Abstract

The Nation and Its Century

The article focuses on the history of the journal "The Nation" which completed 100 years in 1965 and provides information about its founders and literary experience and knowledge of its editors. "The Nation" had been conceived by Frederick Law Olmsted, who was the architect of Central Park, and Edwin Lawrence Godkin, a young Anglo-Irish Liberal on the "New York Times" editorial staff. In 1863 Olmsted had written to Godkin of plans to establish a weekly journal of opinion that would rival such English periodicals as the "Saturday Review" and the "Spectator." Godkin was intensely interested, and when the versatile Olmsted who had sent to "The New York Times" first-hand "classic" reports on the ante-bellum South, agreed to manage a mining enterprise in California, Godkin went ahead with the project.