WILFORD'S LITERARY MICROCOSM, New York, November, 1881

• Amazing 19th century illustrated masthead

See the photos for what must be one of the "busiest" and largest mastheads of the 19th century--or any century for that matter. There are no fewer than 60 images in this masthead with a huge variety of themes.
This is the volume 1, number 4 issue. The publisher considered his periodical "a religio-scientific monthly magazine devoted to the discoveries, theories & investigations of modern science in their bearing on the religious thought of the age." The content is overwhelmed by the masthead--an intriguing, scarce title.
Eight pages, 12 by 18 inches, some wear at the fold and margins.

Background: Wilford’s Microcosm (officially titled Wilford's Literary Microcosm during its early run under editor and publisher A. Wilford Hall) is a highly scarce surviving artifact of late-nineteenth-century American "religio-scientific" publishing, particularly in its earliest eight-page monthly form. Published out of Park Row, New York, starting in August 1881, the periodical served as the primary organ for Hall’s eccentric "Substantial Philosophy"—a system that attempted to bridge Christian theology and modern science by proposing that immaterial phenomena like sound, light, gravity, and mind were physical, substantial entities created by God rather than mere wave motions or abstract forces. Beyond its idiosyncratic editorial mandate targeting the fierce late-Victorian debates surrounding Darwinian evolution, acoustics, and natural philosophy, the title is legendary among rare print collectors for possessing what is arguably the single densest, most visual woodcut masthead in nineteenth-century journalism. Cramming roughly sixty distinct vignettes, portraits, scientific diagrams, allegorical icons, and religious motifs into its top header, the colossal banner physically overwhelms the actual text on the page, transforming these early individual issues—such as Volume 1, Number 4 from November 1881—into sought-after museum pieces and rare collector items of Victorian print iconography.