American weekly magazine (1920-1986)
Saturday Review
,
[1]
previously
The Saturday Review of Literature
,
[2]
was an American weekly
magazine
established in 1924.
Norman Cousins
was the editor from 1940 to 1971.
[3]
Under Cousins, it was described as "a compendium of reportage, essays and criticism about current events, education, science, travel, the arts and other topics."
[1]
At its peak,
Saturday Review
was influential as the base of several widely read
critics
(e.g.,
Wilder Hobson
, music critic
Irving Kolodin
, and theater critics
John Mason Brown
and
Henry Hewes
), and was often known by its initials as
SR
. It was never very profitable and eventually succumbed to the decline of general-interest magazines after restructuring and trying to reinvent itself more than once during the 1970s and 1980s.
History
[
edit
]
From 1920 to 1924,
Literary Review
was a Saturday supplement to the
New York Evening Post
.
[4]
Henry Seidel Canby
established it as a separate publication in 1924.
Bernard DeVoto
was the editor in 1936?1938. In 1950,
John Barkham
became book reviewer there.
[5]
Until 1952, it was known as
The Saturday Review of Literature
.
[4]
The magazine was purchased by the
McCall Corporation
in 1961.
[1]
Saturday Review
reached its maximum circulation of 660,000 under Cousins's editorship.
[2]
Longtime editor Norman Cousins resigned when it was sold, along with McCall Books, to a group led by the two co-founders of
Psychology Today
, which they had recently sold to
Boise Cascade
. They split the magazine into four separate monthlies
[6]
and renamed the publishing company Saturday Review Press, but the experiment ended in insolvency two years later. Former editor Cousins purchased it and recombined the units with
World
, a new magazine he had started in the meantime. Briefly it was called
SR World
before it reverted to
Saturday Review
. Saturday Review Press was sold separately to
E. P. Dutton
. The magazine was sold in 1977 to a group led by Carll Tucker, who sold it in 1980 to Macro Communications, the owner of the business magazine
Financial World
. It was insolvent again in 1982 and was sold to Missouri entrepreneur Jeffrey Gluck. A new group of investors in 1984 resurrected it briefly. According to Greg Lindsay writing for
Folio
twenty years later, most people consider 1982 "the year
Saturday Review
died".
Penthouse
publisher
Bob Guccione
acquired all properties in 1987 and used the title briefly from 1993 for an online publication at
AOL
.
Revival
[
edit
]
In December 2010, business columnist for
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Joseph N. DiStefano reported in his
blog
that John T. Elduff of
JTE Multimedia
planned to "revive" both
Collier's
and
Saturday Review
as print and online magazines ? mainly print, "for Americans 55 to 90". Both would "have a liberal share of attention to research" and look like they did in the 1950s.
[7]
In 2011, JTE Multimedia made use of the
Saturday Review
name with its Web site,
Saturday Review?Drug Trials,
[8]
to report on clinical drug research, focusing on inconclusive and adverse trial results.
[9]
The site disappeared in 2016 with its home page essentially unchanged since its launch date.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
Eric Pace (December 1, 1990).
"Norman Cousins, 75, Dies; Edited The Saturday Review"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
July 14,
2019
.
- ^
a
b
Eric Pace (December 2, 1990).
"Norman Cousins Is Dead at 75;Led Saturday Review for Decades ? Obituary"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
July 14,
2019
.
- ^
Greg Lindsay (February 1, 2003).
"A great one remembered...
Saturday Review
"
.
Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management
. Retrieved
January 13,
2012
.
- ^
a
b
Wood, James Playsted (1956).
Magazines in the United States
(2nd ed.). New York: The Ronald Press Company.
OCLC
333074
.
- ^
Saxon, Wolfgang (20 April 1998).
"John Barkham, 90, Prolific Book Critic Focusing on History"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
7 August
2017
.
- ^
Philip H. Dougherty (April 2, 1980).
"Saturday Review May Become a Monthly"
.
The New York Times
.
- ^
DiStefano, Joseph N. (December 14, 2010).
"Berwyn Publisher to revive Collier's, Saturday Review mags"
. philly.com
. Retrieved
2012-01-13
.
Philly.com says the blog "feeds" his newspaper column.
- ^
"Saturday Review?Drug Trials"
. Archived from
the original
on 7 January 2014
. Retrieved
7 January
2014
.
- ^
"Linked-In company page for Saturday Review-Drug Trials"
. Retrieved
7 January
2014
.