Starting with the issue of March 1903, the Edison Phonograph Monthly was a publication of the National Phonograph Co. The monthly issues provided jobbers and dealers with technical, promotional, and other information, including articles on products, matters of corporate policy, and the progress of litigation, as well as lists of new records, available printed matter, current jobbers, and suspended dealers. Each issue printed numerous communications from jobbers and dealers who related their experiences or posed questions regarding the sale of Edison phonographs and records. The publication was continued by Thomas A. Edison, Inc., in February 1911, and it was renamed the Edison Amberola Monthly in 1917.
The archives of the Edison National Historical Park contains a complete run of the Edison Phonograph Monthly. All issues for the period March 1903-December 1910 (volumes 1-8) have been selected. Prior to 1908, the monthly issues are numbered from 1 (March) through 12 (February). Beginning in 1908, the January issue is the first numbered issue. Each issue is individually paginated and contains approximately twenty pages. The volume and issue numbers appear on page one. Each issue contains a table of contents; the contents pages are missing from the 1908 volume. A 20-page index, prepared by the editors, appears below.
The majority of terms in the index are the names of jobbers and dealers. Also included are recording artists and company employees who are the subject of feature articles, as well as Edison products and other topics that are noted in particular detail. Among the items not indexed are lists of jobbers and dealers, lists of new record releases, and the names of recording artists associated with those releases. A useful source for information about early cylinder records and recording artists is Allen Koenigsberg, Edison Cylinder Records, 1889-1912, 2nd ed. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: APM Press, 1987).
Index entries appear in the following format: Index term: Volume [Issue]: Page (Month Year).