The Massachusetts Magazine was published in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, from 1789 through 1796. Also called the Monthly Museum of Knowledge and Rational Entertainment, it specialized in "poetry, music, biography, history, physics, geography, morality, criticism, philosophy, mathematics, agriculture, architecture, chemistry, novels, tales, romances, translations, news, marriages, deaths, meteorological observations, etc. etc." It was intended as "a kind of thermometer, by which the genius, taste, literature, history, politics, arts, manners, amusements and improvements of the age and nation, may be ascertained."

Founded by Isaiah Thomas

Isaiah Thomas

Isaiah Thomas , was an American newspaper publisher and author. He performed the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Worcester, Massachusetts and reported the first account of the Battles of Lexington and Concord...

, the magazine was also published by Ebenezer T. Andrews (1789-1793), Ezra W. Weld (1794), Samuel Hill (1794), William Greenough (1794-1795), Alexander Martin (1795-1796), Benjamin Sweetser (1796), and James Cutler (1796). The magazine was edited by Isaiah Thomas

Isaiah Thomas

Isaiah Thomas , was an American newspaper publisher and author. He performed the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Worcester, Massachusetts and reported the first account of the Battles of Lexington and Concord...

, Thaddeus Mason Harris

Thaddeus Mason Harris

Thaddeus Mason Harris was a Harvard librarian, Unitarian minister and author in the early 19th Century. Probably his most noted book was A Natural History of the Bible published in 1821....

 (1795-1796), and William Bigelow (1796).

Contributors included Joseph Dennie

Joseph Dennie

Joseph Dennie was an American author and journalist who was one of the foremost men of letters of the Federalist Era. A Federalist, Dennie is best remembered for his series of essays entitled The Lay Preacher and as the founding editor of Port Folio, a journal espousing classical republican values...

 (as Socialis), William Dunlap

William Dunlap

William Dunlap was a pioneer of the American theater. He was a producer, playwright, and actor, as well as a historian. He managed two of New York's earliest and most prominent theaters, the John Street Theatre and the Park Theatre...

, Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

, Sarah Wentworth Morton (as Philenia), Judith Sargent Murray

Judith Sargent Murray

Judith Sargent Murray was an early American advocate for women's rights, an essayist, playwright, poet, and letter writer. She was one of the first American proponents of the idea of the equality of the sexes—that women, like men, had the capability of intellectual accomplishment and should be...

 (as Constantia), Christian Gullager

Christian Gullager

Christian Gullager was an artist specializing in portraits and theatrical scenery in the late 18th century; he worked in Boston, Massachusetts, New York, and Philadelphia. Born in Copenhagen, he trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In America, portrait subjects included president...

.. Sheet music was published with some issues, including compositions by Hans Gram.

Further reading

• Herbert R. Brown. Elements of Sensibility in The Massachusetts Magazine. American Literature, I (1929).
• Herbert R. Brown. Richardson and Sterne in the Massachusetts Magazine.The New England Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jan., 1932), pp. 65-82.
• Beverly Jean Reed. Reading the traveling exhibition show: "Massachusetts Magazine" and the visual/verbal construction of the American woman (dissertation). Purdue Univ., 2000.

External links

• http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/acrostics/a_4.html