The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 6, February, 1835

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2

Word count: 427K words
Chapters: 43

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 6, February, 1835 by VariousAuthor: Various,Language: English, Class: AP: General Works: Periodicals, Release Date: Mar 28, 2017

Editor's review

This is an electronic reprint of the sixth issue of volume one (February 1835) of The Southern Literary Messenger, an important nineteenth-century American periodical, and belongs to the periodical category. Its value lies in preserving the early original form of the journal: book reviews, poems, essays, miscellany, and editorial notes appear together in one issue, directly showing the reading tastes, critical tone, and stylistic habits of the Southern intellectual world of the time. For researchers it is primary material for examining the ecology of Southern literary criticism and publishing culture before the American Civil War; for general readers it is a window onto the literary environment associated with the periodical at a time when figures such as Edgar Allan Poe later rose to fame. Such a periodical is not meant to be read straight through; it is better to choose by column or piece, noting how reviews assess contemporary works and what meters and subjects the poems use. As a historical document, some of its attitudes are distant from today's values; read it with an awareness of historical context and treat it as material for understanding nineteenth-century Southern American literary life rather than a contemporary anthology.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying nineteenth-century American literature and periodical publishing history
Readers interested in the Southern American literary tradition and critical discourse
Readers who enjoy browsing old periodicals and experiencing the original literary environment
Advanced students with English reading ability who want to engage with primary sources

Not a good fit for

Readers hoping for complete long works or continuous narrative
Beginners who need modern annotation and background introduction
General readers impatient with nineteenth-century style and attitudes

Reading tips

Browse the issue's table of contents first and start with the reviews or poetry section; no need to read straight through
When reading reviews, note the critical standards and wording used to evaluate contemporary works
When encountering unfamiliar names or periodical titles, do a quick background check before returning to the text
Compare with other monthly issues to observe continuity in the journal's columns and style

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this a complete book or a single periodical issue?

It is a reprint of a single issue, volume one, number six (February 1835), of The Southern Literary Messenger. It contains the various columns of that issue rather than a complete long work with a unified structure. Read it as a periodical, choosing pieces individually.

Does the content include works by Edgar Allan Poe?

The material only states that this is the February 1835 issue of the journal and does not list specific pieces or authors, so it cannot be confirmed whether this issue includes work by Poe. Readers should rely on the actual table of contents and not assume a particular author is present.

What should readers keep in mind with old periodicals like this?

Pay attention to historical context: stylistic habits, critical standards, and social attitudes differ from those of today, and some expressions may bear the limits of their era. Read it as historical material, focus on its documentary value, and maintain critical distance from the attitudes it contains.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Various Author

Various is not a real person but a collective attribution used in book cataloging and databases for works with multiple authors, commonly applied to anthologies, compilations, or publications with too many contributors to list individually. On this Chinese book site, this attribution covers as many as 3,387 titles, spanning encyclopedic entries, historical documents, and trial records. Representative works include several volumes of the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the record of the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Available public information is limited: nationality, birth and death dates, and common categories are not clearly recorded, making it difficult to summarize a unified writing style or personal biography. Readers should understand it as a cataloging convention rather than a single author.