Little Magazines & Modernism: New Approaches

Mark Morrison indicates in the “Preface” that “little magazines have long been recognized as key components of modernism.” During “the last decade or so modernism has undergone a reconceptualization – indeed a recontextualization – has re‐energized the study of little magazines.” So much so that “scholars have begun to frame the magazines themselves as primary texts.” Scholars have also been engaged with the magazine's relationship to “commercial culture and … mass‐market periodicals,” the little magazine “as political text and primary documents.” Further, little magazines “have proved to be richly significant sites for exploring how bibliographic code works in modernism.” By “bibliographical code” is meant not the words on the page but the “layout, surrounding texts, font, illustrations,” and so on (pp. xv‐xvi).

These elements provide the framework for the 11 contributions to Little Magazines & Modernism: New Approaches. The contributions are divided into three parts: “Negotiations”; “Editorial Practices”; and “Identities”. The first contains four essays. The opening two contributions, Faith Binckes on “Lines of engagement: rhythm, reproduction, and the textual dialogues of early modernism”([21]‐34) and Tom Lutz on “The cosmopolitan midland and the academic writer” ([35]‐47), discuss the attempts by specific magazines to appeal to a larger commercial or cosmopolitan audience than a limited one. Binckes focuses upon Rhythm (1911‐1913), edited by John Middleton Murray and Michael Sadleir. Lutz's concern is not with a London‐ based magazine but one from the heartland of America, Iowa, the base for The Midland (1915‐1933). He focuses upon the attempt of its editor to gain a national audience.

The following two essays, on the other hand, illustrate how “entwined with” each other little magazines were. Jay Bochner concern in his, “The marriage of Rogue and The Soil” ([49]‐66) is with two New York‐ based magazines. Alan Golding's “The Dial, The Little Review, and the dialogics of modernism” ([67]‐81) focuses on two more well known magazines that published such important texts as for instance T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, work by James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and others. Golding shows that that magazines “needed each other.” In the case of The Dial “to exercise influence beyond its small circulation,” and in the instance of The Little Review “to develop talents” (15).

The second part “Editorial Practices” also has four contributions. John Timberman Newcomb writes on “Poetry's opening door: Harriet Monroe and American modernism” ([85]‐103), Jayne Marek on “Women editors and little magazines in the Harlem renaissance” ([105]‐118), Bruce Clarke on “Suffragism, imagism, and the “Cosmic Poet”: scientism and spirituality in The Freewoman and The Egoist” ([119]‐131). Joyce Wexler's “Epilogue: how poetic authority became authoritarian” ([133]‐147), has for its subject Laura Riding's role as the editor of Epilogue. This was “a periodical in book form published from 1935‐1938” ([133]). So, all of the essays in this second section focus upon women as editors.

There are three contributions to the third part “Identities”. Caroline Goeser's “Black and tan: racial and sexual crossings in Ebony and Topaz” (1927: [151]‐175) considers the manner in which its editor Charles S. Johnson “encouraged” his illustrators “to challenge contemporary” American “attitudes about gendered, racial, and sexual identities” (17). Suzanne W. Churchill in “The lying game: Others and the Great Spectra Hoax of 1917” ([177]‐195) concentrates upon illustrating the ways in which “little magazines were essential venues for modernist identity performances” (179).

Adam McKible's “‘Life is real and life is earnest’: Mike Gold, Claude McKay, and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag‐Loringhoven” ([197]‐213) compares and contrasts the widely divergent opinions of three vibrant personalities who contributed to the New York‐ based journal The Liberator during the early 1920s. Robert Scholes's “Afterword” ([217]‐225) sums up the significance of the contributions to Little Magazines & Modernism: New Approaches. For Scholes “what we are doing here is rescuing modernism from modernists like Ezra Pound, who claimed a purity of intention and achievement for modern literature.” The volume clearly shows that this is not the case (225).

There are five “Appendices.” These include enumerative alphabetical listings of “Works Cited” ([229]‐248), of “Books and articles on little magazines from 1890‐1950” ([249]‐262), “Print indexes to little magazines” ([263]‐264), and all too brief partially annotated “Electronic indexes and web resources for little magazines” ([265]). The final index is a most useful descriptive alphabetically arranged listing of 16 “Library holdings of little magazines” ([267]‐268). This is not confined to US holdings and includes those at University College London, and Dalhousie University in Canada.

There are 19 black and white illustrations accompanying this splendidly informative volume. Nine of these exemplify features in Caroline Goeser's essay on Ebony and Topaz. Little Magazines & Modernism: New Approaches is firmly bound, the printing is clear with notes at the foot of the page. With some exceptions, the individual contributions are clearly written, eschewing prolix paragraphs and obscure, technically laden vocabulary. In short, this is a highly recommended volume for purchase for libraries collecting books on early twentieth century Anglo‐American literature, history, and culture.