The Saturday Evening Post, for the first time in its nearly 200-year existence, has its storied history available digitally.
The publication, which started calling itself the Saturday Evening Post in 1821, was earlier known as the Pennsylvania Gazette and owned by Benjamin Franklin.
“We’ve been scanning the editorial since 2009,” said Joan SerVaas, president and CEO of the current publisher, the not-for-profit Saturday Evening Post Society.
“Up until now, you would have had to come to our offices in Indianapolis to gain access to our archives,” said SerVaas. Her father, Beurt SerVaas, purchased the publication from the remnants of the Curtis Publishing Company in 1970.
In its heyday, the magazine was one of the biggest-selling weeklies in the country and featured the first serialization of what became Jack London’s classic “The Call of the Wild” as well as works of fiction from Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut and Joan Didion. Such illustrators as Norman Rockwell and Americana painter John Philip Falter graced its covers in the years before it turned to photos.
To gain access past the paywall requires a $15-a-year membership to the society. The 280,000 members get a subscription to the six-times-a-year magazine, access to the treasure trove in the archives that includes editorial as well as vintage ads — such as one featuring baseball manager Leo Durocher puffing on a Chesterfield — and various perks like discounts on insurance. Adds SerVaas, “We’re always looking for more members.”