Beginning in the late 18th century, magazines and other periodicals began publishing fiction in serialized form, leading to the formation of the magazine novel. The number of periodicals published in the United States rapidly grew from a mere twelve in 1800, to six hundred  by 1850, and over three thousand by 1885. Publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, Godey's Lady Book, Southern Literary Culture,  New York Ledger, Harper's Monthly, The Columbian, and New-York Magazine were among the most prominent publishers of magazine novels.

The increasing popularity of serialized fiction parallelled the development of the novel as a respectable form of literature. Magazines and libraries competed to provide literature to an expanding reading public, and the number of novels in American circulating libraries rose from 10 percent of the total collection in 1765 to 50 percent in 1800.

In Farm, Field, and Fireside:

Many serialized works of fiction were published in The Farmer's Wife, Farmer's Voice, Farmer's Review, Prairie Farmer, and Farm, Field and Stockman. Many of the stories could be characterized as romance fiction designed to appeal to farm wives.  The farm publications also featured children's stories. Both famous authors, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Arthur Conan Doyle, and relatively little known writers are represented in these farm weeklies and monthlies.¹