Also lacking was much original writing. An early American magazine owed more to the editor's scissors than to anyone's pen. Appropriated were the entire contents of pamphlets, segments of books, newspaper articles, verse, essays, and fiction lifted from other magazines, especially English

magazines. Plagiarism was not only common and legal two centuries ago, but was expected, for reprinting was a way to spread information. The most significant essays and literature of the era sooner or later found their way into the pages of American magazines. Through much of its history,

the magazine brought literature to readers who could not afford the expense of books.

In fact, book publishers hesitated to publish an author who had not already won public recognition through magazines. The material was not copyrighted and, in most cases, was not credited to the original source. By the nineteenth century, however, periodicals were printing the works of writers,

known as magazinists, who wrote primarily for this medium.

The expansion of the new United States in the early nineteenth century was matched by an expansion in the number of American periodicals of all kinds. At the time the penny press was introduced, there were general monthly magazines, literary weeklies, quarterly reviews, special magazines for women, religious periodicals, and magazines that focused on a particular region

of the country. Many of the Sunday newspapers were not really Sunday editions of daily newspapers, but were basically separate magazines. The Sunday supplements of modern big city dailies, notably those of The New York Times, continue that tradition.

The first magazine with a mass market was also the first magazine to use woodcut illustrations extensively. The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was published in England from 1832 to 1845. It was written for artisans and laborers who were literate, and its goal

was to improve their minds and behavior.

Of the women's magazines, the most famous, Godey's Lady's Book, was published in the United States by a man, Louis A. Godey, whose attitude toward women was one of gallantry untouched by the beginnings of a movement toward equality for what was then referred to as the fair sex. Its

editor for 41 years was Sara Jocelyn Hale.

Its circulation reached 150,000, extraordinary for the period. The Lady's Book's mixture of short stories, poems, articles, and advice on important topics was scrupulously edited to avoid the slightest appearance of indelicacy. Nevertheless, its pages, as pure as the driven snow, afforded

women with literary talent the opportunity to be published. Among them was Harriet Beecher Stowe, who would later write Uncle Tom's Cabin. Male contributors included Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Hawthorne, and Poe, a stellar list of American writers. Eventually, the Lady's Book fell behind

others in popularity, was absorbed by another magazine which itself was merged into a third magazine, Argosy. This pattern of failures and mergers became an all too familiar part of the history of the American magazine.

By 1900, at least 50 national magazines boasted circulations above 100,000, ranging from relatively costly quality monthly periodicals like Century and Harper's, addressed to a well-educated readership, to romance fiction and, thanks to new technology, lots of pictures.