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Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley
Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley Author:William Henry Venable Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. EARLY PERIODICAL LITERATURE OF THE OHIO VALLET. " THE MEDLEY, OR MONTHLY MISCELLANY." It is recorded in numerous publications, and has been ac... more »cepted as final, by bibliographers, that the Western Review, edited by William Gibbs Hunt, Lexington, Kentucky, in 1819-21, was the first literary magazine published west of the Allegheny Mountains. A recent dis'covery by Mr. A. C. Quisenberry, of Lexington, an accomplished and enthusiastic student of Kentucky literature and history, proves that the pioneers of the Ohio Valley could boast of a distinctively literary monthly, in the year 1803, full sixteen years before Hunt's Review appeared. The Medley, or Monthly Miscellany, printed by Daniel Bradford, in Lexington, Ky., for one year only, from January to December, 1803, must be considered the first magazine of the West, at least until somebody finds its predecessor. Historians need be cautious in deciding upon first events—the first child born, the first house built, the first institution established in a given settlement, or state, or territory. Mr. Quisenberry, while engaged in gathering material for a biographical sketch of the elder Humphrey Marshall, author of Marshall's History of Kentucky, had occasion to ransack the Lexington library, and to make diligent search through the files of the Kentucky Gazette, the earliest newspaper published west of Pittsburg. His attention was attracted by the following announcement in the Gazette, dated October 26, 1802 : " PROPOSALS, By Daniel Bradford, For Publishing by Subscription THE MEDLEY, Or Monthly Miscellany. I. The Medley shall be published in numbers, one of which shall be ready for delivery the first Tuesday in every month, and regularly forwarded to subscribers as directed. II. Each number shall c...« less