St. Nicholas has been called the best children's magazine ever published, particularly during the tenure of its founding editor, Mary Mapes Dodge. From 1873 to 1905, Dodge worked to create what she called a "pleasure ground" for children--a magazine that would have great impact on several generations of children. The list of authors who wrote for her includes Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Rudyard Kipling, Theodore Roosevelt, and Mark Twain. The quality of the magazine's illustration was equally high. The magazine was also the launching pad for a new generation of authors and artists, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.B. White, Jack London, and Eudora Welty. This anthology of critical writing on St. Nicholas includes some of the most influential articles already published and newly commissioned essays on a variety of subjects, including the impact of the St. Nicholas league, the utopian thrust of the magazine's fiction, and the story of the long and productive literary partnership between Dodgeand Alcott. Essays also analyze Dodge's relationship with her readers, her editorial practice, the illustrations, American family life as seen by young British readers, war and military life, advertising, and the middle-class preoccupation with "change of fortune" tales. The work places St. Nicholas in American cultural history, and analyzes how it both influenced and was influenced over thirty years. Essential documentary material presently unpublished or inaccessible and illustrations from the magazine are also included.

In the twilight / Eudora Welty -- Mystery / Stephen Vincent Benet -- Frozen brook / Stella Benson -- Home, to Penelope / Bruce T. Simonds -- Vacation song / E. Vincent Millay -- Voice of the city / John C. Farrar -- Vacation down south / E. Babette Deutsch -- Gratitude / Cornelia Otis Skinner -- In June-time / William R. Benet -- When swallows build / Corey H. Ford -- Where do the fairies meet? / Jessica Nelson North -- Winter walk / Rachel Lyman Field -- Song of summer / Sterling North -- Song of the woods / Stephen Vincent Benet -- My favorite character in fiction / Anne L. Parrish -- Four charades / C.P. Cranch -- Eight charades, done up in rhyme, for lad and lass at candle-time / Ralph Henry Barbour -- Cross-word enigma / G.F. Babcock -- Anagram -- Double-acrostic / Elinor Lothrop Daniels -- Connected squares / Florence and Edna -- Diamond / Jennie N. Child -- Illustrated primal acrostic -- "Aged" puzzle / Helen A. Sibley -- Oblique rectangle / George Linwood Hosea -- Magic letters / Maurice P. Dunlap -- M.M.D. / Josephien Daskam Bacon.