Award of the Pulitzer Prize for American History to Frank Luther Mott's "A History of American Magazines," Volumes II and III, announced yesterday, gave the Harvard University Press its first Pulitzer Prize and calls attention to the distinguished work the Press has been doing.

The two recently issued volumes carry forward the work outlined in the first volume of the series published in 1930, namely to recite accurately the story of American periodicals from 1741 to the present day. Already the work has been generally accepted as the standard authority on the subject by distinguished professors and critics including Arthur M. Schlesinger, professor of American History, Howard Mumford Jones, professor of English, and the American Historical Review.

Biographies of Periodicals Given

The plan of the two volumes consists of a division of the material into chapters, giving a running history of the periodicals in each period, succeeded by supplements which are biographies of most of the magazines that flourished within the years covered.

Professor Mott examines the founding and passing of the periodicals; the phenomenon of a shifting popular favor; tendencies in circulation, advertising, payment of authors and editors; costs of publication; and the development of class journals.

HILDEGARDE IS THRILLED BY HARVARD SINGING AT SMOKER

"Such volume! Such beautiful tone! I've never had such a thrill as listening to Harvard boys sing," cried Hildegarde wrinkling up her nose and placing her arm around her CRIMSON interviewer.

She had just led two thousand Smokerites through the strains of "Harvest Moon" and "Alexander's Ragtime Band."

"I'm no jitterbug," confessed the hit of the show as she was being thronged by autograph seekers after the rendition of her theme song, "Je vous aime beaucoup."

All three volumes are richly illustrated with characteristic sketches from the magazines themselves. But of major value is the analysis of contents according to ideas, literary types, and pictorial presentation.

Function of Magazines Featured

The chief purpose of the author is to describe and discuss the function of the magazine as a medium or a genuinely democratic literature and as an immediate expression of the interests of the nation, its politics, amusements, fashions, rages and crazes, economics and education.

With humor and wit throughout. Professor Mott easily handles the thousand details and the prolonged research that has gone into the book, and puts forth a work that is at once scholarly and readable.