[AMERICAN PERIODICALS] ALDRICH, Thomas Bailey (ed)

Every Saturday: Journal of Choice Reading Selected from Foreign Current Literature. Vols I-V (Jan 1866- Jun 1868)

Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866-68. Five large octavo volumes (26cm). Publisher's embossed cloth, titled in gilt on spines; 728+802+828+828,42 [includes extra Christmas number]+828pp. Unbroken, well-preserved run; occasional toning or edgewear to text; easily Very Good overall.

The first five volumes (of an eventual eight) of this substantial post-Civil War literary magazine that introduced a number of English and Continental authors to American readers. The journal was edited by a young Thomas Bailey Aldrich, at this time still a little-known figure. "The selections in Every Saturday were chiefly from English periodicals, though there were a few from French and German magazines...translating was more expensive than scissoring, and Every Saturday continued throughout to rely upon the English (journals)...Edmund Yates, Charles Reade, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, Anne Thackeray, and William Black furnished fiction – some of which was printed from advance sheets, but most from the English periodicals without a "by your leave" (Mott, History of American Magazines, III:357-8).

The journal ran in its present format through 1869; a Second Series, begun in 1870, introduced illustrations and a quarto format in an attempt to compete with Harper's Weekly; the Third Series (1872) reverted to octavo, and the magazine was eventually absorbed into Littel's Living Age (1874). LOMAZOW 722.

Price: $450.00

Go Back