The New York Mirror was a weekly periodical founded in 1823 by George Morris and Samuel Woodworth. Over the following decades, the New York Mirror revamped itself to become The Mirror in 1843 and, eventually, The Evening Mirror (1844-1898), a daily newspaper by Morris and Nathaniel Parker Willis.
The journal was a weekly publication, and it included coverage of arts and literature in addition to local news. Throughout its career, the publication gathered works from many popular and important literary figures, including Thomas Dunn English who published his work “Ben Bolt” in The Mirror’s September 2, 1843 issue and Edgar Allen Poe who worked as a critic for two years and published “The Raven” in the January 29, 1845 issue of the Mirror.
The New York Mirror was a magazine that demonstrated the impact and importance that writing had, and still has, on people’s lives. The three articles linked below show this impact in various ways. Starting with the Vanity of Authors, we see how authorship has a specific role with the magazine; how every author’s skill and notoriety is inevitably accompanied by vanity, and therefore although they are the creators of a body of work it is their status as an author that ultimately establishes it as a canonical text. Almost even more so than the work itself. Thus, to an author, there is nothing more important than the way the public perceives their work. The perceptions of their work are important because that is the legacy of their work. This then relates to Sensibility because it demonstrates the expectations and guidelines that authors and readers had to follow. Additionally, it maps out the gendered stereotypes of roles that came into play with writing at the time of this magazine’s publication. What was important was the readers’ interpretation of the work, as the writing fit into the mould that the expectations set. We can then examine the other side of this coin through Letters from Correspondence as we can see an avid reader’s reaction to the magazine overall. This reaction shows the importance of this magazine to the readers and how it, and others like it, were a source of entertainment for people while also being a large piece of their social lives. Many people read the magazine, and as demonstrated in the letter, they were able to talk about it with one another. It created a sort of in-group for literary knowledge and references, which then also establishes a sense of elitism. Overall, these three articles can give us insights into the reading and authorship in the 19th century from various different angles and perspectives.