TheHarvardAdvocate.com
Title
The Harvard Advocate
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Description
The Advocate has one of the richest histories of any college literary magazine in the country, and it certainly has the longest. It is -- we are -- the oldest continuously published college literary magazine in the country. The magazine (published then in newspaper format) was founded by Charles S. Gage and William G. Peckham, class of '67 both, in 1866 and, except for a hiatus during the last years of World War II, it has found its way into the hearts and minds or -- failing that -- onto the coffee tables and bathroom floors of readers ever since. But the Advocate was lucky to survive a year.
Its precursor, the Collegian, had hardly drawn breath enough to pronouce an attack on mandatory chapel attendance before the faculty -- scandalized, no doubt, by a certain freedom of thought at a university -- had the publication closed. The Pegasus (as it were) which rose from the ashes retained, however, the Collegian's motto: Dulce est Periculum -- Sweet is Danger. Not so sweet, though, that the Advocate's stance was not cautious with regard to faculty decisions during its first few numbers. By the time the editors were demanding coeduction at Harvard -- "Alumni! the task is yours! See that this criminal exclusiveness is eradicated" -- the magazine had attracted the formidable support of James Russell Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and its life was less precarious.
In fact, healthy Mother Advocate was spawning. In 1873 she ceased to be Harvard's only publication, and the Crimson (nee Magenta, of all infelicitous things; A Quarter of an Hour, anyone?) was founded. And in 1876, some members of the Advocate defected -- or, if you prefer, left -- to form the Lampoon. The advent of these two new publications relieved us of the need (in the first case) to carry football scores and (in the second case) to be funny; now dour black-clad cigarette smokers could forever rule the roost. Or the Sanctum, rather, as the big room on the top floor of 21st South St. is known. By the 1880's the Advocate had devoted itself to essays, fiction, and poetry, and could now attain its destiny.
