“It is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.” This announcement appeared in the first issue of The New Yorker magazine, published on February 21, 1925.

Also, “it hopes to be gay,” said the editors, thereby displaying another sign of the periodical’s age.

But, as if pleading for indulgence, they added: “It recognizes certain shortcomings and realizes that it’s impossible for a magazine fully to establish its character in one number.”

My access to this literary heirloom has come from a surprise Christmas gift. My spouse gave me a complete electronic set of the magazine through February 2005.  By inserting an appropriate CD into my computer, I can locate and read anything that appeared in the pages of The New Yorker.

That includes cartoons and ads, as well as commentary, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The index allows me to find any one item quickly, a boon for a literary junkie like me.

Some of the names found in these pages reverberate in me and will in some of my fellow readers: James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, George E. Kaufman and others bring back the witty writers of the Jazz Age.

To veteran readers of The New Yorker, the cover of that first 1925 issue will bring immediate gratification. Drawn by Rea Irvin, it displays the elegant, iconic character Eustace Tilley, sporting a very high collar and a top hat. With dignified hauteur, Tilley is examining a butterfly, using his monocle for detail.

The price for a New Yorker subscription was five dollars, no small sum for the time. Its orientation toward readers with deep pockets appeared from an ad on page two. It displayed a fancy perfume from the Paris company Caron.

Through the years many New Yorker subscribers have taken the magazine for its cartoons. They could not be bothered with the writing but loved flipping through the pages looking for the best drawings with humorous captions.

The cartoons have become a feature of America’s intellectual landscape, much discussed and laughed over. A perusal of them through the years reveals important currents of the time. Not rarely, they also baffle the viewer with references that have long faded from collective memory.

The first issue carried a section called “The Talk of the Town.” This feature would become a fixed department of the magazine and provide a vehicle for sophisticated, witty, and politically charged commentary on all sorts of events and personalities.

I greatly enjoyed searching later issues for the work of a friend, Agnes Bourneuf. According to family report, this longtime proprietor of the Thomas More Book Shop, in Harvard Square, had published two pieces in the New Yorker. Thanks to the complete index, I found them right away.

Agnes’s first contribution, published in 1945, turned out to be a short, humorous, and poignant story about a secretary who discovers that her sister’s family calls on her only when they need money. It showed great flair and might have been the start of a long career of published prose.

The second piece was a brief memoir of growing up in Nova Scotia. It appeared in the issue of  November 27, 1948. Here, too, Agnes proved her talent with words, perhaps whetting the appetite of New Yorker readers for a distinguished literary future.

Agnes, however, did not ever publish anything else in The New Yorker. Her career as a writer apparently began and ended between those two years. I wish she had written more but her superb work as a bookseller provided compensation for me and many others, including her fellow authors.

Admittedly, The New Yorker still caters to sophisticates of a sort. Of course, it also reflects and addresses people of the city from which it takes its name.

However, as a non-New Yorker and a person of dubious literary sophistication, I still value having this electronic treasure-trove of generally fine writing. Having at hand many of America’s most distinguished writers – John Updike, E.B. White, Scott Fitzgerald, James Thurber – gives me inspiration.

I also value having a record of changing tastes and fashions through the last 80 years. My birth came in the third year of the magazine’s existence and we are growing old together.

Others have been even more addictive than I. My late mother-in-law read The New Yorker from the first issue on, and always remembered the general alarm provoked by her uncontrollable laughter at “The Night the Bed Fell,” by James Thurber. This piece appeared on July 8, 1933 and quickly become a comic classic.

Having it on CDs rather than in mile-high piles of glossy paper also benefits me. As a result of this convenient packaging, I do not have to summon a clutter consultant to extricate me from towering mounds of magazines.

So hail to The New Yorker. May we both continue to flourish for years to come.

Richard Griffin