New to our digital collections: Seattle’s Town Crier Newspaper

We’ve just added over 1,200 issues from Seattle’s local arts periodical, The Town Crier, to our digital collections. The Town Crier was a weekly magazine focusing on Seattle’s news, arts and culture between 1910 and 1938. Over its lifetime, the paper included coverage of the work of individuals such as Frank Kunishige, Edward S. Curtis, Ella McBride, Kenneth Callahan, Mark Tobey, Roi Partridge, Imogen Cunningham and more.

Every year, the paper produced a lengthier Christmas edition with a cover designed by a local artist featuring holiday articles, reproductions of photographs and artwork from local names, and lengthier features on topics such as Seattle homes, industries and history.

In addition to news from the art world, the paper also discussed important issues from local and national news. Topics covered included the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, World War I, Seattle’s 1919 General Strike, the election of Bertha Knight Landes (Seattle’s first female mayor), Prohibition and the Great Depression.

To help people locate articles more easily, we’ve created a list with more than 1700 subject headings ranging from hatpins to Hooverville, and transcribed the original card file index which points toward additional articles on art and artists. These entries aren’t exhaustive, but combined with the ability to search the newspaper’s full text, they help you to find articles you are most interested in more quickly.

Want to see more of our digitized local periodicals? Check out these other titles:

~ posted by Jade D.

2 responses to “New to our digital collections: Seattle’s Town Crier Newspaper”

  1. Thank you! Thank you Seattle Public Library for digitizing this extremely valuable resource.

  2. The issue of August 7, 1920, which I see on Wikipedia.org (in the entry for the play “Smilin’ Through”), says on its cover “Vol. XV, No. 32”– which strongly suggests that the debut issue of this periodical was published on Saturday, January 2, 1906, rather than in 1910!?!

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