by Richard Samuel West
During its 25-year existence (1881-1905),
Truth, in contradiction to its name, was ever changing. In fact, it had
seven distinct incarnations. It is remembered today for two of them, when it was a weekly full-color humor magazine from 1891 to 1898 and when it was a sumptuously illustrated monthly from January 1899 to 1901.
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Truth covers for June 2, 1894,
and July 14, 1894
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Its first incarnation lasted nearly four years, from 1881 through 1884, as a gray weekly of no particular import or distinction. After a year’s suspension, it was back in early 1886, this time poised as a competitor to
Col. William Mann’s scandalous society sheet,
Town Topics. As such, it was full of newsy gossip about New York’s
‘400,’ amateur sports events, the stage, and other aspects of upper class life. It fared little better in this second incarnation than in its first, however, and after five years of languish, looked decidedly unlike a publication that would be welcomed into the homes of New York’s high society.
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Truth, June 2, 1894,
comic strip page by George Luks
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At the beginning of 1891, backers were secured to transform the weekly a third time.
Blakely Hall was installed as editor. He seemed determined above all that his
Truth would not be dull. He immediately secured recognizable names to write for the weekly. And as the year progressed he introduced more and more color into its pages. By the end of the year, the new
Truth had arrived: it modeled itself after two other successful magazines of the period, combining all of the vigor and eye-catching color of the mighty political cartoon weekly
Puck with the more refined and less partisan orientation of the comic weekly
Life. The result: a beautiful and lively 16-page magazine, small folio (the new
Truth had the size of the later photographic
Life), built around three full-color cartoons in each issue, and ornamented with small black and white cartoons, short stories, theatre reviews, gossip, and jokes.
Truth’s cartoons were an important element of the revived magazine. While Truth’s three full-color plates could have been created on the same presses that printed
Puck and
Judge each week, they looked decidedly different. First of all,
Truth’s cartoons almost never featured a caricature of a famous person from any profession, be it politician, industrialist, impresario, or actor of note. Secondly, they almost never had any connection to current events. So, instead of a colorful broadside aimed at President Cleveland’s monetary policy or a somber memorial to the late General William T. Sherman,
Truth’s cartoons concerned themselves with more timeless matters: the rituals of courtship, the change of seasons, racy glimpses of a Broadway backstage, matrimonial discord, social hypocrisy, the first blush of young love, etc. Among the artists who limned these eternal subjects were
Charles Howard Johnson (who would die young in 1896),
Archie Gunn, A.B. Wensell, W. Granville-Smith, and
Thure de Thulstrup. The back page cartoon, usually more comic in nature, was drawn by
Syd B. Griffin, George Luks, and
Hy Mayer, among others.
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On June 2, 1894, Richard F. Outcault introduces
the
character who would become the
Yellow Kid
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Editor Hall was no intellectual, but he had taste enough to recognize talent. Hall, assisted by the versatile
James L. Ford as literary editor (sometimes identified as “managing editor”), published several early short stories by
Stephen Crane when no ‘respectable’ publisher would touch him.
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Truth, November 14, 1896,
Rose O’Neill full-page illustration
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Truth’s most famous discovery was comic artist
Richard F. Outcault, who introduced
the Yellow Kid (before he was known as such) in its pages on June 2, 1894. Less than a year later, Outcault would be working full-time for the
New York World and the Yellow Kid would be making journalism history as the kid who started the comics. In 1896, the graceful drawings of a young Missouri woman named
Rose O’Neill began appearing regularly in
Truth. A little over a decade later, O’Neill would invent the
‘Kewpies,’ securing her place in history as the first successful female cartoonist.
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Truth center-spread, June 2, 1894
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The new
Truth quickly attained a circulation of about 50,000. But
Truth was an expensive magazine to produce and selling 50,000 copies a week was not enough to pay the bills. In 1894,
Truth’s printer, the
American Lithograph Company, took control of the magazine and forced Hall out. Editor Ford noted in his memoirs that the American Lithograph Company might have known how to print pretty pictures but knew nothing about running a humor magazine. If that is true, the Company’s ineptitude took years to affect the weekly in any noticeable way. In fact, in the three years after Hall’s departure, with a parade of anonymous or obscure men in the editor’s chair,
Truth was even brighter than before, featuring the most beautiful covers of any weekly ever published in America up to that time and increasingly sophisticated and refined centerspreads. During the 1896 presidential campaign year,
Truth also featured the political cartoons of future Pulitzer Prize winner
Charles McAuley (as he then spelled his name), without causing irreparable harm to the magazines studied detachment from world events.
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Truth covers, December 29, 1894, and May 9, 1896
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Mott says
Tom Hall (no relation to Blakely) was the editor from 1896 through 1898. Conflicting evidence suggests that Canadian writer and poet
Peter McArthur was editor from July 1895 to July 1897 and that
Emma Sylvester took over the chair before the end of that year, so if there is any accuracy to Mott’s claim, Tom Hall’s editorship would have been limited to a short time in 1896 or 1897. Hall, a West Point graduate and Rough Rider (not to be confused – as Sydney Kramer did in his
Stone and Kimball bibliography – with the Tom Hall who was a Harvard graduate and professor of literature), was a major contributor of poetry and prose to
Truth through the mid-1890s, but we could find no evidence that he ever held the top spot on the magazine.
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Truth center-spread, October 17, 1896
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By all appearances
Truth was thriving. But the magazine’s financial fortunes must have flagged in 1897, because, in the fall,
Truth became a hybrid: three of four issues a month continued the style and flavor of the magazine as it had been for the previous five years, but the fourth issue was devoted to more serious subject matter, along the lines of what could be found in any issue of
Harper’s Monthly or
Munsey’s Magazine. The format for these magazine issues was also different. Once a month,
Truth shrunk to the size of the current
Reader’s Digest. It still sported a colorful cover but the signature centerspread and back cover cartoons were gone. This schizophrenic existence had no hope of working, in that the smaller magazine issue appealed to a very different readership than did the regular weekly issues.
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Truth’s quarterly, 1895 and 1897 covers
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This ill-conceived experiment soon ended and with the issue of December 18, 1897, the third incarnation of
Truth ended as well. With that issue, the magazine reduced its size (to quarto, the size of the current
Time magazine), and its price (from ten cents to a nickel). The color cover and centerspread were retained, but they were more illustrative than comic in nature. The contents were dominated by miscellaneous nonfiction, serial novels, short stories, poems, and an occasional cartoon. Pretty routine stuff. But then in April along came the
Spanish-American War. The covers were now devoted to patriotic themes and the centerspreads to portraits of generals or gatefolds of battleships – a sort of colorful military pornography. Perhaps not surprisingly, this was
Truth’s most successful period with a circulation during the war approaching 400,000. When the war came to an abrupt end, so too did
Truth’s phenomenal success, despite the fact that there were many lovely covers during the latter part of 1898.
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Truth covers from 1898 when the magazine
was quarto sized (the same size as Time magazine),
September 7
and 21, 1898
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At the beginning of 1899, the American Lithograph Company started all over again, reinventing
Truth as a high-priced 32-page monthly (for 25 cents) to a 40-page monthly. The content was varied (biographies of artists, travelogues, tours of famous residences, fashion news, fiction), and though not uniformly distinguished, it was more substantial than anything that had come before. But what made the new
Truth special was its appearance. It returned to its old small folio size and was printed on heavy coated stock. Color punctuated the contents, with two or three blank-reverse full-color plates on pebbled paper – to make them resemble classic stone lithographs – and several other full-color portraits in each issue. It was as if the American Lithograph Company had decided to make
Truth a showcase for the sophistication of its printing capabilities. The first year of the new
Truth was impressive, the second even better, and the third, 1901, absolutely breath-taking. Surely no more beautiful publication was being issued in America at that time. Each issue was a testament to the maturity of the printing arts.
William de Leftwich Dodge, the celebrated painter, was commissioned to draw a half-dozen Art Nouveau covers.
Dodge, Mucha, PAL, Leyendecker, and others, contributed color plates in the form of separately published supplements, laid into the magazine, or distributed with the magazine for free.
Henry James and
Stephen Crane wrote fiction. Even the back-page advertisements surpassed anything appearing in the other general interest monthlies of the period. Alas, such beauty could not last. The financial troubles of 1901 apparently hit the American Lithograph Company hard. It downgraded the magazine with the New Year and published three issues of a weakened and clearly less expensive
Truth before selling the property in March.
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Covers of Truth’s 1899-1901 incarnation,
May and July, 1901
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With the May 1901 issue,
Truth became radicalized as
“The Woman’s Forum,” an unofficial organ of the
Federation of Women’s Clubs and a medium of communication among progressive women’s clubs around the country. The May and June issues feature contributions by important women writers (
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton), but the new magazine failed and was suspended. In 1904, the title was resurrected as an octavo sized monthly – the same size as the old pulp magazines – that served as a sorry vehicle for reprints from British publications.
Truth survived thus until the end of 1905, when it folded for the last time.
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By 1902 Truth was in decline,
March and May covers
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* Richard Samuel West’s new book Iconoclast in Ink; The Political Cartoons of Jay N. “Ding” Darling can be purchased HERE.
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