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Since the turn of the 20th century, many writers of varying brilliance have flashed across the literary horizon of the city. Portland-born Harrison Jewell Holt, who served on the New York Globe, brought out his The Calendared Isles (1910) and Midnight at Mears House (1912). Florence
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Brooks Whitehouse wrote The God of Things (1902) and The Effendi (1904), as well as many short stories published in various magazines. Ers- kine Caldwell, who managed a local bookshop in 1929, left Portland for wider fields; in 1933 his short story, 'Country Full of Swedes,' won the Yale Quarterly Review Award. His stories have appeared in the Best Short Stories of 1931 and 1932. In 1936 his Sacrilege of Alan Kent was published by the local Falmouth Book House; today Erskine Caldwell has won fame for his Tobacco Road.
Eric P. Kelly, summer resident of Chebeag Island, was awarded the John Newberry Medal in 1930 for excellence in juvenile literature for The Trumpeter of Krakow; his other works include Treasure Mountain (1937), and At The Sign of the Golden Compass (1938). Portland-born George Stuyvesant Jackson compiled Early Songs of Uncle Sam (1934), and wrote Uncommon Scold, The Story of Anne Royall (1938). Helen Albee Prince based her Grandma's Album Quilt (1936) on diaries she had kept for more than half a century.
From 1930 to 1936 Alfred Morang lived in Portland; his 'Frozen Still- ness' was included in O'Brien's Best Short Stories of 1935, its compiler praising Morang as "a suberb artist" and listing 16 of his stories in The Yearbook of American Short Stories. Morang's work has been included in nearly 50 American and European periodicals; his Funeral in Winter (1936) is as grim in content as in title.
Portland today presents a fairly active group of writers producing much that is interesting both in prose and verse. Mrs. Harold Lee Berry has pub- lished two volumes of lyric poetry, The White Heron (1933), and Tall Oneida Mountain (1934) ; Alice Homer's Stars for Your Wagon (1935), and Let Us Reason Together (1934) have been locally praised. The Scribblers' Club, an active local group of penwomen, published Fifteen Girls On A Hobby Horse (1937), combining their poetry and prose talents.
Within the past few years Herbert G. Jones, a Welsh-born writer who has adopted Portland as his home city, has delighted his readers with two chatty and highly informative books-I Discover Maine (1937), and Old Portland Town (1938). Jones' style is easy and intimately informative, depending for historical revelation upon accurately related anecdotes rather than dry statistics.
Maurice Gardner's This Man (1937) had as its locale a lonely isle in Casco Bay; other Gardner works include Bantan - God-like Islander
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(1932), a highly imaginative novel in a South Sea setting, and the early Son of the Wilderness, a story of high adventure in the Maine woods.
Among local contemporary authors is Esther Cloudman Dunn, whose scholarly Literature of Shakespeare's England (1936) attracted much fa- vorable attention. Leon Tebbett's Amazing Story of Maine (1935) is the only recent book on the geological story of this State. Lena K. Sargent featured the romance of fishing in Casco Bay in her Bruce the Fisherboy (1936). Casco Bay and its islands are the setting for Grace Blanchard's Island Cure (1922), William Haynes' Casco Bay Yarns, and Idle Island (1927) by Ethel Hueston, a prolific writer whose most recent work is High Bridge (1938). Edward H. Carlson, local newspaperman, collabo- rated with James Coolen to produce We're Sailing in The Morning (1938). Albert Walter Tolman is the author of the Jim Spurling series of four volumes of adventure and fiction, and contributes to young people's publi- cations.
H. Leroy Caston, under the pen name' Robert Barrington,' produced the ancestral biography, Some Valiant Ones (1937), which centers mainly around the old Kennebec river country, although parts of it concern early Falmouth; he also wrote For All Eternity, a play. Attracting much attention in the contemporary field of verse is the work of Myra Lee Kennedy (Mrs. John Parks), whose poems have been printed in several leading American newspapers and periodicals. Other modern writers connected with Portland include: Robert G. Albion, author of Square Riggers on Schedule (1938) ; Clifford Orr who became popular almost overnight with his detective story, The Dartmouth Murders (1929); Agnes Burke Hale, a brillant short story writer, for some years a regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, author of the novel, So Wise So Young (1935) ; Edith A. Sawyer, who has done noteworthy work in the juvenile field; and Robert T. Sterling, keeper of Portland Head Light, who penned Lighthouses of the Maine Coast By The Men Who Keep Them (1935). With the pub- lication of A Slice of Life (1938), Portland's Margery Palmer Power shocked the local literary world with the frank reality of her poetic style.
Edward F. Morrill, former newspaperman and resident of Portland, first attracted attention with his tribute 'Edward Arlington Robinson,' a sonnet which won a prize in the Portland Sunday Telegram Contest in 1936. A member of the Poetry Fellowship of Maine, his rondeau 'Blood God Mars,' an indictment of war, won the first annual prize of that organization in February, 1939. In May of the same year, Mr. Morrill's sonnette 'Con-
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vent' won the Anita Brown Medal, awarded through the National Poetry Center. His style is realistic, achieving a vivid effect through a meticulous choice of phraseology.
Frances Wright Turner is active in many literary organizations in the city and State. Her lyric poem 'October' won the Brook prize in 1918; 'People,' the Kaleidoscope Magazine (Texas) prize, 1929; 'Gardens' in 1938, won the State prize for the best poem in the regional convention of the Na- tional League of American Pen-Women, and her lyric 'Fog' won the Na- tional Contest prize of this organization the same year. Her published works include Drifting Leaves (1926), a volume of lyric poems, and Star Dust (1930), a child's book of verse.
Although William Hutchinson Rowe is neither Portland-born nor a re- sident of the city, his maritime books are intimately connected with the local scene. Published in Portland were his Shipbuilding Days and Tales of the Sea (1924), Shipbuilding Days in Casco Bay, 1727-1890 (1929) , and Ancient North Yarmouth and Yarmouth (1937) .
The Federal Writers' Project in Maine, a unit of a national program of the Work Projects Administration, has maintained editorial offices in Portland and field workers throughout the State since its inception in 1935. Originally designed to give useful employment to needy writers and re- search workers, the Federal Writers' Project has gradually developed the more ambitious objective of utilizing the talent among these unemployed writers to create and present a comprehensive portrait of Maine. The re- sult is a collective work to which all the writers and research workers con- tributed according to their talents. In September, 1939, this project be- came the Maine Writers' Project, sponsored by the State Department of Education. The members of the Maine project, in addition to the Portland City Guide, have written Maine: A Guide Down East (1937), a 450-page history-guide published by Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston. Under the supervision of R. Richard Ellingwood, State Director, the project has considerably expanded its scope and since the spring of 1938 has been en- gaged in the production of seven varied books. Maine's Capitol (1939), published by the Kennebec Journal Print Shop, is a handbook on the State- house and the functions of the government of Maine; Augusta-Hallowell on the Kennebec, a history-guide to Maine's capital city, Augusta, and to the State's smallest incorporated city, Hallowell, is scheduled for publica- tion during the summer of 1940. In collaboration with other New England States, the Maine Writers' have assisted in preparing U. S. One (1937), a
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mile-by-mile description of the Federal Highway extending from Maine to Florida. Other collaborative work included New England Hurricane (1938), a factual, pictorial record of the 'big wind' of September, 1938; Skiing In The East (1939), a handbook to winter resorts and ski trails in eastern states; and Here's New England (1939), a guidebook, with es- says on the principal recreation areas of the New England States.
The Historical Records Survey, which began operation in Maine in 1936 as a part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Ad- ministration, has as its principal object the inventory of all extant town and city records in the State for the reference of the lay public and students in Maine town government as well as for the citizens and officials of the towns themselves. Completed work is No. 5. Hancock County Vol. 1. Towns of Mt. Desert (1938), and No. 4. Franklin County Vols. 1 & 2 Avon and Berlin (1939).
The present Woman's Literary Union of Portland, quoted as being "the first Federation of its kind in the world," has a total membership of nearly 350. It is the result of the federation in 1889 of the 16 literary clubs then in the city, in addition to 21 ladies not affiliated with any group; the re- sulting association was known as the Ladies' Literary Union of Portland, and had a membership of 113. In 1890 the name was changed to the one it now bears, and in 1908 five departments were arranged for the study of art, sociology, education, forestry, crafts, and industry, as well as the origi- nal study of an appreciation of literature. Frye Hall, the home of the group, was dedicated in 1917. Recently there have been added depart- ments of Parliamentary Law, Decorating, Conversational Spanish, and Public Speaking.
There have been few strictly literary clubs in the city, although many groups have been formed which have met for the discussion of literature in general. The Fraternity Club came into being about 1872 and abstracts and papers read in ensuing years were bound and placed in the Maine His- torical Society. Many of Portland's literary lights have been members of this club, which has been called one of the oldest in the country.
Printers and Publishers
Portland's printing and publishing history started in 1785, when the first local printing press was set in operation. During the next century a host of printers and publishers added their individual talents toward making Longfellow's town "seated by the sea" well known as a publishing center.
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However, no individual name stands out through these years as does that of Thomas Bird Mosher whose Bibelot series or reprints have become world famous.
While a partner in Mclellan Mosher and Company, from 1882 to 1890, Thomas Bird Mosher (1852-1923) reprinted for himself a few well- known books, designing his own styles and formats. The first of these books was George Meredith's Modern Love. In 1895 Mosher started un- der his own name the Bibelot series of reprints, limited editions of which became known throughout the world for their excellent workmanship. The Bibelot series in small quarto form (41/2" x 6"), printed from hand set type on white laid paper with uncut edges, are contained in 20 volumes of 400 to 450 pages, with an additional index volume. Originally, these quartos were issued monthly, and Mosher wrote a new introduction for each one, the series extending over a period of 20 years. Of these introductions Christopher Morley wrote in The Saturday Review of Literature: "Mr. Mosher spent more than thirty years in betrothing books and readers to one another; like the zooming bumble-bee and with a similar hum of ecstasy he sped from one mind to the next, setting the whole garden in a lively state of cross-fertilization .... " His reprinting of poetry and verse from rare editions and unusual sources continued until his death. From the stand- point of printing, paper, rulings, and covers, Mosher's various editions on pure vellum, and on Italian, handmade Van Gelder Dutch and English papers have given a unique format to some of the choice works of English and American authors.
The first absolute facsimile reproduction of Edward Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam (1859) was reprinted by Mosher, as well as a facsimile edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1859). The Brocade edition was another Mosher series, and included limited reprints of the work of such au- thors as Matthew Arnold, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Morris, and Oscar Wilde. His popular edition, The Lyric Garland, was composed of the works of several well-known writers, among whom were Percy Bysshe Shelley, Algernon Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, and W. B. Yeats. Mosher is also internationally known for his Ideal, Golden Text, Venetian, and Quarto series. The Mosher Press was the first in America to adopt the dolphin and anchor device; this colophon, or terminal inscription, originated with Aldus Manutius, a 15th-century Venetian printer, and quite appro- priately, Mosher introduced the device in his Venetian series. After his death the name Thomas Bird Mosher was applied only to reprints of
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books he had previously published, and the name Mosher Press was given to the books it continued to print for authors and others who desired their work set up in the Mosher style.
The Southworth Press, established in 1875 as a private press, has operated continuously since its inception, becoming the Southworth-Anthoensen Press in 1934. This press makes a specialty of printing fine and limited edi- tions of books and catalogues for institutions and collectors, as well as other kinds of printing along commercial lines. In a list compiled in 1937 by Paul A. Bennett, Director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, naming 37 of the finest books of our time, three were off the Southworth- Anthoensen Press. Among them, and one of their best achivements, was Early American Children's Books (1935). Among other recent out- standing books they have published are: Notes on Prints (1930) by William M. Evans, Jr., published for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; Gargantua and Pantagruel (1936), in five volumes, for the Limited Editions Club of New York; The Clan Chisholm (1935), compiled by Harriette M. Thrasher, a local woman; Early American Rooms (1932), by Russell H. Kettell; The Colonial Printer (1938), by Lawrence C. Wroth, and Marks of Early American Silversmiths (1939), by Ernest M. Currier.
The Marks Printing House, established in 1876, specializes in court work printing and the publishing of county records in book form. They engage in commercial and job printing, and bring out the Maine Medical Journal, a monthly publication. Two of their outstanding books are: Reminiscences of a Yarmouth Schoolboy (1926), and True Tales of the Sea (1930), written by the late Colonel Edward Plummer.
The Bradford Press, established in 1932, issued among other publications, a limited edition of Harold Trowbridge Pulsifer's poem, Elegy for a House (1935). They published Seventy Stories from the Old Testament (1938), by Helen Slocum Estabrook, graphically illustrated with reproductions of 14th-century woodcuts.
The Forest City Printing Company was established in 1935 by Walter E. Harmon and is an outgrowth of the commercial department of the South- worth Press, which was originally set up in 1875 by Francis Southworth. They engage in general commercial and job printing featuring catalogs, ad- vertising booklets and direct mail material. The firm makes a specialty of publishing town and municipal reports as well as yearbooks for various schools and colleges. Among the latter are The Windonian, Windham High School; The Totem, Portland High School; The Amethyst, Deering High
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School; the Bates Mirror, Bates College; and The Tekton, for Wentworth Institute of Boston, Massachusetts. They also publish tabloid weekly and monthly newspapers for fraternal organizations, schools, clubs and near-by communities. In addition to the Portland City Guide (1940), the firm brought out Man and Beast in French Thought Of The Eighteenth Cen- tury (1936) .
The Falmouth Book House was established by Leon H. Tebbetts, a local newspaperman, in 1935. Some of the best known books published by this house are: Historical Churches and Homes of Maine (1937), by the Maine Writers' Research Club; The Amazing Story of Maine (1935), Mr. Teb- betts' own portrayal of the early geological era of the State; The Triad Anthology of New England Verse (1938), compiled by Louise Hall Little- field, representing a collection of poems written by 200 New England poets; and The Sacrilege of Alan Kent (1936), by Erskine Caldwell.
Over the century and a half of publishing in Portland there have been no magazines that have come into the foreground of American letters. Since the days of John Neal's Yankee, a literary magazine he established in 1828, there have been sporadic attempts to launch this type of publica- tion. The last attempt to run a magazine in the city was made by Virginia L. Gates and Stanton H. Woodman, when they copyrighted Sun Up in 1926; the venture collapsed after a few years. The magazine carried fea- tures of important persons and places in Maine, and articles on prominent clubs and their activities.
THE
almout
Gazette
AND
WEEKLY ADVERTISER
(No. 1.) SATURDAY January 1 1785. (Vol. 1.)
NEWSPAPERS
For more than a century and a half after its founding Falmouth had neither printing presses nor newspapers, and depended for news entirely on the scant sheets delivered by mail carriers on horseback from Boston. Oc- casionally these would be supplemented by fragmentary items brought to port by travelers and ship captains. When there were storms of unusual severity, the mail and the newssheets might be delayed more than a month. The return of peace after the Revolutionary War brought some prosperity to the community, but times were still hard and comparatively few could afford an individual subscription to these papers. Frequently whole neigh- borhoods would subscribe for a single publication which was passed from home to home and then carefully preserved for future reading.
Newspapers have been published in Portland since the latter part of the 18th century, and at times there have been as many as fifteen publications issued simultaneously in the city. Over this span of years great editors have had their day and their say, grudgingly yielding the field to the more pro- gressive opposition. Fighting editor-publishers like old Nathaniel Willis, Jr., have gone to jail for their opinions; reporters, like his own son N. P. Willis, have severed weary apprenticeships, poring over handset type and then going away to great cities and brilliant journalistic careers. Papers have sprung into being overnight, and have faded into oblivion. Others have weathered the vicissitudes of the years and matured to become our present publications.
Thomas B. Wait of Boston, with Benjamin Titcomb, Jr., member of a prominent local family as partner, issued volume one, number one of the Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertiser, on January 1, 1785, the first newspaper in Maine. Portland's pioneer newspaper publisher, Wait, was a
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man of strong mind and ardent temperament, and his vehemence was never shown to better advantage than in the controversy that arose over the es- tablishment of a regular theater in Falmouth soon after his paper was founded. Plays had been performed in a local hall, but some of the resi- dents thought a permanent theater should be constructed. The project was opposed by influential citizens on the grounds of morality. Wait fought for the friends of the drama, this probably being the first time in Maine the columns of a paper were enlisted for the support of a civic movement. However, the battle was lost at the time, and the plan abandoned.
The Reverend Thomas Smith noted in his journal on April 28, 1771, that he preached a sermon to seafaring men; the sermon was published by re- quest the same year in Boston as "there was then no printing press in Maine." Wait and Titcomb remedied this situation in 1785 with the es- tablishment of their printing shop, and the following year they produced their first major work, a spelling book. This volume is of historical in- terest if only for the announcement on its title page: "The Universal Spell- ing Book, or a New and Easy Guide to the English Language, containing Tables, etc., etc., 28th edition, by Daniel Fenning, late School-master of Bures Suffolk, Falmouth, Casco (Bay). Printed and Sold by Thomas Wait at his Office in Middle Street."
The Falmouth Gazette became the Cumberland Gazette in 1786, and in the congressional campaign that waxed hot three years later Wait, still pro- prietor of the paper, firmly supported George Thatcher of Biddeford. At the time one member of Congress was chosen from the single district allotted Maine, and the political controversies accompanying the campaign aroused the wrath of the various factions as they aired their respective views through the columns of Wait's paper. Passionately he voiced his support of Thatcher, although a majority of the townspeople were opposed. So furi- ously did the battle wage that the editor was personally assaulted, two of his friends threatened with bodily injury, and Samuel C. Johonnot, a promi- nent lawyer, driven from town. In 1792 Wait once again changed the name of his paper, this time to the Eastern Herald; his connection with the news- sheet ceased in 1796 when a new owner merged it with the Gazette of Maine. The impetuous Wait returned to Boston about 1815 where he died 15 years later.
Previous to the Thatcher controversy Titcomb had withdrawn from the partnership with Wait, and at the height of the rumpus saw an oppor- tunity for an opposition paper. This emerged October 8, 1790, as the
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Gazette of Maine. In 1796 John Kelse Baker, an apprentice of Wait, bought both the Eastern Herald and Titcomb's Gazette, and published a semiweekly under the name of the Eastern Herald and Gazette of Maine. The list of subscribers contained 1,700 names and it existed until compe- tition forced it from the field in 1804.
In 1796 the Oriental Trumpet sounded a hopeful note from John Rand, an apprentice of Wait, but its tone was early subdued and its melody forgot- ten. Two years later, in April, Eleazer A. Jenks established the Portland Gazette, a weekly paper. This passed through different hands though un- der the same name, until 1826, when it merged with the Portland Adver- tiser; in 1910 it was in turn absorbed by the Evening Express and the re- sulting newssheet became the Portland Evening Express and Daily Ad- vertiser. Guy P. Gannett acquired the newspaper in 1925 and the last half of the title was dropped.
The long-lived Eastern Argus was set up in 1803, the first issue appearing early in September. This is an instance of a paper being born of political controversy as it was initiated by Calvin Davis and Nathaniel Willis, Jr., to support the measures of Jefferson's administration. Willis, who had been termed the "fighting editor" and the "old Trojan," was the first editor in Maine to be imprisoned as a result of political sentiments uttered through the press. His imprisonment took place after the mudslinging congressional campaign conducted in the District of Maine in 1806, when Joseph Bart- lett of Saco opposed Richard Cutts and Doctor T. G. Thornton, both of York County. Willis published some communications written by Doctor Thornton, heaping abuse upon Joseph Bartlett. When Cutts was success- ful in the election, Bartlett sued Willis for libel, charging that he had com- posed the articles. The court awarded Bartlett $2,000, and Willis, unable to pay, went to jail when Thornton refused to stand behind the editor in the affair. While incarcerated in the county jail Willis played his trump cards with devastating effect upon the leads of his enemy, his paper ap- pearing each week with a flaring headline announcing the number of weeks the editor had been imprisoned for "daring to avow sentiments of political freedom." Popular sympathy was enlisted by this unusual procedure, coupled with such subtle appeals as the following, which appeared in the Argus of December 18, 1806:
IMPRISONMENT!
On Saturday last, the EDITOR of this paper was arrested and committed to Prison, to satisfy the judgment recovered against
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him at the Supreme Judicial Court in the County of York; but the interference of Friends has saved him from close confinement -yet a separation from his family during the present tedious nights, is irksome, and under existing circumstances peculiarly so. For the public benefit, however, he cheerfully suffers the de- privation of social enjoyments, & patiently submits to be withheld from attending a sick child and distressed family. In the con- sciousness of fidelity in his public duties, and the approbation of the friends of his country, he hopes to find compensation for these sufferings.
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