The world of southern periodicals, though limited to a white upper- and middle-class readership, was one of the most open of southern institutions. Copyright laws, still ill-defined even by the late antebellum period, were rarely enforced, and the postal service permitted the mailing of periodicals between editors free of charge. This exchange system almost guaranteed that columns and entire works would be reprinted, with or without granting original publication credit. Some papers, often with the word “eclectic” in the title, were composed entirely of selections from other periodicals. Male and female authors alike were angered and frustrated by the haphazard nature of copyright, for they were well aware that they lost royalties to unscrupulous editors. Fanny Fern, a well-known northern writer, complained in 1857 about Europeans who dipped “their forefinger and thumb into my pocket.” The lack of copyright enforcement, however, had the beneficial effect of widening the availability of reading material. This is significant because even small publications were rarely the product of purely local efforts; southerners reading an “eclectic” magazine were exposed to writers, poetry, and essays that might have originated in New York, Paris, London, or some other city.