In February 1925, the inaugural issue of the New Yorker magazine was published. Although it struggled in its early years, the weekly magazine would ultimately become a national magazine famous for the quality and breadth of its writing and cartoons.

The New Yorker was the brainchild of Harold Ross (1892–1951). After World War I (1914–18), Ross began hanging out at New York's Algonquin Hotel with a group of writers and artists that would come to be known as the "Algonquin Round Table." Ross was taken with the wit and sophistication of the group and decided that if he could capture it in a magazine, it would find a readership. Ross, who would edit the magazine for twenty-six years, established the magazine's four basic literary emphases: nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and cartoons. The New Yorker went on to excel in all four areas, frequently in the same issue.

The early years...