Europe, wasn't fired.
The period your book covers (1857-1925) includes, to put it mildly, some important historical events, from major breakthroughs in science and technology to the Civil War and World War I to the extension of voting rights to women. How did the Atlantic respond to the changing times?
The times themselves propelled much of the content of the magazine. It was perhaps the magazine's genius to have its ear to political change and to subtly but strongly argue a "right course" in times of crisis. Like most magazines, the Atlantic thrived on controversy. In the 1920s, for example, the generations challenged one another through letters to the Contributors' Column. One young man informed his elders that the best thing they could do is step aside, while a correspondent signing himself "The Old Grouch" said that young people—especially young women—needed to be plainly told that "the older generation is running this world."
Toward the end of the book you write "To some extent magazines tend to remain in the era that gave them birth." How is today's Atlantic still similar to the original vision of its founders, and how do you think it has changed?
In fact, it's very different not only because of changes in publishing and the nature of modern magazines, which speak to a much broader audience through the internet, but because it now resides in Washington, D.C., and publishes ten issues a year, with one devoted to fiction. That said, it's only fitting that a magazine evolve with the times as the Atlantic has done. Readers still turn to the Atlantic for excellent writing and honest, comprehensive analysis of important issues.
You must have read quite a hefty portion of the Atlantic's run by now. Is there a particular period of the magazine's history that you find most appealing? Put another way, if you were stuck on a desert island and only had one decade of Atlantic issues, which decade’s would you most like to have?
Though it's hard to read about World War I and the millions killed, I find the Atlantic's analysis of the war as it unfolds and increasingly involves the United States compelling reading. I was deeply moved by letters that a young pilot wrote his mother before he died. He wanted her to know that he had no bitterness against the enemy as individuals. It was war that he hated and he would willingly die if it meant an end to all other wars. After the war, the Atlantic had to remake itself to appeal to a new generation of returning veterans, flappers, and college students, not to mention the great post-war writers that changed the course of American and British literature—and that's a story in itself.
What types of books would we find on your own bookshelves? What have you read and enjoyed recently?
I read everything from 19th-century books and magazines to mysteries by the Italian writer Andrea Camilleri. Most recently, I read Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and P. D. James’s homage to Jane Austen, Death Comes to Pemberley.
Can you tell us a bit about your next project?
I actually have two overlapping projects, which I have never done before. One focuses on the journey Henry James took to the United States after an absence of twenty years, and the book that chronicles his impressions, The American Scene. The other is a biography of Marian Hooper Adams, the brilliant wife of Henry Adams, whom contemporaries like James knew as "Clover." In her relatively short lifetime, she immersed herself in politics, women's education, literature, and above all, in the still emerging art of photography.
Thank you, Susan!
—interview by Jeremy Dibbell