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Cheerful Moments

American mail-order magazine

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 14, 2025
Entity authorityQ28403979
Source-derived summary

Cheerful Moments was an American monthly mail-order magazine from 1892 until 1908, primarily a vehicle for advertising and light stories of the day, and one of a number of similar publications.

The magazine was founded in Boston in 1892. It was later acquired by George W. Willis of New York, who worked in the field of mail order publications for over 25 years. It claimed an average monthly circulation that reached up to claims of 500,000 copies by 1903.

In December 1901, Advertising Experience described the most recent issue as "pretty much all advertising" where the "reading matter is simply an incidental but what there is of it is good."

A contemporary textbook on advertising listed Cheerful Moments in a list of typical mail-order magazine of the day:

The American Farm World, Cheerful Moments, Woman's World, Homefolks, Comfort, The Gentlewoman, Good Stories, the Metropolitan and Rural Home, Spare Moments, the American Nation, and the Fireside Visitor are a few of the long list of low-priced monthly publications of large circulation that are filled with stories and reading matter of general character and that reach the great rural and semiurban field.

It appears that Gaylord Wilshire took over the magazine by mid-1906, and it ceased publishing after its subscription list was absorbed into his Wilshire's magazine in March 1908.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cheerful Moments” is american mail-order magazine. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cheerful, Moments and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1892, 1908, 1903, 1901—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Cheerful, Moments and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american mail-order magazine” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q28403979. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1892, 1908, 1903 and 1901.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cheerful Moments”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cheerful Moments primary sources, Cheerful Moments archive and Cheerful research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cheerful Moments”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Cheerful Moments” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.