The Carpet-Bag, Vol. II, No. 22

The Carpet-Bag, Vol. II, No. 22 (1852) The masthead features ornamental scrollwork framing the title, with a hand grasping a carpet bag at top center. Flanking vignettes depict domestic and commercial scenes. The cover presents a grand panoramic engraving of Saint Louis, Missouri—steamboats, factories, and riverfront activity rendered in wood-block detail. *The Carpet-Bag* was a Boston-based weekly combining literary humor, tall tales, light verse, and woodcut illustration. Published 1851–1853 under editor Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber, it occupied a distinct niche between genteel periodicals and sensation press, printing burlesque sketches and comic character writing. The paper introduced Mark Twain's first nationally distributed story and featured Artemus Ward, anchoring *The Carpet-Bag* in the lineage of American literary humor that preceded the modern comic magazine.