Kansas Trivia (Blog)

Letters & Publications - March 9, 2012

By KPR Staff

Published March 7, 2012 at 1:37 AM CST

Q: Jane Grant, who grew up in the southeast Kansas town of Girard, was a staff writer for the New York Times. What’s the name of the national magazine she started with her first husband, Harold Ross, in 1925?

From Left: Harold Ross during World War I. Ross edited the U.S. Army's newspaper, The Stars and Stripes, ca. 1918. Jane Grant and Harold Ross in 1926. Jane Grant's favorite photograph of herself, taken sometime in the 1950s. (Jane Grant Photograph Collection, PH141, University of Oregon Libraries.)

A: The New Yorker

Eustace Tilley was drawn by Rea Irvin, the magazine's first art editor, for the cover of the first issue of The New Yorker, in 1925, and has returned for nearly every anniversary issue since. Since 1994, the magazine has invited contributing artists to reinterpret this iconic dandy. A selection of these visual riffs appears on newyorker.com.The New Yorker is a magazine of news, commentary, essays, fiction, cartoons and poetry. The magazine often focuses on the cultural life of New York City, but the publication enjoys a broad audience - well beyond the borders of Manhattan Island. The magazine was founded in 1925 by Harold Ross and his wife, Jane Grant. Grant was born in Joplin, Mo., but grew up in Girard, Kan.

In addition to her work at the magazine, Grant was an accomplished New York Times journalist and member of the Algonquin Round Table. An early feminist, Grant often wrote about and supported women’s issues.