The original conception of The New Yorker was to create a weekly humor magazine which was intended for an elite local audience. The readership and popularity of the publication grew until it enveloped a mass market of educated and sophisticated consumers. The New Yorker became an important part of American popular culture and played a crucial role in developing American comic traditions. The mid-1930s saw the inclusion of American Humor into the Academy as a subject worthy of academic study. It claimed its own right as a discipline, "halfway between folklore and literature." Editors cultivated contributors who specialized in a single mode; there were authors of verse and fiction, artists to create cartoons and idea drawings, and some contributors who could do both, like James Thurber. Tina Brown, an editor who served for a six-year term in the 1990s, described the old New Yorker as "full of mischief, lots of wit, and covers bursting with life." The New Yorker was writing for affluent, young, college-educated urbanites who formed a "visible and potent generation fo reader-consumers." The New Yorker executed a shift away from traditional folksy, rustic wisdom and humor, and developed a fast-paced, witty, highly cultured and exclusive type of humor. They developed the staff through a networks system that included Ivy League universities, social circles, and local journalism. The magazine focused on three main branches. As a news department, there were many stories on sports, personality profiles, and political satire. In the "Talk of the Town" section, carefully selected events around the city were highlighted as "worth going to" and all of the short headline "newsbreaks" were accompanied by brief, wry commentary. In the area of consumer service, writers would discuss fashion, real estate, travel opportunities, and automobiles, anything that was a high class good or service. The critics reviewed the theatre, art and museum exhibitions, and the "current cinema," as well as restaurants and nightlife. The magazine was closely tied to it's namesake city, and sponsored a write-in column entitled "Why I Like New York." Many of the entrants described New York as crowded, filthy, and unhealthy but impossible to live anywhere else. They imagined the residents of New York to be unique, and therefore deserving fo their own magazine, similar in thought to the city-based magazines that were springing up around the country in the 1930s. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Harold Ross- The antithesis of the editor of a highly sophisticated magazine, Ross was a high school drop-out described by some as "an illiterate clown." His backwoodsman appearance, shock of coarse brown hair, and habit of muttering, grunting, and violently exploding were all in direct contrast with the polished, classy magazine that was the product of his life's work. But even though Ross suffered from "eccentric ineptitude," he is also regarded as a creative genius and brilliant editor. -a genius at encouraging people. -"Humor was allowed to infect everything." White's obituary of Ross. Ross was born in the mining town of Aspen, Colorado, to George Ross and Ida Martin. His family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah when he was seven years old, and Ross completed two years of high school before dropping out. He worked as a freelance journalist and wrote for the San Francisco Call and Post until 1917 when he enlisted in the United States Army Eighteenth Engineers Railway Regiment, shortly after the U.S. entrance into World War I. Private Ross went AWOL on duty in central France but reappeared in Paris to talk his way into the position of Editor-in-Chief of the new Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for American servicemen abroad. While in Paris he edited and published a book of jokes, called Yank Talk.

When he returned to the States in May of 1919, he edited the Home Sector in New York, a weekly journal for former servicemen who had read Stars and Stripes. The journal went under, and Ross edited the humor magazine Judge for six weeks. Ross fell in with the Algonquin Round Table, a group of exclusive writers who lunched at the Algonquin Hotel for witty conversation and companionship. From this group, Ross culled advisory board members for the new publication he was planning- Marc Connelly, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, and Heywood Braun all joined The New Yorker at its inception. The first issue of the magazine which was "not edited for the old lady in Dubuque" ran its first issue on February 21, 1925. E.B. White- Born Elwyn Brooks White on July 11, 1899 in Mt. Vernon, New York, White began writing at an early age and was the editor of the Cornell Daily Sun during college. He wandered all over the country after graduation and worked on the Seattle Times, on an Alaskan steamer, and moped around New York for years soaking up the feel of the city and collecting rejection slips for his literary submissions. He started out at The New Yorker in 1926 assembling the "Talk of the Town" section, and as he developed as a writer he began to contribute comedic sketches, humorous essays, parodies and fables to the magazine. "He excelled in prose that was precise, elegant, idiomatic, rhythmic but brief and to the point." His third book was a parody of self-help manuals, written with James Thurber: "Is Sex Necessary?" His best known works were the children's classics "Charlotte's Web" and "Stuart Little," and also the updated version of the manual "Elements of Style" published in 1959. Marc Connelly wrote that "It was White who brought the steel and the music to the magazine." Katharine Angell White- Born in 1892, she graduated fourth in the Bryn Mawr College Class of 1914. She started out at the New Yorker in 1925 six months after its inception reading unsolicited manuscripts for two hours a day. She quickly moved to full-time work and proved indispensable as an editor, writer, and a shaper of the magazine's advertising policy. Extremely literate and an elegant and cultivated woman, Thurber described her as "the fountain and shrine of the New Yorker." In 1929, she left her first husband, a lawyer, and married the young writer she had recommended be hired by Ross- E.B. White. They were both back at work at The New Yorker the next day. She was a woman of integrity and had a refined sense of good taste which showed in her deft handling of verse, profiles, and casuals. She served as the first Head of Fiction. In her obituary, printed in the New Yorker in 1977, William Shawn wrote that "More than any other editor except Harold Ross himself, Katharine White gace The New Yorker its shape, and set it on its course." Robert Benchley- Born on September 15, 1889 in Massachusetts, Benchley attended Harvard and was president of editorial board member of the Harvard Lampoon. He contributed humorous pieces to Vanity Fair, was a reporter for the New York Tribune, and shared an office with Dorothy Parker as a freelance writer. He began at The New Yorker in 1925 and was the drama critic from 1929-1940. By 1938 he was developing a career in Hollywood filmmaking, and by 1943 was retired from writing. James Thurber- Born on December 8, 1894 in Columbus, Ohio. Thurber was blinded in the left eye during a game of William Tell at the age of 8 which kept him from military service during WWI. He was the editor of the monthly humor magazine at Ohio State University once he had returned from dropping out sophomore year "just to read." He worked as a freelance writer, as a press agent, and as a reporter in Paris. He was hired at The New Yorker in 1927 at the recommendation of E.B. White first as an editor, but he eventually concentrated on the short humorous tales and essays known as "casuals." Thurber and White shared a cubicle for three years, and are largely credited with establishing The New Yorker's sophisticated tone. Thurber began publishing cartoons in the magazine in 1931, and is famous for his dominant women, small and nervous passive men, and enormous dogs. His best book was "My Life and Hard Times," made up of hysterical sketches of his eccentric family in Columbus. He resigned from the staff in 1933 but continued to contribute to the magazine. "He was honored with helping to elevate American humor from its crude nineteenth-century model to a more polished, contemporary style. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Algonquin Round Table wits of "the Vicious Circle": Harold Ross, Dorothy Parker, Harpo Marx, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Edna Ferber, Marc Connelly, George S. Kaufman, and Russell Crouse. After 1925, many of these contributed to The New Yorker. Of course you would want to hang out at lunchtime with this group- they were entertaining, witty, urbane, and could be ruthless in their satires and critiques. Highly cultured and literate, they were a fast crowd. EB White: "The future was always like a high pasture, a little frightening, full of herds of steers and of intimations of wider prospects, of trysts with fate, of vague passionate culminations and the nearness of sky and to groves, of juniper smells and sweet-fern in a broiling sun. The future was one devil of a fine place, and it was a long while on the way." _____________________________________________________ BIBLIOGRAPHY: Corey, Mary F. The World Through a Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, MA, 1999. Gill, Brendan. Here at The New Yorker. Random House; New York, 1975. Kramer, Dale. Ross and The New Yorker. Doubleday and Company, Inc.; Garden City, N.Y, 1951. Lee, Judith Yaross. Defining New Yorker Humor. University Press of Mississippi; Jackson, MS, 2000. Yagoda, Ben. About Town: The New Yorker and the World it Made. Scribner and Sons; New York, N.Y., 2000. American National Biography. Oxford University Press; New York, 1999.