St. Nicholas magazine was a popular monthly periodical founded in 1873 and cherished by children for decades. Its pages were filled with lovely illustrations, poems, and stories by authors and artists of the day, all tailored to young readers. It also featured the work of children who would grow up to be celebrated writers themselves.

In the years of the Victorian era leading up to the first issue of St. Nicholas, the market for children’s literature had rapidly expanded, as had the demand for pleasurable and inexpensive reading like periodicals. Technological innovations made printing faster and cheaper, and growing rates of literacy and leisure time among the population meant more people, old and young, were eager for reading materials. Scribner and Company recognized this demand and asked Mary Mapes Dodge, author of the popular children’s book Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates, to lead St. Nicholas as its editor. The first issue was published in November of 1873.

Dodge had strong opinions about what a children’s magazine should look like, which shaped the direction of St. Nicholas. Those opinions were published in the periodical Scribner’s Monthly in 1873, where she declared that “the child’s magazine needs to be stronger, truer, bolder, more uncompromising than the [adult’s]. Its cheer must be the cheer of the bird-song, not of condescending editorial babble… Let there be no sermonizing either, no wearisome spinning out of facts, no rattling of the dry bones of history. A child’s magazine is its pleasure-ground.”

 

 

Dodge tapped her social circle of writers and artists to contribute to the magazine. Frances Hodgson Burnett was a frequent contributor, and her books Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess were first published as serials in the pages of St. Nicholas. In addition to the work of beloved authors like Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain, it also showcased the work of the most popular illustrators of the era, often considered the “Golden Age of Illustration,” like Arthur Rackham.

In 1899, the magazine established the St. Nicholas League, a popular feature that held contests every month for the best poetry, fiction, essays, art, photography, and even puzzles created by its own readership, which were published in a following issue. Winning a gold or silver badge in one of these contests wasn’t just a matter of pride—the winners were also awarded a cash prize.

 

 

One of the most prolific young writers in the pages of the St. Nicholas League was the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her first poem, “Forest Trees,” was published under the name “Vincent Millay” in 1906, when she was fourteen. She would go on to have several more poems featured before she turned 18.

Pittsburgh’s own Rachel Carson was an enthusiastic fan of the magazine as a child. She was published for the first time at age ten, when she won a silver badge for a story titled “A Battle in the Clouds,” about a famous aviator. Her first published piece of nature writing, “My Favorite Recreation,” appeared in the St. Nicholas League in 1922, when she was fourteen years old.

 

 

Some writers were recognized in the St. Nicholas League for a different medium than the one we know them for today. Eudora Welty, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer, won a silver badge for her drawing of a summer shoreline at the age of 10. F. Scott Fitzgerald was given an honorable mention for a photograph in 1910, and William Faulkner for a drawing in 1911.

 

 

St. Nicholas went through a series of rotating editors in the late 1920s and 1930s, and the Great Depression hurt its readership numbers. The magazine published its last issue in 1940. Briefly revived in 1943, St. Nicholas was unable to make a comeback, but its legacy lives on in the writers it inspired. Today, its pages provide a beautifully illustrated portal into an era of growing interest in producing literature that children would love.

Several issues of St. Nicholas magazine from the 1870s through the 1930s are featured in CLP-Main’s current exhibit, “A World of Imagination: Illustrations and the History of Children’s Services at the Library,” from February until May 2025. Stop by to see them for yourself!

To learn more about the Rare Books and Special Collections at the Library, see the LibGuide: Rare Books and Special Collections at CLP-Main.