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In the twenty-five year period between 1825 and 1850 the number of magazines and journals in the United States increased from one hundred to six hundred. So great was the interest in magazines that the Illinois Monthly Magazine called this period the "golden age of periodicals."[1] But it was golden only if one looked at numbers; most magazines survived between six months and two years.[2] The New York Mirror described the reasons for the ephemeral existence of most periodicals:
This is an accurate, if general, description of the Family Companion and Ladies' Mirror, published in Macon, Georgia, between October 15, 1841, and February 15, 1843. Spurred by the challenge for the South to publish magazines competitive with those of the North, Benjamin F. Griffin and his wife, Sarah Lawrence Griffin, began their new magazine with solid planning and high hopes. Southern praise of the venture was as high as expected and the following from the Northern Brother Jonathan suggests the Companion enjoyed more than a regional reputation: "It appears to be gaining favor on all hands, East, West, North and South, and better still, to deserve it. It is beautifully printed — contains a very large amount of reading matter, is wholly original, and among its regular contributors, are some of the best living writers."[4]
The most important of the "best living writers" spoken of by the Brother Jonathan were William Gilmore Simms and John Neal, both of whom helped guide the journal and contributed heavily to it.[5] Other contributors
In his book on Early Georgia Magazines, Bertram Flanders makes the following estimate: "The Family Companion stands at the very top of Georgia ante-bellum monthlies, sharing honors with the Magnolia (Savannah) and the Orion (Penfield). Mrs. Sarah Lawrence Griffin, though not the best judge in the world of reading matter, in some way managed to get contributions that were among the best to be found in Southern periodicals."[6]
A problem facing scholars wishing to examine the Companion is that its index, like others of the period, is by title only, is inaccurate, and is incomplete. The index following this introduction is expanded beyond mere rearrangement of the original by study of internal evidence and by study of letters from many of the Companion contributors to the Griffins. Some eighty of these letters are in the hands of descendants of the Griffins, and they clearly establish authorship of a number of works which, in the magazine, are anonymous or pseudonymous.
The correspondence also makes clear that many of the anonymous items were supplied by Mrs. Griffin and by John Neal. We have refrained from any attribution based on assumption or analysis of style, and have supplied names only where the question seems beyond dispute. There are indirect identities such as "By the author of 'The Partisan,'" which leads unmistakably to William Gilmore Simms; in such a case the author's name is given here in brackets because it did not actually appear in the magazine. Other attributions were achieved in a more roundabout fashion but are equally valid. For instance, many items in the Companion are identified as "By the Author of 'The Ins and the Outs,'" a sketch appearing in the first issue of the Companion and identified in John Neal's letters as his own. The first of the "Poetry of Flowers" series is anonymous, but five others are credited to Clifton; on internal evidence we have credited the first one to Clifton also. "Clifton" and "Charles Clifton" are probably the same individual but evidence is lacking and we have listed the names separately. We have included in the author list such pseudonyms as "Arion," "Old File," "Somers," and others, rather than have a separate listing.
Under "Anonymous" the titles are arranged alphabetically; works of known authors and the pseudonymous authors, however, appear chronologically.
Because many of the authors are somewhat obscure and the titles are not always descriptive, we have added the terms article, fiction, and poem in square brackets; we have used the term sketch as a catch-all for whatever did not fit into the first three categories. Where the title provides a good indication, no category has been added.
Pagination of the original volumes includes duplications and skips. We have given the numbers shown on the pages involved, with the indication "includes pagination error." In these cases, the reader must be alert for a break in sequence.
Original spelling has not been changed. Punctuation has been normalized in a few cases to avoid distraction of the modern reader's eye. When a title in the original appears in all capital letters, it is impossible to know if the author or editor would have capitalized prepositions; in such a case we tend to modern usage. Irregularities such as "NO. I" in one issue and "No. 2" in the next have been altered to conform to the first appearance.
In order to present a compact index readily consulted by scholars interested in magazine publication of the early 1840's, we have not introduced notes detailing exactly how each attribution was made. In several cases it is by internal evidence available to anyone who studies the magazine; in some cases it is available only in the as-yet-unpublished Griffin letters.
Should a scholar in the field find an item of particular interest, the present authors would be happy to correspond on the subject.
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