 | |
| Editor | Norman Cousins, 1942–1971, 1973–1977 |
|---|---|
| Categories | U.S. culture; book, music, and movie reviews; education |
| Frequency | Weekly |
| Circulation | 660,000 (peak) |
| Publisher | various |
| Founder | Henry Seidel Canby |
| First issue | 1920 (1920) |
| Final issue | June 1986 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| ISSN | 0036-4983 |
Saturday Review,[1] previouslyThe Saturday Review of Literature,[2] was an American weeklymagazine established in 1924.Norman Cousins was the editor from 1940 to 1971.[3] Under Cousins, it was described as "a compendium of reportage, essays and criticism about current events, education, science, travel, the arts and other topics."[1]
At its peak,Saturday Review was influential as the base of several widely readcritics (e.g.,Wilder Hobson, music criticIrving Kolodin, and theater criticsJohn Mason Brown andHenry Hewes), and was often known by its initials asSR. It was never very profitable and eventually succumbed to the decline of general-interest magazines after restructuring and trying to reinvent itself more than once during the 1970s and 1980s.
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Henry Seidel Canby established the publication in 1924.Bernard DeVoto was the editor in 1936–1938. In 1950,John Barkham became book reviewer there.[4] Until 1952, it was known asThe Saturday Review of Literature.[5]
The magazine was purchased by theMcCall Corporation in 1961.[1]
Under the editorship of Cousins (1940–1971) and the vice-presidency ofJ. R. Cominsky,The Saturday Review reached its maximum circulation of 660,000 and cultural influence.[2][6]Cousins resigned when it was sold, along with McCall Books, to a group led by the two co-founders ofPsychology Today, which they had recently sold toBoise Cascade. They split the magazine into four separate monthlies[7] and renamed the publishing company Saturday Review Press, but the experiment ended in insolvency two years later. Former editor Cousins purchased it and recombined the units withWorld, a new magazine that he had started in the meantime. Briefly it was calledSR World before it reverted toSaturday Review. Saturday Review Press was sold separately toE. P. Dutton.
The magazine was sold in 1977 to a group led by Carll Tucker, who sold it in 1980 to Macro Communications, the owner of the business magazineFinancial World. It was insolvent again in 1982 and was sold to Missouri entrepreneurJeffrey Gluck . A new group of investors in 1984 resurrected it briefly. According to Greg Lindsay writing forFolio twenty years later, most people consider 1982 "the yearSaturday Review died".
Penthouse publisherBob Guccione acquired all properties in 1987 and used the title briefly from 1993 for an online publication atAOL.
In December 2010, business columnist forThe Philadelphia Inquirer Joseph N. DiStefano reported in hisblog that John T. Elduff ofJTE Multimedia planned to "revive" bothCollier's andSaturday Review as print and online magazines — mainly print, "for Americans 55 to 90". Both would "have a liberal share of attention to research" and look like they did in the 1950s.[8]
In 2011, JTE Multimedia made use of theSaturday Review name with its website,Saturday Review–Drug Trials,[9] to report on clinical drug research, focusing on inconclusive and adverse trial results.[10] The site disappeared in 2016, with its home page essentially unchanged since its launch date.