Wide Awake (magazine)

Wide Awake was a monthly American children's magazine, founded in 1875 by Daniel Lothrop. It published stories written by Margaret Sidney, Edward Everett Hale, Sarah Orne Jewett, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, and Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman.Wide Awake was illustrated by many well known artists including Howard Pyle, William Thomas Smedley, and Sol Eytinge Jr.

Wide Awake merged with St. Nicholas Magazine in 1893.

Daniel Lothrop, founder of the Boston publishing firm of D. Lothrop Company, started Wide Awake, intended for a readership of children between ten and eighteen years of age. Lothrop was a publisher with an evangelical viewpoint. He wanted a magazine that "shall help to make the boys and girls of America broad-minded, pure-hearted, and thoroughly wide awake."

The first issue was dated July, 1875 and in it readers were informed "Magazines like Wide Awake are good for young folks, and contain nothing of the 'run-away-to-sea' style for boys, or the 'elope-and-be-happy' incentive for girls, which are greatly cried against by parents now-a-days."

Ella Farman, author of several children's books published by Lothrop, was chosen as the magazine's first editor. Charles Stuart Pratt was the associate editor. The two married in 1877. Ella Farman Pratt remained as editor until December, 1891.

Wide Awake's final editor was Elbridge Streeter Brooks, who had been an associate editor at St. Nicholas Magazine from 1884 through 1887. He was a prolific writer of more than thirty non-fiction children's books.

Early issues contained between 60 and 72 pages of well-illustrated short stories, articles, poems, and serialized stories. There were word puzzles on a page entitled Tangles. Readers' letters about their homes and families were printed in a section called Wide Awake Post Office. Wide Awake Athletics told children about playing team sports and excerising at a gymnasium.

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