Puritan

A women's title from the Munsey publishing house, THE PURITAN aimed at women who wanted a traditional approach to life. It was established in 1897, and in September 1898 Munsey arranged for GODEY'S MAGAZINE [previously GODEY'S LADY'S BOOK] to merge into PURITAN. In April 1901 it was itself merged into THE JUNIOR MUNSEY, a magazine for older children, and that in turn was merged with the April 1902 issue into the pulp magazine ARGOSY. Quite a journey. More images and history at PhilSP's magazine history site with notes about THE PURITAN , THE JUNIOR MUNSEY, and GODEY'S MAGAZINE. Most of the later issues are online; see Ockerbloom's summary page. Munsey discusses his publishing philosophy, 1899.

Dennis Lien summarized Munsey's explanation for closing the magazine: Four unnumbered pages near the end of the (unpaginated) advertising section, headed “To the Readers of the Puritan,” comprise an editorial in which Frank A. Munsey explains why he is “consolidating” THE PURITAN with THE JUNIOR MUNSEY as of the April issue. He claims THE PURITAN makes a good profit and has “an edition” of 155,000 (compared though to 660,000 for MUNSEY"S) but does not get enough advertising to continue, because of prejudice on the part of most advertisers on appearing in multiple magazines from a single publisher. Also, it is “a class publication” intended for women, and Munsey does not like such limitations. Now he will have just THE ARGOSY for adults and JUNIOR MUNSEY “for all the people.” (These pages appear in the ad section in the online site, but apparently were an insert in the middle of the issue in the original, per the cover." (Ref., including contents of this issue.)

Cover images for this magazine are difficult to find. We apologize for the poor quality of many of these we show here.