‘A monthly album of crazy fancies’: The Arena, ‘cranks’ and radical magazines in the 1890s

Abstract

This article uses Boston reformer Benjamin O. Flower’s magazine The Arena in its first, most militant and successful period, from 1889 to 1896, as a case study to analyze the relationship between political radicalism and the periodical form and to examine the changing and contested definition of ‘radicalism’. It analyzes how Flower’s ambivalent intentions as an editor and a reformer were reflected in the hybrid nature of his magazine. It also examines two ‘cranky’ movements he was associated with: middle-class women’s struggle for emancipation and Populists’ fight against railroad and money monopolies. This paper explores how radicals used print culture to circulate and legitimize the fringe protest movements they thought would regenerate the United States.