The Arena (magazine)

The Arena was a liberal literary and political magazine published by Arena Publishing Co. in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded by Benjamin Orange Flower in 1889[1] and existed for twenty years. Though it had a circulation of more than 30,000 at one point, it was rarely profitable. The final issue was published in August 1909.[2]

For the British magazine, see Arena (magazine).
Pictorial cover of a later issue of The Arena.

Publication history

The Arena was established by Benjamin Orange Flower in December 1889. The magazine was a monthly with volumes typically consisting of six issues.[3]

The magazine advocated social reform, featuring articles about poverty, slums, sweatshops, child labor, and other social problems.[1] It openly advocated birth control, free silver, agrarian reform, the single tax, and trust-busting. It was the only journal of national import to support William Jennings Bryan in 1896. Later, it advocated penal reform and opposed capital punishment.[4]

It published work by writers such as Upton Sinclair, Stephen Crane[5] and Hamlin Garland. Women wrote a quarter of the contents during its first twenty volumes. A section of Garland's Main-Travelled Roads first appeared in The Arena.[6] The Arena later employed investigative journalists and became known as a muckraker. The magazine published articles on socialism and was supportive of efforts to organize workers into trade unions. It favored literature that supported the poor and powerless.[2]

Footnotes
  1. Smith, Susan Harris and Dawson, Melanie, Editors. The American 1890s: A Cultural Reader Duke University Press (2000), p. 273. Retrieved July 29, 2013
  2. The Arena Archived 2013-08-03 at the Wayback Machine Spartacus Educational. Retrieved July 29, 2013
  3. "Arena," in International Magazine Co., Periodicals, vol. 1, no. 1 (Oct.-Dec. 1917), pg. 8.
  4. Lake, Randall A. "'WOMAN IN JOURNALISM' – CIRCA FEBRUARY-OCTOBER, 1897". "SHE FLIES WITH HER OWN WINGS" THE COLLECTED SPEECHES OF ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY (1834-1915). Retrieved 1 February 2016.
  5. Wertheim, Stanley. A Stephen Crane Encyclopedia, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1997), p. 109.
  6. Pizer, Donald. Hamlin Garland, Prairie Radical: Writings from the 1890s. Chicago: University of Illinois Press (2010), p. 14 ISBN 978-0252035098
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