Life Magazine January 11, 1912 Cover

The cover of Life Magazine by Albert Dodd Blashfield (1860-1920) features this allegorical scene of the old year sitting at a table with the new year. What the symbolism of the pose, wine, smoking, hourglass and table setting boils down to is: out with the old and in with new.

The original Life Magazine (not the 1936 -1972 photo-journal magazine version of Life) featured humor, cartoons and short articles.

Some of the artists who would draw for the magazine included luminaries such as Gibson Girl creator Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell, James Montgomery Flagg, Rea Irvin, Robert Ripley (before he created Ripley’s Believe It or Not) and Oliver Herford.

John E. Drewery in Some Magazines and Magazine Makers (1924, The Stratford Company), had this assessment of Life:

As there is nothing more entertaining to read than articles of genuine humor bubbling over with a hearty laugh in every line, the author cannot help but place it among the great in a long list of entertaining periodicals.

…The idea in the minds of many that Life is wholly humorous is a most mistaken one. Quite to the contrary; in fact Life is a weekly magazine containing some of the best thought and work of a number of great American writers on the theatre, literature, and various humorous aspects of human affairs. And it is keen and brilliant in its way of talking about these things through its editorials, articles and reviews.

Life was founded by John Ames Mitchell in 1883 and after his death in 1918, Charles Dana Gibson, took controlling interest of the magazine in 1920 and became its editor.

Gibson would relinquish his editor role within a few years and Life would hit a high circulation mark of 238,000 in 1923.

The final issue of the original Life Magazine was October 20, 1936.