History of Rushlight Magazine

mallard by Riss Coury

Rushlight Literary Magazine, the oldest collegiate literary magazine still in publication in the United States, was first published in 1855 and founded by Lucy Larcom (1824-1893).

The first edition of Rushlight was published on July 11th, 1855, handwritten on paper. The original 170-year-old copies of early editions are held in Wheaton’s Gebbie Archives and Special Collections in Madeline Clark Wallace Library as well as in the digital repository.

If you would like to see past editions of Rushlight online, check out our Archives page.

“A Rushlight, flickering and small, is better than no light at all.”

— Rushlight’s motto by Lucy Larcom

Larcom started her career in literature at age eleven when she began writing for The Operative’s Magazine and the Lowell Offering, both literary magazines written by girls working in textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. Larcom and her fellow mill girls used these periodicals to publish their original poetry and works of short fiction. Larcom’s work on these magazines also connected her with abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier.

Later, Larcom graduated from and began teaching at the Monticello Female Seminary in Godfrey, Illinois. After moving back to Massachusetts, she began her work at Wheaton College and developed Rushlight. She also was the editor of Our Young Folks, a Boston children’s magazine, and had her works published in The Atlantic.

Originally, Rushlight served as both a literary magazine and a newspaper until the Wheaton Wire (then The Wheaton News), and the Wheaton Magazine (then Wheaton Alumnae News), were created in 1921 and 1922. Rushlight was originally edited by the senior class as a part of the Psyche Literary Society in 1859.