| John R. Thompson bought the Messenger in 1847 -- over a
decade after Edgar Allan Poe had worked as its editor. Thompson was born in
Richmond to parents who had moved there from the North, and was educated at the
University of Virginia. He hoped to make the magazine appeal to a national
audience, and sought out contributions from northern writers, but reacted
vehemently to what he saw as Uncle Tom's Cabin's attack not just on
slavery, but on the South. At the beginning of 1853 he went so far as to reduce
the yearly subscription rate from $5 to $3 in hopes of pulling in more southern
readers to rally around his appeal for southern magazines to resist the
abolition furor aroused by Stowe's novel (see second article below).
Thompson's long October, 1852, review of the novel is available in the REVIEWS section of
the archive. |
