To mark the Libraries’ new exhibition, Inventing the Page: Student Literary Magazines at Drexel, the Archives’ blog will feature a series of essays about past literary magazines by Drexel alumna and Archives volunteer, Martha Cornog. The new exhibition opens Wednesday, April 18, with a reception from 5-7 p.m. at Hagerty Library.
Echo of Things to Come: Drexel’s First Literary Magazine
by Martha Cornog
“We propose to entertain and be entertained,” wrote The Drexel Echo‘s fledgling editors, “to encourage and be encouraged, to be instructed, and, if possible, to instruct.”
Drexel’s first campus publication with literary content, Echo blossomed from the student body in 1907, a mere sixteen years after the institution was founded. By then, college literary magazines had become academic standbys. The Columbia Review claims to have been the first in the nation as of 1815, but then Columbia University itself was founded in 1754. The much older Harvard, first U.S. academic body as of 1636, dates its own Harvard Advocate magazine to 1866. So while ever so much younger, Drexel’s Echo was certainly faster off the mark.
Actually, the monthly Echo resembles more an all-purpose campus magazine than a literary journal. While a handful of creative efforts—prose and poetry—open each issue, a “School Notes” section of news items follows with brief notes about class officers, faculty changes, news of the Library School, and the perennial sports updates. Reports on goings-on among student organizations and a jokes section close out the first issue. And on the back cover linger four paid advertisements: for a meat market, two photographers, and a sporting goods store.
Cover of the first issue of the Drexel Echo, 1907
