''Saturday Review'', previously ''The Saturday Review of Literature'', was an American weekly

magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...

established in 1924. Norman Cousins was the editor from 1940 to 1971. Under Cousins, it was described as "a compendium of reportage, essays and criticism about current events, education, science, travel, the arts and other topics." At its peak, ''Saturday Review'' was influential as the base of several widely read

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as Art criticism, art, Literary criticism, literature, Music journalism, music, Film criticism, cinema, Theater criticism, theater, Fas ...

s (e.g., Wilder Hobson, music critic Irving Kolodin, and theater critics John Mason Brown and Henry Hewes), and was often known by its initials as ''SR''. 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.

History

Henry Seidel Canby established the publication in 1924. Bernard DeVoto was the editor in 1936–1938. In 1950, John Barkham became book reviewer there. Until 1952, it was known as ''The Saturday Review of Literature''. The magazine was purchased by the McCall Corporation in 1961. ''Saturday Review'' reached its maximum circulation of 660,000 under the editorship (1940–1971) of Norman Cousins. Longtime editor Cousins resigned when it was sold, along with McCall Books, to a group led by the two co-founders of ''

Psychology Today ''Psychology Today'' is an American media organization with a focus on psychology and human behavior. The publication began as a bimonthly magazine, which first appeared in 1967. The print magazine's reported circulation is 275,000 as of 2023. ...

'', which they had recently sold to Boise Cascade. They split the magazine into four separate monthlies 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 with ''World'', a new magazine that he had started in the meantime. Briefly it was called ''SR World'' before it reverted to ''Saturday Review''. Saturday Review Press was sold separately to E. 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 magazine '' Financial World''. It was insolvent again in 1982 and was sold to Missouri entrepreneur Jeffrey Gluck . A new group of investors in 1984 resurrected it briefly. According to Greg Lindsay writing for ''Folio'' twenty years later, most people consider 1982 "the year ''Saturday Review'' died". '' Penthouse'' publisher Bob Guccione acquired all properties in 1987 and used the title briefly from 1993 for an online publication at AOL.

Revival

In December 2010, business columnist for ''

The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', often referred to simply as ''The Inquirer'', is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded on June 1, 1829, ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is the third-longest continuously operating da ...

'' Joseph N. DiStefano reported in his

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

that John T. Elduff of

JTE Multimedia JTE Multimedia, LLC is a publishing company located in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania that was founded in 2007. It publishes three peer-reviewed medical journals: '' Hospital Practice'', '' Postgraduate Medicine'', and '' The Physician and Sportsmedicin ...

planned to "revive" both ''

Collier's } ''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter F. Collier, Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened i ...

'' and ''Saturday 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. Philly.com says the blog "feeds" his newspaper column. In 2011, JTE Multimedia made use of the ''Saturday Review'' name with its website, ''Saturday Review–Drug Trials'', to report on clinical drug research, focusing on inconclusive and adverse trial results. The site disappeared in 2016, with its home page essentially unchanged since its launch date.

References

{{Reflist, 30em Defunct health magazines published in the United States Defunct lifestyle magazines published in the United States Defunct literary magazines published in the United States Defunct magazines published in New York City Defunct men's magazines published in the United States Magazines disestablished in 1986 Magazines established in 1920 Weekly magazines published in the United States