When Lewis Lapham died final 12 months, it appeared that his journal would possibly go along with him.
Lapham’s Quarterly, a beloved journal of historical past and reportage he began, had stopped placing out points. The destiny of the publication was unsure with out Mr. Lapham, a nattily dressed former editor at Harper’s who appeared to personify a bygone period of magazines.
However Mr. Lapham’s journal will reside on, although beneath a a lot totally different proprietor. Bard Faculty, a non-public liberal arts establishment in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., is buying it for gratis from the American Agora Basis, the nonprofit that had printed the journal.
“This may profit all our college students,” mentioned Leon Botstein, the president of Bard Faculty. “To grasp the way it’s attainable to speak intelligently, with out jargon, with out the worst of self-referential tutorial prose, about necessary concepts and necessary controversies and complexities, which we appear to not tolerate immediately.”
Lapham’s Quarterly, which was based in 2007, is one thing of an oddity, even for the quirky journal enterprise. Every difficulty connects a broad, sweeping theme — “Night time,” for instance, or “Happiness” — to present occasions thorough long-form articles and excerpts from historic texts by writers like Shakespeare. Mr. Lapham had already written the preamble to the most recent difficulty, targeted on power, when he died in July at age 89.
Bard Faculty plans to publish that difficulty in print and has others in improvement, with the titles “Islands” and “Folly.” It’s nonetheless unclear whether or not Bard will proceed Lapham’s Quarterly on its common print schedule after that. The journal might be operated by the Hannah Arendt Middle, a politics and humanities establishment based by the scholar Roger Berkowitz.
One of the vital precious property owned by the inspiration, the checklist of 17,500 paying subscribers to Lapham’s Quarterly, may even cross to Bard, mentioned Paul Morris, the journal’s writer and govt editor. It’s unclear whether or not any of the 18 or so workers members furloughed when the journal went on hiatus final 12 months might be employed again. The American Agora Basis will dissolve.
Earlier than he died, Mr. Lapham blessed the transaction with Bard on a name with Mr. Morris. Nevertheless it took months for Bard to vet copyright points, mentioned Mr. Morris, who added that his solely remorse was that Mr. Lapham wasn’t round to see the journal cross into secure palms.
“It’s my nice lament that he couldn’t be right here for this dialog,” Mr. Morris mentioned, “as a result of I do know he’d be echoing all the things that’s been mentioned and including his personal taste to it.”
