Spirit of the Times

The Spirit of the Times: A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature and the Stage was an American weekly newspaper published in New York City. The paper aimed for an upper-class readership made up largely of sportsmen. The Spirit also included humorous material, much of it based on experience of settlers near the southwestern frontier.Theatre news was a third important component. The Spirit had an average circulation of about 22,000, with a peak of about 40,000 subscribers.

William T. Porter and his brothers started the Spirit of the Times in 1831. They sought an upper-class readership, stating in one issue that the Spirit was "designed to promote the views and interests of but an infinitesimal division of those classes of society composing the great mass . . . . " They modeled the paper on Bell's Life in London, a high-class English journal. Subscriptions rose from $2 to $5 in 1836, followed in 1839 by another rise to $10. Editorial policies forbade any discussion of politics in the paper so as to avoid alienating any potential readers. Nevertheless, some writers managed to have material printed that showed favoritism, typically toward the Whigs. The biggest breach of the 'no politics' rule came in 1842, after the publication of Dickens's inflammatory American Notes. A wave of anti-British, anti-imperialist articles followed.

By 1839, the Spirit was the most popular sporting journal in the United States. This allowed the Porters to buy their main rival, the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine. By 1856, all of the Porter brothers were dead except William. The paper split at some point, one branch called the Spirit of the Times, the other Porter's Spirit of the Times. Porter died in 1858, and circulation of the two papers suffered. After the papers remerged in 1861, George Wilkes bought the enterprise and tried to keep it profitable. In 1878, William B. Curtis became the new editor and helped propagate the journal's elitism by refusing to cover sporting events that were not sanctioned by amateur organizations, which had rigid admission requirements.

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