[The first purpose of this work is to present a literary history of the Atlantic Monthly between 1909 and 1929. The second is to observe the decline of the genteel tradition in American intellectual life. In 1909 Ellery Sedgwick began his twenty-eight year editorship of the magazine and gradually but thoroughly remade its editorial policy, emphasizing current affairs and supplementing belles-lettres with less formal narratives of personal experience. Sedgwick's literary tastes were relatively conservative and those of his readers, who included vieilles filles of both sexes, more so. But the magazine continued to attract serious writers. During Sedgwick's first decade he published fiction and essays by Edith Wharton, J.J. Chapman, Owen Wister, H.L. Mencken, Agnes Repplier, Gamaliel Bradford, John Galsworthy, Laurence Binyon, F.L. Lucas, John Buchan, Edward Garnett, Havelock Ellis, John Masefield, H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell. The traditional English literary influence remained strong.]