ABSTRACT
William Trotter Porter began Spirit of the Times in 1831 to fill a gap in American magazine publishing. He modeled his sporting newspaper after Bell's Life in London, which showcased turf news (horse racing) but also offered a miscellany of other reports and stories. Porter could have contented himself with just reporting English and local (New York) turf news, but because of his love for horse racing he sent correspondents down south and into the western regions. His desire to publish sporting news happily coincided with the crescendo and peak of American horse racing in the 1830s. Whether Spirit of the Times nutured the horse-racing craze, or whether Porter simply capitalized on its apparent popularity, is a matter of conjecture. What is certain is that Porter's magazine was the first to report American sporting news at length, inaugurating a faddish interest in turf details and statistics.
