University of Delaware Office of Public Relations The Messenger Vol. 5, No. 4/1996 Reflections on 100-plus years Our main object in publishing The Review is to labor in the interest of our beloved college. Delaware College is a worthy institution, and none know it better than the students, who have felt her training hand." These were the sentiments expressed by Horace Greeley Knowles, Delaware 1884, the first editor-in-chief of The Delaware College Review, in Vol. 1, No. 1, in September 1882. At the time, few women were still enrolled in the predominantly men's college-the vestiges of an experiment in coeducation begun by President William Henry Purnell. And, the college was small, so small that the faculty consisted of five professors, one of whom was the president. The evolution of The Review, one of the nation's oldest, continuously published collegiate newspapers, mirrors both a changing world and an expanding University. That run is a tribute to the energy and enthusiasm of its student staffs and to the tolerance and support of University administrators who, in the eyes of student journalists for more than a century, have seldom done anything right. One major difference between today's Review and its predecessors is that early Review content was more literary than news-oriented. Pre-1900 issues contain essays on such diverse subjects as Oliver Cromwell, author George Eliot and Sweden's Queen Christina. Biographies of professors and prominent alumni were featured regularly and advertising consumed much of the paper's space. Alumni were encouraged to subscribe at a cost of $1 per year. When Delaware College and the Women's College merged to form the University of Delaware in 1921, The Review's editor-in-chief was supported by a male editor at Delaware College and a female counterpart enrolled in the Women's College. In 1945, Anne Stonemetz Little, Delaware '46, became the first female editor-in- chief. Since the 1970s, The Review has gained increasing stature among its peers, frequently receiving All-American honors in national evaluations. The top editorial and business staffers are paid. The current Review is published twice weekly. Its content is varied, with important state and national issues as well as campus news covered by a staff of 45 to 50 students. It was the second editor of The Review, Louis L. Curtis, Delaware 1884, who summarized the paper's progress after its first year of publication, noting: "...Today it lives, a strong and healthy child, which, by proper care from alma mater, and those into whose hands it may chance to fall, will grow to such an extent, as to make itself an indispensable factor of the College." -Elbert Chance '52 '59M