The Forum (defunct magazine)

The Forum was an American magazine founded in 1885 by Isaac Rice. It existed under various names and formats until it ceased publication in 1950. Published in New York, its most notable incarnation (1885 until 1902) was symposium based. Articles from prominent guest authors debated all sides of a contemporary political or social issue - often across several issues and in some cases, several decades. At other times, it published fiction and poetry, and published articles produced by staff columnists in a ‘news roundup’ format.

At its zenith, The Forum became one of the most respected journals in America, alongside Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine. It was exceptional of these in several respects, as it carried a more Southern emphasis, and was also the only journal widely accessible to Black Americans. Its articles were of such reliably high standard that they were often used as resources for colleges and universities, with the articles studied in seminar discussions. Writing in 1957, Frank Luther Mott wrote: “It would be difficult to find a better exposition of the more serious interests of the American mind in the decade of 1886 to 1896 than is afforded by the first twenty volumes of The Forum...The Progress of science and industry, education in its many phases, religious controversy, and movements in literature and the fine arts gave variety to Forum content.”

The Forum’s first editor was Lorettus Sutton Metcalf, whose skills established the magazine’s reputation for academic content. But it was when Walter Hines Page, the noted publisher, took over as editor in 1891, that the magazine became famous. Later editors included Isaac’s brother Joseph Mayer Rice, a notable reform figure in the Progressive Era, Frederick Taber Cooper, and Henry Goddard Leach, who resumed the symposium format in 1923.

Editors of The Forum were as follows:

Rice founded The Forum as a wedding gift to his wife Julia Hyneman Barnett. A German immigrant musician, Rice had enrolled at Columbia University School of Law in 1878, and after graduating in 1880, became the librarian of Columbia’s new School of Political Science. From 1884, he taught classes in the law school, but after he began to practice law, he resigned from teaching. As a lawyer specializing in monopolies and patents, he began to invest in the railroad industry, and then the Electric Storage Battery Company, of which he became president in 1897.

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