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Article: Saturday Evening Post
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SATURDAY EVENING POST
SATURDAY EVENING POST.
The modern
Saturday Evening Post
dates from 1897, when publisher Cyrus H. K. Curtis bought the failing periodical for $1,000. Curtis immediately cobbled together a suspect genealogy, alleging Ben Franklin as the
Post
's founder and pushing the masthead date back from 1821 to 1728. In 1898, Curtis appointed George Horace Lorimer as editor, a position he held through 1936. Under his leadership, the
Post
became America's most successful and most influential magazine, achieving a weekly circulation of 1,000,000 as early as 1908. In the 1920s, riding on a sea of advertising that exceeded $50 million annually, issues frequently offered over 200 ...