Little Magazines & Modernism: New Approaches

Little Magazines & Modernism offers a much-needed, high-quality collection of articles on an emerging approach to modernist studies. Exploring periodicals as well-known as Poetry or The Dial, along with lesser-known magazines like the multi-racial Ebony and Topaz, it will attract readers across a wide spectrum and should be in every research library. Some of the essays are gems, and all are interesting. George Bornstein, C. A. Patrides Professor of Literature, University of Michigan Little magazines made modernism happen. This collection offers a reconsideration of little magazines' integral role in the development of modernism. Essays on avant-garde, literary, political, regional, and African-American little magazines offer diverse approaches: discussions of material practices; analyses of the relationship between little magazines and popular audiences; examinations of correspondences between texts and images; feminist modifications of literary history; and reflections on the emerging field of periodical studies. Little magazines made modernism happen. These pioneering enterprises were typically founded by individuals or small groups intent on publishing the experimental works or radical opinions of untried, unpopular, or underrepresented writers. Recently, little magazines have reemerged as an important critical tool for examining the local and material conditions that shaped modernism. This volume reflects the diversity of Anglo-American modernism, with essays on avant-garde, literary, political, regional, and African American little magazines. It also presents a diversity of approaches to these magazines: discussions of material practices and relations; analyses of the relationship between little magazines and popular or elite audiences; examinations of correspondences between texts and images; feminist modifications of the traditional canon or histories; and reflections on the emerging field of periodical studies. All emphasize the primacy and materiality of little magazines. With a preface by Mark Morrisson, an afterword by Robert Scholes, and an extensive bibliography of little magazine resources, the collection serves both as an introduction to little magazines and a reconsideration of their integral role in the development of modernism. Contents: Preface, Mark Morrisson; Introduction, Suzanne W. Churchill and Adam McKible. Part I Negotiations: Rhythm, reproduction and the textual dialogues of early modernism, Faith Binkes; The cosmopolitan Midland and the academic writer, Tom Lutz; The marriage of Rogue and Soil, Jay Bochner; The Dial, The Little Review, and modernist canonicity, Alan Golding. Part II Editorial Practices: Poetry's opening door: Harriet Munroe and American modernism, John Timberman Newcomb; Women editors and little magazines in the Harlem renaissance, Jayne Marek; Suffragism, imagism and the 'cosmic poet': scientism and spirituality in The Freewoman and The Egoist, Bruce Clarke; Epilogue: how modernist authority became authoritarian, Joyce Wexler; The case of Ebony and Topaz: racial and sexual hybridity in Harlem renaissance illustrations, Caroline Goeser; The lying game: Others and the great spectra hoax of 1917, Suzanne W. Churchill; 'Life is real and life is earnest': Mike Gold, Claude McKay and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Adam McKible; Afterword, Robert Scholes; Appendices; Index. About the Author: Suzanne W. Churchill is Associate Professor of English at Davidson College, North Carolina, USA. Adam McKible is Associate Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, USA.