As the magazine evaporates, like dew, from the American landscape, perhaps we should pause to appreciate some outstanding ones.

One of my favorites is a small magazine from the 1890s, Multum in Parvo. In fact, it billed itself as the “Smallest Magazine in the World.” And small it is — 3” by 4 1/2″. It was published monthly by a certain A. B. Courtney, in Boston; there are many ads for the Keystone Book Company, in Philadelphia, so maybe they had a hand in it as well. Each issue is 16 pages, sold for a nickel, and is devoted to a single topic. These include jokes, lightning calculation, recipes, detective stories, magic tricks, riddles, light verse, Civil War vignettes, ventriloquism, hypnotism, spiritualism, and mind reading. My entrenched habit of browsing through ephemera has also netted me a couple of examples with different covers, sold as non-periodical pamphlets.

Anyone familiar with the Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Books will be struck by the resemblance: the format, the price, even much of the content. I doubt there’s a lineage; more likely, great pamphleteers think alike.

Here’s a gallery of some:

(Posted by Doug Skinner; a longer version appeared in the Big Blue Newsletter, #13.)