This issue of Bonner’s New York Ledger includes poems by George D. Prentice, Alice Cary, Lydia Huntly Sigourney, C. D. Stuart, as well as Edward Everett’s weekly column, “The Mount Vernon Papers,” and Sylvanus Cobb’s serial, “The Queen’s Plot; or, The Prophet of Palmyra.” When this issue went to print, Prentice was the editor of the well-regarded Louisville Journal, in Louisville, Kentucky; and his poems were regularly appearing in the pages of the Ledger. On the first page, we find his poem, “Young Kate” written with a dominant meter of iambic pentameter. The poem is an ode to “a lovely girl” who, according to the speaker, seems "All music, love, and poetry” (5-6). Directly below Prentice’s romantic poem is a “romance of ancient days,” i.e., Cobb’s “The Queen’s Plot,” which makes me wonder about the potential associative links (thematic or generic) between serials and poems in story papers. Most readers, as critics like Michael Denning would tell us, picked up story papers like the Ledger for their sensational fiction. Yet the romantic relationship, in my example, begs the question. It just so happens that there might be different answers for different types of readers.
On page three, we find two poems by Cary and Sigourney. This page is an example of the poets that regularly appeared in this paper. In the late 50s, Cary and Sigourney were big-deal poets with a long-established fandom. It is remarkable to see their poems two columns away from each other in a story paper mostly devoted to sensational serials. Yet this was the nature of the Ledger. It’s editor wanted to offer the best writers for the best prices. By 1857, the Ledger exceeded a circulation of 150, 000. By 1859, his contributor’s record included stars like Emerson Bennett, Charles Dickens, Fanny Fern, E. D. E. N. Southworth (not mentioning the ones already alluded to). In 1874, Bonner managed to convince Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who is arguably the most famous poet of the nineteenth century, to sell him a poem. According to Mary Noel, Longfellow “did not want to write for newspapers,” but Bonner’s offer of $3,000 for “The Hanging of the Crane,” a poem Noel calls “two-hundred lines of indifferent poetry," was hard to turn down especially considering that Longfellow was short of money during this time.
On page three, we find two poems by Cary and Sigourney. This page is an example of the poets that regularly appeared in this paper. In the late 50s, Cary and Sigourney were big-deal poets with a long-established fandom. It is remarkable to see their poems two columns away from each other in a story paper mostly devoted to sensational serials. Yet this was the nature of the Ledger. It’s editor wanted to offer the best writers for the best prices. By 1857, the Ledger exceeded a circulation of 150, 000. By 1859, his contributor’s record included stars like Emerson Bennett, Charles Dickens, Fanny Fern, E. D. E. N. Southworth (not mentioning the ones already alluded to). In 1874, Bonner managed to convince Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who is arguably the most famous poet of the nineteenth century, to sell him a poem. According to Mary Noel, Longfellow “did not want to write for newspapers,” but Bonner’s offer of $3,000 for “The Hanging of the Crane,” a poem Noel calls “two-hundred lines of indifferent poetry," was hard to turn down especially considering that Longfellow was short of money during this time.
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