Click here for larger image

Magnolia Weekly: A Home Journal of Literature and General News. Richmond: 4? October 1862-11? March 1865.

From the first days of the Civil War, Richmond served as a center of publishing activity. Of particular interest to many readers were the numerous periodicals, including, for example, the Age: A Southern Monthly Eclectic Magazine, Smith and Barrow's Monthly, and the Sentinel.

Also printed in Richmond were the Bohemian, which quickly disappeared; the Confederate States Medical and Surgical Journal, not inaugurated until early 1864; and Southern Punch, a magazine of humor first issued in 1863 and closely modeled after the famed and long-standing English publication known simply as Punch. Easily the best known, however, were the Southern Illustrated News and the Magnolia Weekly, the latter variously subtitled as A Home Journal of Literature and General News and as A Southern Home Journal. There were other changes, too: the issues for 25 October 1862 and 12 March 1864, for example, depict two variations in the magazine's design. The Magnolia Weekly attracted numerous subscribers from across the Confederacy, particularly, as in the words of one Richmonder, because the South's readers should "no longer be compelled to read the trashy publications of itinerant Yankees."

Copies of the Magnolia Weekly are among the numerous rare Confederate imprints in the collections of the Library of Virginia.