Lost But No Longer Forgotten: The Chicagoan

Yes, I admit it. I had never heard of The Chicagoan until I stumbled on the University of Chicago Press's announcement of the November, 2008 release of Neil Harris' book, The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age. It seems I'm not alone. Harris himself only discovered the magazine a few years ago while browsing in the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago and he is the Preston and Sterling Morton Professor of History and Art History Emeritus at the University. What he found were "a group of nine plainly bound volumes whose unassuming spines bore the name the Chicagoan. Pulling one down and leafing through its pages, Harris was startled to find it brimming with striking covers, fanciful art, witty cartoons, profiles of local personalities, and a whole range of incisive articles. He quickly realized that he had stumbled upon a Chicago counterpart to the New Yorker that mysteriously had slipped through the cracks of history and memory."

The Chicagoan hit the newsstands only sixteen months after The New Yorker made its debut in 1925. Alas, it didn't survive. But, now comes Harris' book; 400 pages of delicious deco (or, probably "nouvoue") as only Chicago can do it. Check out the sample pages (prepare to begin drooling) tantalizingly provided by the UofC Press. It is gorgeous! Please tell me a series of posters of Chicagoan covers will be available soon! If they aren't, someone is asleep in the marketing department.

UPDATE: I can assure you that the University of Chicago Press is NOT asleep. (I really didn't think they were.) That's the good news. The bad news is, however, that their agreement with Quigley Publications (the original publisher of “The Chicagoan”) prevents them from issuing posters. Now I'm depressed. But, we do have the book to look forward to!