Category:Cosmopolis

Title: Cosmopolis; An International Review

Editor: Fernand Ortmans, Baron de Senechal

Publisher: T. Fisher Unwin

Cosmopolis was an anti-war, anti-nationalistic journal that ran from January 1896 to November 1898, with a circulation of about 20,000. Notable contributors included Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Leo Tolstoy, Y.B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. Its stated aim was "an effort to protect European intellectual life from destructive nationalism".^[1] In an era of escalating militaristic sentiment that tended to drive wedges between the various European powers, contributors and readers of Cosmopolis called instead for sympathy and international understanding.^[2]

To this aim, Cosmopolis was a trilingual periodical, featuring three different sections of articles in every issue in English, French, and German. Pieces were on a variety of international subjects, usually concerning literature and culture in other countries. Other topics included essays on history, international politics, and reviews of literature and drama.^[3] Articles in the three sections were usually linked by common subjects.

In 1897, editions in Russian were published in St. Petersburg, and in the last months of the periodical's existence, sections in Dutch, Scandinavian, Italian, and Greek were promised to subscribers. However, public sentiment was generally against that of the periodical, and, indeed, Cosmopolis' contributors maintained a generally negative view of the ability of culture to actually foster the mutual understanding that the periodical promoted.^[4] In a sort of fulfillment of its own prophecy, Cosmopolis failed by the end of 1898, probably due to insufficient demand.

Notes

1. ↑ WD.
2. ↑ Julia Reid, "The Academy and Cosmopolis: Evolution and Culture in Robert Louis Stevenson's Periodical Encounters," Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media, ed. Louise Henson, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2004, 263-74, Print.
3. ↑ Stephen Donovan, "Cosmopolis," Conrad First: The Joseph Conrad Periodical Archive, Uppsala University, 2006, Web, 16 Feb. 2009.
4. ↑ Reid 267.

Submitted by: Gillis, Benjamin: section 1, Winter 2009