xtremely hard to trace. Another fact that aided in the
disappearance of these publications was their short existence. If a
periodical, like the _American Museum_ or the _Port Folio_, ran for a
number of years, it became well known and its volumes were carefully
preserved. The libraries attempted to get complete sets and thus the
magazine was made accessible for future generations. A large number of
these magazines, however, had a precarious existence for a year or
more, and then were discontinued for lack of support. Indeed, the many
failures among these literary ventures cause one to wonder why others
were undertaken, and yet year after year new magazines were launched
on the market with full anticipation of success. This certainly
indicates a widespread demand for this class of literature and if the
kind offered did not happen to suit the taste, the fickle public was
constantly deserting the old for the new.

The investigator is moreover impeded in his progress by lack of
definite and trustworthy information about these publications. There
is no complete list of the American magazines during the years under
discussion, although work has been done on the period to the end of
1800. Paul Leicester Ford published a _Check-list of American
magazines printed in the eighteenth century_ (1889, Brooklyn, N. Y.).
This was an attempt to list all publications referred to by any
writer, whether accessible or not. The present investigation, however,
has brought to light thirty-five or forty volumes of magazines
(including twenty new titles), evidently unknown to Ford, not to speak
of several newspapers of more or less literary value; but the latter
seem to have been omitted intentionally from the _Check-list_.

Even the magazines of Philadelphia, the literary center of the country
during the eighteenth century, have not been listed. "A complete list
of the Philadelphia magazines is impossible. Many of them have
disappeared and left not a rack behind. The special student of
Pennsylvania history will detect some omissions in these pages, for
all that has here been done has been done at first hand, and where a
magazine was inaccessible to me, I have not attempted to see it
through the eyes of a more fortunate investigator."[14] What is here
said of Philadelphia is equally true of Boston, New York, Baltimore
and the other centers of literary activity of a century ago.

[Footnote 14: Albert H. Smyth, _The Philadelphia Magazines