The editorial Edward Bok enjoyed this hugely; the real Edward Bok did
not. The one was bottled up in the other. It was a case of absolute
self-effacement. The man behind the editor knew that if he followed his
own personal tastes and expressed them in his magazine, a limited
audience would be his instead of the enormous clientele that he was now
reaching. It was the man behind the editor who had sought expression in
the idea of Country Life, the magazine which his company sold to
Doubleday, Page & Company, and which he would personally have enjoyed
editing.
It was in 1913 that the real Edward Bok, bottled up for twenty-five
years, again came to the surface. The majority stockholders of The
Century Magazine wanted to dispose of their interest in the periodical.
Overtures were made to The Curtis Publishing Company, but its hands were
full, and the matter was presented for Bok's personal consideration. The
idea interested him, as he saw in The Century a chance for his
self-expression. He entered into negotiations, looked carefully into the
property itself and over the field which such a magazine might fill,
decided to buy it, and install an active editor while he, as a close
adviser, served as the propelling power.
Bok figured out that there was room for one of the trio of what was, and
still is, called the standard-sized magazines, namely Scribner's,
Harper's, and The Century. He believed, as he does to-day, that any one
of these magazines could be so edited as to preserve all its traditions
and yet be so ingrafted with the new progressive, modern spirit as to
dominate the field and constitute itself the leader in that particular
group.
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