Editor of Harper's Magazine Will Retire By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Lewis H. Lapham, the editor of Harper's Magazine for nearly 30 years, said yesterday that he would retire as editor in the spring.
Mr. Lapham, who is 70, said he would take on the title of editor emeritus and would continue to write his "Notebook" column on a regular basis. He is under contract to write a book about President William Howard Taft. He said in an interview that he might also write at least two other books, one about the second half of the 20th century and the other about his family, which arrived on American shores from England in the 1630's.
"If I'm going to do something new, the time has come to do it," he said in an interview. "I have a certain number of years left and a number of things I've left undone."
Mr. Lapham was cagey about whether he had picked a successor, saying, "I'm not prepared to talk about a successor now." But, he added, "It's going to be fine."
He said he expected a new editor would be named within a month and that the person would retain the character of Harper's, a 155-year-old monthly. He described the magazine this way: "It's about inquiry. It's not about the promulgation of the truth, it's about a search for the truth."
Circulation at the magazine was 227,583 as of June, and has declined slightly over the last few years, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Mr. Lapham was fired from the magazine 25 years ago, when it was losing $2 million a year and on the verge of folding. John R. MacArthur, the president and publisher of Harper's Magazine, then rescued the magazine with help from his family foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the board of the Atlantic Richfield Company. Mr. MacArthur reinstalled Mr. Lapham as editor in 1983, and he has been there ever since.
"This is a sad day," Mr. MacArthur said in a statement yesterday of Mr. Lapham's relinquishing of the editorship, saying he had had "22 years of fruitful collaboration with Lewis."