section_path: History/Early history
section_name: Early history
paragraph_text: Early history
  
  The magazine was founded as The National Press by poet and essayist Nathaniel Parker Willis and New York Evening Mirror newspaper editor George Pope Morris in 1846. Eight months later, it was renamed The Home Journal. After 1901, the magazine's name became Town & Country, and it has retained that name ever since.
  
  Throughout most of the 19th century, this weekly magazine featured poetry, essays, and fiction. As more influential people began reading it, the magazine began to include society news and gossip in its pages. After 1901, the magazine continued to chronicle the social events and leisure activities of the North American upper class, including debutante or cotillion balls, and also reported on the subsequent "advantageous marriages" that came from people meeting at such social engagements.
  
  The magazine's earlier readership consisted of members of the Establishment. This included older wealthy families of New York City, Boston Brahmins and, later, those people in other parts of the United States whose surnames may have appeared in the Social Register (established 1887).
  
  Willis owned and edited the magazine from 1846 until his death in 1867.