Of these magazines the most important was the "Southern Magazine", published at Baltimore from 1871 to 1875, -- a magazine which came nearest filling the place occupied by the "Southern Literary Messenger" before the war. While it was somewhat eclectic in its character, -- reprinting articles from the English magazines, -- it had as contributors a group of promising young scholars and writers. The editor was William Hand Browne, now professor of English literature in Johns Hopkins University. Professor Gildersleeve, then of the University of Virginia, Professor Thomas R. Price, then professor of English at Randolph-Macon, James Albert Harrison, later the biographer and editor of Poe, and Margaret J. Preston were regular contributors. Richard Malcolm Johnston contributed his "Dukesborough Tales" to it. One of the publishers of the magazine, Mr. Lawrence Turnbull, visited Lanier at Macon in 1871 and became much interested in him. To the magazine Lanier contributed "Prospects and Retrospects" (March and April, 1871), "A Song" and "A Seashore Grave" (July, 1871), "Nature-Metaphors" (February, 1872), "San Antonio de Bexar" (July and August, 1873), and "Peace" (October, 1874).

Of the books published during this period, few have survived. John Esten Cooke's novels and his lives of Stonewall Jackson and Lee, two or three collections of the war poetry of the South, Gayarre's histories, the "War between the States", by Alexander H. Stephens, Craven's "Prison Life of Jefferson Davis", and Dabney's "Defense of Virginia" are perhaps the most significant. J. Wood Davidson's "Living Writers of the South", published in 1869, gives the best general idea of the extent and quality of the post-bellum writing. Noteworthy, also, is a series of text-books projected with the idea that the moral and mental training of the sons and daughters of the South should no longer be intrusted to teachers and books imported from abroad. As planned originally, the scheme called for Bledsoe's Mathematics, Maury's Geographies, Holmes's Readers, Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar, histories of Louisiana and South Carolina by Gayarre and Simms respectively, scientific books by the Le Conte brothers, and English Classics by Richard Malcolm Johnston.

So much needs to be said of the character of the literature immediately succeeding the war, if for no other reason, that it may be contrasted with the literature of, say, the period from 1875 to 1885. With the death of Timrod in 1867, and of Simms, Longstreet, and Prentice in 1870, the old order of Southern writers had passed away. By 1875 a new group of writers had begun their work, Paul Hamilton Hayne best representing the transition from one to the other. The younger writers either had been Confederate soldiers, or had been intimately identified with those who were. They began to write, not out of response to a demand for distinctively Southern literature, but because they had the artistic spirit, the desire to create. They were interested in describing Southern scenery, and in portraying types of character in the social life of their respective States. Unlike most of the literature of the Old South, the new literature was related directly to the life of the people. Men began to describe Southern scenery, not some fantastic world of dreamland; sentimentalism was superseded by a healthy realism. The writers fell in with contemporary tendencies and followed the lead of Bret Harte and Mark Twain, who had begun to write humorous local sketches and incidents. With them literature was not a diversion, but a business. They were willing to be known as men of letters who made their living by literature. They stood, too, for the national, rather than the sectional, spirit. "What does it matter," said Joel Chandler Harris, "whether I am Northerner or Southerner if I am true to truth, and true to that larger truth, my own true self? My idea is that truth is more important than sectionalism, and that literature that can be labeled Northern, Southern, Western, or Eastern, is not worth labeling at all." Again, he said, speaking of the ideal Southern writer: "He must be Southern and yet cosmopolitan; he must be intensely local in feeling, but utterly unprejudiced and unpartisan as to opinions, tradition, and sentiment. Whenever we have a genuine Southern literature, it will be American and cosmopolitan as well. Only let it be the work of genius, and it will take all sections by storm."

And it did take all sections by storm. Contrary to the idea which had prevailed after the war that Northern people would be slow to recognize Southern genius, it must be said that Northern magazines, Northern publishers, and Northern readers made possible the success of Southern writers. In 1873, "Scribner's Magazine" sent a special train through the South with the purpose of securing a series of articles on "the great South". While in New Orleans, Mr. Edward King, who had charge of the expedition, discovered George W. Cable, whose story, "'Sieur George", appeared in "Scribner's Magazine" in October of that year. Between that time and 1881 the magazine published, in addition to Cable's stories, -- afterwards collected into the volume "Old Creole Days", -- stories and poems by John Esten Cooke, Margaret J. Preston, Maurice Thompson, Mrs. Burnett, Mrs. Harrison, Irwin Russell, Richard Malcolm Johnston, Thomas Nelson Page, and Sidney Lanier. In an editorial of September, 1881, the editor, referring to the fact that no less than seven articles by Southerners had appeared in a recent number of "Scribner's", said: "We are glad to recognize the fact of a permanent productive force in literature in the Southern States. . . . We welcome the new writers to the great republic of letters with all heartiness." "The Century Magazine", the successor of "Scribner's", continued to be the patron of the new Southern writers. The number for April, 1884, contained Lanier's portrait as a frontispiece, a sketch of Lanier by William Hayes Ward, Thomas Nelson Page's "Marse Chan", an installment of Cable's "Dr. Sevier", Walter B. Hill's article on "Uncle Tom Without a Cabin", and William Preston Johnston's poem, "The Master".

"Harper's Magazine", in January, 1874, began a series of articles on the New South, by Edwin De Leon, and in the following year published a series of articles by Constance F. Woolson, giving sketches of Florida and western North Carolina. In May, 1887, appeared an article giving the first complete survey of Southern literature, which, according to the author, had introduced into our national literature "a stream of rich, warm blood." The "Independent", a paper which had seemed to Southerners extremely severe in its criticism of the life of the South, is especially connected with the rising fame of Lanier. The editor recognized his genius while he was still alive, after his death continued to publish his poems, and in 1884 wrote the Memorial for the first complete edition of his poems. Maurice Thompson, another Southern writer, became its literary editor in 1888.