Index of Modernist Magazines

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Jun 29 2016

Wheels

Cover page. Wheels. NO. 2(1917)

Facts

Title: 
Wheels (1918 – 1921)
Wheels: An Anthology of Verse (1916 – 1917)

Date of Publication: 
Dec. 1916 – Jan. 1921

Place(s) of Publication: 
Oxford, England

Frequency of Publication: 
Annually

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher: 
B.H. Blackwell, Oxford (1916 – 1919) Longmans, Green & Co., New York (1916 – 1918) L. Parsons, London (1920) C.W. Daniel, Ltd., London (1921)

Physical Description: 
19 – 22 cm. in length. After the first issue, each new publication called a “cycle.” Fourth cycle dedicated to the memory of Wilfred Owen.

Price:
2 shillings, 6 pence per issue

Editor(s): 
Edith Sitwell

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Libraries with Complete Original Issues: 
Simon Fraser University; Northwestern University; University of Tulsa; Brown University; University of Iowa Searchable PDFs of full run available online at Brown University’s Modernist Journals Project 

Reprint Editions: 
Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint

Description

The poetry of the Sitwell siblings and their friends dominated the pages of Wheels. Most cycles of the magazine feature multiple poems by Edith Sitwell, Osbert Sitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell, Aldous Huxley, Nancy Cunard, Iris Tree, Sherard Vines, Helen Rootham, and Arnold James, and one issue featured seven poems by Wilfred Owen. Despite the somewhat small range of contributors, the magazine received praise from its petite audience and garnered high acclaim in newspaper reviews. The Sitwells organized Wheels in hopes of escaping the Georgian poetry that dominated 20th century England, instead developing a “bright, hard satiric style that came to be their trademark” (Martin). Their magazine published “modernism with visible roots in French decadent literature,” with cover art for the magazine suggesting Vorticism and Futurism (The Modernist Journals Project).

Gallery

Manifesto

The first cycle of Wheels opened with the following poem by frequent contributor Nancy Cunard

WHEELS
I sometimes think that all our thoughts are wheels
Rolling forever through the painted world,
Moved by the cunning of a thousand clowns
Dressed paper-wise, with blatant rounded masks,
That take their multi-coloured caravans
From place to place, and act and leap and sing,
Catching the spinning hoops when cymbals clash.
And one is dressed as Fate, and one as Death,
The rest that represent Love, Joy and Sin,
Join hands in solemn stage-learnt ecstasy,
While Folly beats a drum with golden pegs,
And mocks that shrouded Jester called Despair.
The dwarves and other curious satellites,
Voluptuous-mouthed, with slyly-pointed steps,
Strut in the circus while the people stare.–
And some have sober faces white with chalk,
And roll the heavy wheels all through the streets
Of sleeping hearts, with ponderance and noise
Like weary armies on a solemn march.–
Now in the scented gardens of the night,
Where we are scattered like a pack of cards,
Our words are turned to spokes that thoughts may roll
And form a jangling chain around the world,
{Itself a fabulous wheel controlled by Time
Over the slow incline of centuries.)
So dreams and prayers and feelings born of sleep
As well as all the sun-gilt pageantry
Made out of summer breezes and hot noons,
Are in the great revolving of the spheres
Under the trampling of their chariot wheels.

Wheels. 1:1 (Dec. 1916): 9 – 10.

Editors

Edith Sitwell (Sept. 7, 1887 – Dec. 9, 1964)

Editor: Dec. 1916 – Jan. 1921

Dame Edith Sitwell was a preeminent British poet, born into an aristocratic family in Scarborough, England. Seeking to “communicate sensations, rather than to describe them,” she published half a dozen volumes of poetry and served as founder and editor of the little magazine Wheels (“Sitwell, Dame”). She came to the forefront of the British literary scene in 1923 with her recitation of her poetry sequence Façade, with a musical accompaniment by composer Sir William Walton. She continued producing poetry into the 1960s. Her critical work included books about poetry, Alexander Pope, and Queen Elizabeth I. She was made a Dame in 1954.

Contributors

Nancy Cunard

“The Carnivals of Peace”
“Remorse”
“Wheels”

Aldous Huxley
“Love Song”
“Evening Party”
“Retrospect”
“Farewell to the Muses”

Wilfred Owen
“The Chances”
“The Dead Beat”
“The Sentry”
“Strange Meeting”

Helen Rootham
“Symphony”
“Nun”
“Envious Youth: 1916”

Iris Tree
“As a Nun’s Face”
“Gourmet”
“Romance”
“Mouth of the Dust I Kiss Corruption Absolute”

Sherard Vines
“War Strike”
“A Song for Grocers”
“New Signs”
“The Gospel of Chimneys”
“Carry On”

Bibliography

Wheels. The Modernist Journals Project. 2007. Brown University. 23 July 2009.

Martin, Robert K. “Dame Edith Sitwell.” British Poets, 1914-1945. Ed. Donald E. Stanford. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 20. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Davidson College Library, Davidson, NC. 8 July 2009.

Sitwell, Dame, Edith (1887 – 1964). The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women. London: Penguin, 1998. Credo Reference. Davidson College Library, Davidson, NC. 07 July 2009.

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: British

Jun 29 2016

The Voice of the Negro

Cover page. The Voice of the Negro. 3.4 (1906)

Facts

Title: 
The Voice of the Negro

Date of Publication:  
1904 (1:1) – 1907 (4:10)

Place(s) of Publication: 
Atlanta, Georgia (Jan. 1904 – July 1906)
Chicago, Illinois (Aug. 1906 – Oct. 1907)

Frequency of Publication: 
Monthly

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher: 
J.L. Nichols and Company (Jan. 1904 – Apr. 1904)
Hertel, Jenkins, and Company (May 1904 – July 1906)
Voice Publishing Company (Aug. 1906 – Oct. 1907)

Physical Description: 
4 v. in 3. ill. 26 cm

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s): 
J.W.E Bowen
Jesse Max Barber

Associate Editor(s): 
Emmet Jay Scott (Editorial Contributor)

Libraries with Original Issues: 
UNC-Chapel Hill

Reprint Editions: 
Johnson C. Smith, New York, Negro University Presses, 1969.  Wake Forest University, Duke University, Georgia State University, University of Georgia, University of Virginia

Description

The Voice of the Negro was founded in January 1904, the first journal edited by African Americans for a general audience of readers (Walter 369). The four leading editors of the little magazine – John Wesley Edward Bowen, Emmett J. Scott, Booker T. Washington, and Jesse Max Barber – began this magazine in Atlanta, Georgia, the city with the largest number of black institutes at the time, in order to foster the black literary and political voice in the “New South” (369). J Max Barber, as he was formally known, soon took the reins of the magazine’s editing and produced what seemed to be a “split-personality” magazine (Harlan 47): African American contributors either accommodated white influence and policy on race issues, or radically supported an assertive Negro voice (371). The magazine published essays on education and race politics at state, national, and international levels (370). The Voice of the Negro also addressed issues such as the term “Negro,” black marginalization, and women’s rights through the mediums of poetry, essays, and short stories (45).

Over time, J Max Barber’s editing grew more passionate and radical, which caused contention between him and other black writers in the area. His commitment to Negro rights erupted in controversy following an anonymous letter he wrote to a local newspaper setting the record straight about a massacre of black Atlantas by whites in 1906 (374). Although his account was factually accurate, such historical truth-telling was unacceptable to white audiences. When he was discovered as the author, Barber had to flee town to Chicago. There, he attempted to start the magazine again in October 1906 rebranding it as The Voice (374). Barber lost financial support following his relocation, his publisher Hertel and Johnson folded, and the magazine ceased publication the following year (56). Publication records indicated that the magazine ended with 12,000 subscribers (46). Overall, The Voice of the Negro attempted to elevate the Negro race in the south, in the hopes of giving future generations of African Americans  a voice in American and global affairs (370).

Gallery

Manifesto

The Voice of the Negro published their manifesto in the January 1904 edition at the start of the magazine’s publication:

“The Voice of the Negro for 1904 will keep you posted on Current History, Educational Improvements, Art, Science, Race Issues, Sociological Movements and Religion. It is the herald of the Dawn of the Day. It is the first magazine ever edited in the South by Colored Men. It will prove to be a necessity in the cultured colored homes and a source of information on Negro inspirations and aspirations in the white homes” (Voice of the Negro 1:1).

“1904 will be a year of great things. The country is becoming altruistic and the Negro is emerging from his age of Fire and Blood. We shall study carefully the trends of the times…Our pictures and illustrations will be very interesting. Sparks from Editor J.W.E Bowen’s pen will illuminate many a pessimistic home” (Voice of the Negro 1:1).

Editors

John Wesley Edwards Bowen (Dec. 3, 1855 – Jul. 20, 1933)
Editor: Jan. 1904 – Aug. 1906

John Wesley Edwards Bowen was born in New Orleans in 1855 to former slaves in New Orleans. Bowen’s father Edward purchased his wife and son out of slavery in 1858. To ensure a better future for their son, the Bowens secured him the finest education. He received his undergraduate degree from New Orleans University, a bachelor’s degree from the School of Theology at Boston University, and doctorate degree from Boston University (the second African American to do so). Bowen led a life of teaching starting at Central Tennessee College (1878-82) then to Gammon Theological Seminary (’93-’32) where he eventually became president in 1910. While teaching, and before his years at  Gammon, Bowen served as pastor of Centennial Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore (Bowen, J.W.E [1855-1933]). His value for African American education, faith, and liberation of his race shaped his contributions and edits to the Voice of The Negro journal. Bowen remained a social activist especially in the church when he published An Appeal for Negro Bishops, But No Separation in 1912 (Bowen, J.W.E [1855-1933]).

Jesse Max Barber ( July 5, 1878 – Sept. 20, 1949)
Editor: Jan. 1904 – Oct. 1907

Born in South Carolina, J. Max Barber worked in his early years – rather fittingly – as a barber. In pursuing a better life through education, Barber went on to study at the Virginia Union University in Richmond where his literary life commenced.  There he became the student editor of the University Journal and president of Literary Society. After graduating in 1903 he assumed the position of editor on The Voice of the Negro in 1904 and shaped the journal into a radical and progressive literary form. Abby Johnson, in her book Propaganda and Aesthetics, provides Barber’s vision for the Voice of the Negro: “We want it to be more than a mere magazine. We expect of it current and sociological history so accurately given and so vividly portrayed that it will become a kind of documentation for the coming generations” (Johnson, 1).

Barber continued to support civil rights through his membership in the Niagara Movement and the NAACP. After The Voice of the Negro folded, Barber briefly edited for the Chicago Conservator. He turned to a career in dentistry while still remaining active in the social rights for African Americans. From 1919 to 1921 Barber served as president for the Philadelphia branch of the NAACP and then became president of the John Brown Memorial Association. He published regularly in Abbott’s Monthly from 1930 to 1933 ( Barber, J. Max [1878-1949]).

Contributors

John H. Adams
“Rough Sketches”
“Easter”

Azalia E. Martin
“Spring”
“Phantoms”

J.W.E. Bowen
“Doing things at Tuskegee Institute”

William Pickens
“Southern Negro in Northern University”

Benjamin Griffith Brawley
“The Dawn -Poem”

Nannie H. Burroughs
“Not Color but Character”

James D. Corrothers 
“The Peace of God”
“Lincoln”
“A Face”

W.E.B. DuBois
“Debit and Credit – The American Negro in Account with the year of grace nineteen hundred and four”
“The Beginning of Slavery”
“Slavery in Greece and Rome”
“Serfdom”
“The Beginning of Emancipation”

Silas X. Floyd
“Wayside”
“October”
“Story: She Came at Christmas”
“The tried and the true”

T. Thomas Fortune
“The filipino”
“The Voteless Citizen”

J.R.E. Lee
“The National Association of Teachers of Colored Youths”
“The National Negro Business League”

Mrs. Josephine B. Bruce
“The Farmer and the City Folk”

Kelly Miller
“Roosevelt and the Negro”
“An Estimate of Frederick Douglass”

Daniel Murray
“Bibliographia- Africana”
“The Industrial Problem of the United States and the Negro’s Relation To It”
“Who Invented the Cotton Gin? Did a negro do the work and Eli Whitney get all the credit?”

W.S. Scarborough
“The Negro and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition”
“Roosevelt – The Man, The Patriot, The Statesman”
“The Emancipation of the Negro”

Emmett J. Scott
“Tuskegee Negro Conferences”
“The Louisiana Purchase Exposition”

Mrs. Mary Church Terrell
“The Berlin International Congress of Women”
“Christmas at the White House”

C.H. Turner
“Spontaneous Generation”
“Atoms are complex bodies”

Fannie Barrier Williams
“The Smaller Economies”
“The Women’s Part in a Man’s Business”
“The Timely Message of the Simple Life”

Mrs. Josephine Silone Yates
“The Equipment of the Teacher”
“The National Association of Colored Women”
“Thought Power in Education”

Bibliography

Blue, Christopher T. “Barber, J. Max (1878-1949) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed.” Barber, J. Max (1878-1949) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2012.

Bowen, J.W.E; Barber J. Max. Voice of the Negro: The Black Experience in America- Negro Periodicals in the United States, 1840- 1960. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969. Print.

“Bowen, J. W. E. (1885-€“1933) – Educator, Minister, Writer, Lecturer, Chronology, Provides Shelter during Atlanta Riot.” Bowen, J. W. E.(1885-€“1933). N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2012.

Daniel, Walter C. Black Journals of the United States. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1982. Print.

Harlan, Louis R. “Booker T. Washington and the Voice of the Negro, 1904-1907.” Journal of Southern History. February (1979): 45-62. Print.

Johnson, Abby. Propaganda and aesthetics : the literary politics of African-American magazines in the twentieth century.Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. Print.

Johnson, Charles S. “Rise of the Negro Magazine.” Journal of Negro History. October (1977): 325-38. Web.

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: American

Jun 27 2016

VVV

Cover page. Max Ernst. No. 1 (1942)

Facts

Title:
VVV

Date of Publication:
Oct. 1942 (no. 1); Mar. 1943 (no. 2); Feb. 1944 (no. 3)

Place(s) of Publication:
Office of VVV Room 3308, 10 East 40th Street, New York, N.Y

Frequency of Publication:
Annually (not necessarily intentionally, however, as the second issue was a merging of what would have been the second and third issues)

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher:
Published Independently by David Hare

Physical Description:
no. 1: 28.6 × 21.9 cm. 72 pages, colored ed. (Oct. 1942)
no. 2-3 (double issue): 28.6 × 21.9 cm. 143 pages, colored ed. (Mar. 1943)
no. 4: 28.6 × 21.9 cm. 87 pages, colored ed. (Feb. 1944)

Editor(s):
David Hare

Associate Editor(s):
André Breton (Editorial Advisor)
Marcel Duchamp (Editorial Advisor)
Max Ernst (Editorial Advisor)

Libraries/Databases with Complete Original Issues:
New York Public Library; Duke University’s Perkins Library; University of Virginia Library; National Gallery of Art Library; Library of Congress; Maryland Institute College of Art’s Decker Library; Johns Hopkins University’s Milton S. Eisenhower Library; Indiana University Library; Cleveland Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; University of Michigan Library; Museum of Modern Art; Cornell University Library

Reprint Editions:
None

Description

Published from 1942 through 1944, VVV offered surrealist and expressionistic views of Western culture to Americans, specifically New York City youths seeking international perspectives and art. Surrealism, and VVV in particular, sought to redefine American avant-garde through irrational thought processes that required tapping into a deeper level of consciousness, often invoking revolutionary approaches and techniques to art and literature by challenging traditional forms. Each issue of VVV published photographs, sculptures, poetry, and prose; however, VVV’s avant garde presentation of these materials was highly experimental and radical.

Each issue’s cover art featured the magazine’s VVV logo along with colorful art. The first issue featured a drawing by Max Ernst; the second, an illustration by Marcel Duchamp; and the final, a design by Matta. The magazine was filled with lavish illustrations and poetry with cross-cultural influences. Readers might turn from a page written completely in French to English, only to switch back to French a few pages later. The final issue included many fold-out pages of varying size, adding to the creativity and depth of thought (Hoffman 24).

VVV, in all of its colorful, creative, and transformative beauty, worked to unite and bring together new artists and direct them towards a bountiful array of new thought. Expanding beyond art into the realms of sociology, anthropology, and psychology, VVV deepened the scope of intellectual thought through transformative exploration of the mind and forms of expression; pushing intellectualists and artists, alike, to attempt revolutionary new approaches to every day applications like architecture, writing, and art.  In this way, VVV, along with other abstract expressionist little magazines like View – a magazine that VVV commonly referenced and co-dominated the surrealist scene – authored a public critique of standard Western culture.

Gallery

Manifesto

VVV’s intent was simple–to fill the streets of New York (youths, internationals, and abstract expressionists alike) with surrealism.  The following is an “editorial credo,” as Lucy R. Lippard would refer to it, that was included at the beginning of each of the magazine’s three published issues (Lippard 212).  VVV’s manifesto’s abstract form mimics the content, tone, and revolutionary material included in the magazine.

VVV

That is, V + V + V. We say . . . –– . . . –– . . . ––

that is, not only

V               as a vow—and energy—to return to a habitable and conceivable world,

Victory over the forces of regression and of death unloosed at present on

The earth, but also V beyond this first Victory, for this world can no more,

And ought no more, be the same, V over that which tends to perpetuate the

Enslavement of man by man,

And beyond this

VV            of that double Victory, V again over all that is opposed to the emancipation

Of the spirit, of which the first indispensable condition is the liberation

Of man,

Whence,

VVV         towards the emancipation of the spirit, through these necessary stages: it

Is only in this that our activity can recognize its end

Or again:

One knows that to

V               which signifies the View around us, the eye turned towards the external

World, the conscious surface,

Some of us have not ceased to oppose

VV            the View inside us, the eye turned toward the interior world and the depths

Of the unconscious,

Whence

VVV         towards a synthesis in a third term, of these two Views, the first V with

Its axis on the EGO and the reality principle, the second VV on the SELF

And the pleasure principle—the resolution of their contradiction tending

Only to the continual, systematic enlargement of the field of consciousness

Towards a total view,

VVV

                  Which translates all the reactions of the eternal upon the actual, of the

Psychic upon the physical, and takes account of the myth in process of

Formation beneath the VEIL of happenings. (VVV 1:1)

Editors

David Hare (Mar. 10, 1917 – Dec. 21, 1992)
Editor: 1942 – 1944

David Hare, an American artist who was born in New York in 1917, was mainly known for his magnificent sculptures, though he was also a prominent painter and photographer. As he himself concluded, “I was good with my hands, but I chose art, too, for the independence of it” (Kimmelman). Hare attended the Fountain Valley School, a high school that his mother helped to found, before moving to Roxbury, Connecticut and working as a photographer. After working as a color photographer for some years, Hare was introduced to some of the world’s leading avant grade artists – Max Ernst, Andre Breton, and, renowned dadaist, Marcel Duchamp – with whom he would eventually begin publishing the revolutionary VVV magazine in New York. As its editor he would also frequently submit pieces of his own. After the magazine’s final issue was published in 1944, Hare continued submitting pieces to various magazines and museums around New York, including an exhibit in the Guggenheim that featured a decade-long collection of his work in 1977. Hare became a member of the early New York School Abstract Expressionists and helped to found The Subjects for Artist School in 1948.  Hare continued teaching, painting, and sculpturing into the 1970’s and 80’s before moving to Victor, Idaho in 1985.  Hare died in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on December 21, 1992.

Contributors

Alain Bosquet
“Tu Tournes”
“Tu Te Precises”

André Breton
“Prolegomena to a Third Manifesto of Surrealism or Else”
“Froleuse”
“Passage a Niveau”
“Premiers Transparents”
“Guerre”
“Mot a Mante”
“Interieur”
“Situation Du Surréalisme Entre les Deux Guerres”

Leonora Carrington
“La Dame Ovale”
“Down below”

Aimé Césaire
“Batouque”
“Annonciation”
“Tam-Tam I”
“Tam-Tam II”

Charles Duits
“Le Jour Est Un Attentat”

Max Ernst
“Les Etats Généraux”
“Portrait of a Gypsy Rose Lee”
“First Memorable Conversation With the Chimera”

Wifredo Lam
“La Chanteuse Des Poissons”

Robert Allerton Parker
“Cannibal Designs”

William Seabrook
“The Door Swung Inward”

Kurt Seligmann
“Les Quatre Saisons”

Bibliography

Brooker, Peter, and Andrew Thacker. “Europe in America: Remapping Broken Cultural Lines: View (1940-7) and VVV (1942-4).” The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.

Hadler, Mona. “David Hare, Surrealism, and the Comics.” The Space Between 2.1 (2011): 93-108. Web.

Hofman, Irene. “Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection.” Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL. 2001. Print.

Kimmelman, Michael. “David Hare, Sculptor and Photographer, Dies at 75.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Dec. 1992. Web. 06 Oct. 2015.

Lippard, Lucy R., ed. Surrealists on Art. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970. Print.

Parkinson, Gavin. “Surrealism and Quantum Mechanics: Dispersal and Fragmentation in Art, Life, and Physics.” Science in Context, 17, pp 557-577. 2004. Print.

VVV. New York, N.Y: 1:1, 1942. Print.

VVV. New York, N.Y: 1:2-3, 1943. Print.

VVV. New York, N.Y: 1:4, 1944. Print.

“VVV” compiled by Nathan Thomas Argueta (Class of ’16, Davidson College)

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: American

Jun 27 2016

Transition

Cover design. Transition. No. 5 (Aug. 1927).

Facts

Title: 
Transition

Subtitles varied:
an international quarterly for creative experiment (Summer 1928 – June 1930)
an international workshop for orphic creation (Mar. 1932 – Feb. 1933)
an intercontinental workshop for vertigralist transmutation (July 1935)
a quarterly review (June 1936 – 1937)

Date of Publication: 
Apr. 1927 (no. 1) – Spring 1938 (no. 27)
Publication suspended between the Summer of 1930 and the Spring of 1932

Place(s) of Publication: 
Paris, France (Apr. 1927 – Mar. 1928)
Colombey-les-deux-Eglises, France (Apr. 1928 – Spring 1938)

Frequency of Publication: 
Monthly (April 1927 – March 1928)
Quarterly (Summer 1928 – June 1930)
Irregular (1930 – Spring 1938)

Circulation: 
1000+ in 1927

Publisher: 
Shakespeare and Co., 12 Rue de l’Odeon, Paris
Bretano, 1 West 47th St, New York

Physical Description: 
The magazine was 5.5″ x 9″. Often ran over 200 pages. Has supplement entitled “Transition pamphlet.”

Price: 
$5 per subscription

Editor(s): 
Eugene Jolas

Associate Editor(s): 
Elliot Paul (Apr. 1927 – Mar. 1928)
Robert Sage (Oct. 1927 – Fall 1928)
James Johnson Sweeney (June 1936 – May 1938)

Libraries with Original Issues: 
Northwestern University; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Princeton University; Columbia University; Brown University: University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Iowa

Reprint Editions: 
New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1967
Some scanned issues on Gallica.fr

Description

Eugene Jolas began his little magazine career with The Double Dealer, but he found the magazine overly restrictive, and hoped to create a transatlantic place of refuge for experimental writers to express themselves without fear of criticism. With the help of his wife, translator and printer Maria Mcdonald, Jolas created his own creative magazine, transition. The magazine aimed to combat the rigidity of American political and artistic views. Jolas’s travels to Paris helped him fuse the spirit of French modernism with the rebellion and innovation of American writers. The first issue, a heavy, 150-page magazine, was published in 1927 after a long struggle with foreign printing complications.

The magazine quickly became a “laboratory of the word” – a place to experiment with and shape new ideas – for Modernists such as James Joyce, William Carlos Williams, H. D., Alfred Kreymborg, Gertrude Stein, and Muriel Rukeyser (Hoffman 176). Political writers, Harlem Renaissance voices, works with psychoanalytic qualities, multinational and multilingual works, and other various artistic schools harmonized in the varied pages.

transition eventually morphed from a synthesis of Expressionism and Surrealism into a more philosophical combination of irrational surrealism and language innovation, which the Jolases labeled Vertigralism. transition expanded and slightly shifted its focus, and embraced new media such as sculpture, civil rights activism, carvings, criticism, and cartoons. The diversity of both form and content brought the magazine success for more than ten years. During transition‘s run, Jolas created new literary philosophies, provided inspiration to the avant-garde tradition, and published works that became canonical classics.

Gallery

Manifesto

The editors issued the following statement of purpose in the magazine’s third year:
PROCLAMATION

“Tired of the spectacle of short stories, novels, poems and plays still under the hegemony of the banal word, monotonous syntax, static psychology, descriptive naturalism, and desirous crystallizing a viewpoint….

We hereby declare that:
1. The revolution in the English Language is an accomplished fact.

2. The imagination in search of a fabulous world is autonomous and unconfined
(Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity…. Blake)

3. Pure poetry is a lyrical absolute that seeks an a priori reality within ourselves alone.
(Bring out number, weight and measure in a year of dearth…. Blake)

4. Narrative is not mere anecdote, but the projection of a metamorphosis of reality.
(Enough! Or Too Much! … Blake)

5. The expression of these concepts can be achieved only through the rhythmic “Hallucination of the Word”. (Rimbaud).

6. The literary creator has the right to disintegrate the primal matter of words imposed on him by text-books and dictionaries.
(The road of excess leads to the palace of Wisdom… Blake)

7. He has the right to use words of his own fashioning and to disregard existing grammatical and syntactical laws.
(The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction … Blake)

8. The “litany of words” is admitted as an independent unit.

9. We are not concerned with the propagation of sociological ideas, except to emancipate the creative elements from the present ideology.

10. Time is a tyranny to be abolished.

11. The writer expresses. He does not communicate.

12. The plain reader be damned.
(Damn braces! Bless relaxes! … Blake)

–Signed: Kay Boyle, Whit Burnett, Hart Crane, Caress Crosby, Harry Crosby, Martha Foley, Stuart Gilbert, A. L. Gillespie, Leigh Hoffman, Eugene Jolas, Elliot Paul, Douglas Rigby, Theo Rutra, Robert Sage, Harold J. Salemson, Laurence Vail.”

“Proclamation.” No. 16-17 (June 1929): 13.

Editors

Eugene Jolas (Oct. 26, 1894 – May 26, 1952)
Editor: Apr. 1927 – Spring 1938

New Jersey born John George Eugène Jolas’s cultural standpoint was influenced by his German mother and his French father. He moved to Alsace-Lorraine, France at a young age, where he faced the tensions between French and German languages, societies, and politics. These conflicts, and apprehensions about the German army draft, inspired Jolas to return to America in 1909 with a more poly-national worldview. Though faced with typical immigrant struggles such as poor employment opportunities, language acquisition, and ethnic divisions, Jolas eventually emerged successful as both a journalist and a poet in the American literary scene. He then moved to Paris where he met his wife, Maria McDonald, and began formulating ideas for a little magazine, transition. The magazine marked, as biographers Kramer and Rumold point out, Jolas’ “greatest literary project and most enduring achievement ” (Babel xv).

Contributors

Samuel Beckett
“Assumption”
“For Future Reference”

Kay Boyle
“Dedicated to Guy Urquhart”
“Polar Bears and Others”
“Theme”

Hart Crane
“O Carib Isle!”

H. D.
“Gift”
“Psyche”
“Dream”
“No”
“Socratic”

Max Ernst
Jennes Filles en des Belles Poses
The Virgin Corrects the Child Jesus Before Three Witnesses

Stuart Gilbert
“The Aeolus Episode in Ulysses”
“Function of Words”
“Joyce Thesaurus Minusculus”

Juan Gris
Still Life

Ernest Hemingway
“The Sentence”
“Three Stories”
“Hills Like White Elephants”

James Joyce
“Work in Progress” (Finnegan’s Wake)

Franz Kafka
“Metamorphosis”

Alfred Kreymborg
From Manhattan Anthology

Pablo Picasso
Petite Fille Lisant

Muriel Rukeyser
“Lover as Fox”

Gertrude Stein
“An Elucidation”
“As a Wife Has a Cow A Love Story”
“The Life and Death of Juan Gris”
“Tender Buttons”
“Made a Mile Away”

William Carlos Williams
“The Dead Baby”
“The Somnambulists”
“A Note on the Recent Work of James Joyce”
“Winter”
“Improvisations”
“A Voyage to Paraguay”

Bibliography

Hoffman, Frederick J., Charles Allen, and Carolyn F. Ulrich. The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1947.

“Ernest Hemingway In His Time: Appearing in the Little Magazine.” Transition. 18 Nov. 2003. Special Collections Department. University of Delaware Library. 22 July 2009.

Jolas, Eugene and Robert Sage, eds. Transition Stories: Twenty-three Stories from “Transition.” New York: W. V. McKee, 1929.

Kramer, Andreas and Rainer Rumold, eds. Jolas, Eugene. Man from Babel. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998.

Nelson, Cary. Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910-1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

transition. 1927 – 1938. New York: Kraus Reprint Corp., 1967.

“Transition” compiled by Alice Neumann (Class of ’06, Davidson College)

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: European

Jun 27 2016

This Quarter

Cover design. This Quarter. 1:2 (Autumn 1925 - Winter 1926).

Facts

Title: 
This Quarter

Date of Publication: 
Spring 1925 (1:1) – Oct./Dec. 1932 (5:2). Suspended summer 1927 – June 1929

Place(s) of Publication: 
Paris, France
Milan, Italy (1:2, 1925)
Monte Carlo, Monaco (1:3-4, 1927 and 1929)

Frequency of Publication: 
Irregular. Was intended to be published quarterly but during some periods couldn’t meet its financial exigencies and went unpublished.

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher: 
E.W. Titus, Paris
Covegno: Via Borgospesso, Milan

Physical Description: 
6.5″ x 9″. Approx. 300 pages. Each issue broke up the work by section: poetry, prose, reviews, comments, miscellany. Sept. 1932 issue added title, “Surrealist number,” guest editor André Breton, with contributions from Giorgio di Chirico, Salvador Dali, Paul Eluard, Yves Tanguy, Tristan Tzara, and others. Vol. 1 No. 2 features a supplement, “Antheil musical supplement.” First issue dedicated to Ezra Pound and features a photo of the poet by Man Ray.

Price: 
$2 per issue / $8 per year

Editor(s): 
Ernest Walsh (1925 – 1926)
Ethel Moorhead (1925 – 1929)
Edward W. Titus (1929 – 1932)

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Libraries with Complete Original Issues: 
Brown University; Ohio State University; Getty Research Institute; Library of Congress; Northwestern University; Cornell University; McGill University; University of California, Los Angeles

Reprint Editions: 
New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1967.

Description

With Scottish suffragette Ethel Moore as a benefactress, Ernest Walsh decided to publish a quarterly which would “publish the artist’s work while it is still fresh.” The sometimes lovers published their first issue of This Quarter from Paris in 1925. Walsh hoped the magazine would give him a venue to publish his poetry (in one issue as many as thirty pages of it) alongside the Modernsits who Walsh acknowledged as “the greats.”

The first issue of This Quarter praised Ezra Pound, “who by his creative work, his editorship of several magazines, his helpful friendship for young and unknown artists, his many and untiring efforts to win better appreciation of what is first-rate in art comes first to our mind as meriting the gratitude of this generation.” Walsh received contributions from him, as well as his other literary heroes: William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and finally Ernest Hemingway, who also helped in the printing and editing of early issues.

Walsh’s interactions with the literary world were not always pleasant. Owing perhaps to their volatile personalities and the close working arrangement, Walsh and Hemingway eventually had a falling out. In his memoir A Moveable Feast Hemingway documented the scuffle in a chapter titled “The Man who was Marked for Death,” in which he described how Walsh told Hemingway that he had won the $1000 writing prize but that he never actually presented the money as promised. This Quarter attracted a great deal of press due to its libertarian editorial policy and its denunciation of literary periodicals like The Dial (“its influence on young writers is insidious”), The Criterion (“a tradition without individuality”) and The Little Review (“too trivial to discuss”) (Hoffman 82).

Moorhead suspended the periodical’s publication following Walsh’s death to tuberculosis until Edward Titus became the new editor in 1929. His effort to steer the magazine in a new, more conservative, direction forfeited much of This Quarter’s appeal. The periodical suffered from inadequate financing and a lack of strong leadership in the wake of Walsh’s death, and its final issue hit newsstands in late 1932. Before it became insolvent, however, it fostered an environment of freedom for the author and set the stage for Modernist writers like Hemingway to print in more mainstream periodicals.

Gallery

Manifesto

Though This Quarter never issued a formal manifesto, Walsh made a number of proclamations as to the magazine’s purpose. The magazine hoped to offer encouragement to rather than interference with new writers.

Editors

Ernest Walsh (Aug. 10, 1895 – Oct. 16, 1926)
Co-Editor: Spring 1925 – June 1926

An expatriate American poet and coeditor of This Quarter, Ernest Walsh was diagnosed as tubercular at seventeen. He spent several years in a sanatorium in Lake Saranac, New York before being discharged, supposedly cured. Following a brief stint in the military, Walsh met Ethel Moorhead, a suffragette who provided the necessary capital to launch This Quarter, which intended to “publish the artist’s work while it [was] still fresh.” Walsh edited the first two issues before passing away from complications related to his disease.

Ethel Moorhead (1869 – 1955)
Co-Editor: Spring 1925 – June 1929

Before joining Ernest Walsh as an editor for This Quarter, Ethel Moorhead was a suffragette active in the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). As a participant in the 1912 WSPU London window-smashing campaign, she faced nearly constant arrests. Like the other militants in the union, she exercised hunger strikes in order to get released from prison under the Cat and Mouse Act, and when sent home to recover from double pneumonia in 1914 she escaped to France. There she met the ailing Ernest Walsh, and travelled with him throughout north Africa and Europe. She assisted in the financing and administration of This Quarter until Walsh’s death and Ernest Hemingway’s departure in 1926, at which point she assumed full control of the magazine until Edward Titus took over.

Edward Titus 
Editor: June 1929 – Mar. 1931

Expatriate American journalist Edward Titus was an editor for This Quarter and the founder of Black Mannequin Press. While living in London he married cosmetic mogul Helena Rubinstein in 1908 and fathered two children with her before the family fled Europe for Greenwich, Connecticut at the outbreak of World War I. They returned to Paris in 1918, and Titus began publishing D. H. Lawrence and other modernists through his Press. His marriage was faltering by the time he started editing This Quarterdue, according to his wife, to her obsession with her business. During Moorhead’s hiatus from 1929-1932 Titus published more conservative works in This Quarter than its previous editors had.

Contributors

Sherwood Anderson
“These Mountaineers”

George Antheil
Extract from Mr. Bloom and the Cyclops

André Breton
“Surrealism: Yesterday To-Day and To-Morrow”

Morley Callaghan
“Now that April’s Here”

Emmanuel Carnevali
Sketches
“Girl”

E. E. Cummings
Various untitled poems

Salvador Dali
“The Object as Revealed in Surrealist Experiment”

Rhys Davies
“Blodwen”

Marcel Duchamp
“The Bride Stripped Bare by her Own Bachelors”

H. D.
“Hippolytus Temporizes”

Max Ernst
“Inspiration to Order”

Ernest Hemingway
“Big Two-Hearted River”
“Homage to Ezra”
“The Undefeated”

Eugene Jolas
“The Immigrant”

James Joyce
“Extract from Work in Progress” (Shem the Penman Episode from Finnegans Wake)

Alfred Kreymborg
“Chasing the Climate”

Harold Loeb
“Cimex Lectularius”
“Fragment”

Ethel Moorhead
“Incendaries (Work in Progress)”

Carl Sandburg
“Whiffs of the Ohio River”
“New Song for Indiana Ophelias”

William Carlos Williams
“Child and Vegetables”

Yvor Winters
“The Critiad”

Bibliography

Allen, Charles. “Regionalism and the Little Magazines.” College English 7:1 (1945).

Crawford, Elizabeth. The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866 – 1928. UK: Routledge, 2001. 423 – 426.

Hoffman, Frederick J., Charles Allen, and Carolyn F. Ulrich. The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1947.

Image, cover May 1925. This Quarter. Accessed from “Apprenticeship and Paris.” 10 Sept. 2002. Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. University of South Carolina. 13 July 2009.

Image, cover Autumn 1925 – Winter 1926. “Ernest Hemingway In His Time: Appearing in the Little Magazine.” 18 Nov. 2003.Special Collections Department. University of Delaware Library. 22 July 2009.

Joost, Nicholas. Ernest Hemingway and the Little Magazines: The Paris Years. Barre, MA: Barre Publishers, 1968.

Kenney, Alma L. “Rubenstein, Helena, Dec. 25 1870 – April 1, 1965.” Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1980. Credo Reference. Davidson College Library, Davidson, NC. 7 July 2009.

Knight, Donald. “Dictionary of Literary Biography on Ernest Walsh.” BookRags. 2005. 8 May 2007.

“This Quarter” compiled by Christian Williams (Class of ’07, Davidson College)

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: European

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