A little later, he became a reporter on the Newark (New Jersey) Advertiser, of which he was later editor. With Newton Crane, he founded the Newark Register. In 1870, he became editor of Hours at Home, a monthly magazine published by Scribner's. It merged with Scribner's Monthly, which was edited by J. G. Holland. Gilder became managing editor. When Holland died in 1881, Gilder became editor. In November 1881, the monthly was renamed as The Century Magazine, and Gilder remained its editor until his death. Gilder's assistant editor at Century was Sophia Bledsoe Herrick. Under Gilder's editorship, The Century became one of the most esteemed periodicals in the country and Gilder himself became influential enough that his biographer Herbert Smith referred to the 1880s as "the Gilder Age". He published the works of William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman