So the Saturday Evening Post, it has a long history as a Newspaper, it has even been debated on where it really started, as this is also something you may not easily find on the internet, was it first started in 1729 as the history card where were are going to learn about the topic, or 1821 where the first issue came out, well I guess it's your option....due to the format I use, we may not be able to get into full detail or why and that.
So without further ado, here is The Saturday Evening Post from the story of America cards; Thought and Culture section.

(What is the Saturday Evening Post?)

The Saturday Evening Post is an American magazine, which is one of the oddest and it is still around, It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influential magazines within the American middle class, with fiction, non-fiction, cartoons and features that reached two million homes every week.

(Sentimental Homespun Covers)

For more than half a century, the Saturday Evening Post ranked high among America's most influential magazines.
It was originally intended to supply Philadelphians with good, wholesome family reading on Sundays and its list of contributors were such early giants in literature as Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Stephen Crane, Bret Harte, Jack London, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Some claim that the magazine's origins go back as far as 1729, when Benjamin Franklin published The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette. (That's a long title).
The name was changed in 1779 to Pennsylvania Gazette and Weekly Advertiser.

In 1821 it was purchased by Charles Alexander and Samuel Atkinson, who renamed it and began publishing it as a weekend paper.

Despite its development of good fiction writers, the Post did not prosper under these gentlemen.
In 1897 the magazine was bought by Cyrus Curtis who was already publishing the Ladies Home Journal with some success. Curtis wanted to give the public a quality weekly publication that cost only five cents, and he hired an editor named George Horace Lorimer to create such a magazine.

Upon an ambitious venture, hiring the top fiction writers of the day for high fees and prompt payments.
He revamped the editorial pages, making sure that the Post tackled national issues with depth and seriousness.

Soon new advertising came pouring in, and by 1909 the Saturday Evening Post boasted one million readers.
Lorimer continued as the Post's most outstanding editor until his retirement in 1936, bringing to his readers such new writing talent as F. Scott Fitzgerard and Ring Larder.
He also introduced the work of Norman Rockwell, whose sentimental homespun covers for the magazine made him one of America's favorite illustrators.

Rockwell's painting of a small girl holding her doll out to be examined by a kind country doctor remains one of America's all-time favorite magazine covers.
Following World war II, America's reading habits changed, and in January of 1969 the Saturday Evening Post stopped publication, The competition from television and new, more specialized magazines was an also important factor of its demise.

In June 1971, however, the Post was brought back into circulation as a quarterly magazine, and it is now published nine times a year.

(The Post Illustrators)

Now rockwell wasn't the only illustrator to get attention on his work when his work was sold to the evening post, but he was quite unknown before it at just 22 years old in new york, and rockwell had painted over 300 covers for the post since then.
another illustrator from nebraska, John Phillip Falter, became known as "a painter of americana with an accent of the middle west," who "brought out some of the homeliness and humor of middle western town life and home life." he did over 120 covers for the Post between 1943 and 1968.

Another artist by the name of Charles R. Chickering was a freelance illustrator who went to design numerous postage stamps for the U.S Post Office.

(Ending)

And that is going to be the history for Saturday Evening Post coming the story of America Cards. I hope you enjoyed this and I'll see you next time when I make a new History card video as always.