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 27 2016

The Tyro

Facts

Title:
The Tyro: A Review of the Arts of Painting, Sculpture and Design

Date of Publication:
Apr. 1921; 1922

Place of Publication:
London, England.

Frequency of Publication:
Twice

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher:
The Egoist Press (backed by Sidney Schiff)

Physical Description:
Issue I: 37.5 cm (high) by 25 cm, 12 pages. Issue II, “compact quarto” nearly 100 pages.

Price:
1 shilling, 6 pence per issue / 6 shillings, 6 pence per four-issue subscription

Editor(s):
Wyndham Lewis

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Libraries with Complete Originals:
Univ. of California Santa Barbara; Univ. of Colorado Boulder; Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst; Univ. of Minnesota, Morris Library; Princeton Univ.; Univ. of Tulsa; Univ. of Houston.

Reprint Editions:
Searchable PDFs available online at the Modernist Journals Project

Description

The Tyro: A Review of the Arts of Painting, Sculpture and Design, marks Wyndham Lewis’s second, and more aggressive (though less well-known) attempt to provide “a rallying spot” for experimental painters in England for whom painting required “an intelligent applications as any science.” The magazine was published twice and bridged writing by the likes of T.S. Eliot with avant-garde illustrations. The first issue appeared in 1921 and covered 12 pages. The second issue was published a year later and expanded to over 100 pages with even more illustrations by avant-garde European artists.

Gallery

Manifesto

In the first issue of The Tyro Wyndham Lewis makes clear the purpose of his newest magazine:

THE OBJECTS OF THIS PAPER,—To be a rallying spot for those painters, or persons interested in painting, in this country, for whom ” painting ” signifies not a lucrative or sentimental calling, but a constant and perpetually renewed effort: requiring as exacting and intelligent application as any science, with as great an aim. The only papers at present existing purely for painters are, in a more or less veiled way (usually veiled in a little splashing of bright colour and little more), tributaries of the official painting of Burlington House. There is actually at the moment no paper in this country wholly devoted to the interests of the great European movement in painting and design, the most significant art phenomenon in Europe to-day.

The number of painters experimenting in England in the European sense are very few. The reason for that, and the remedy for what appears to us that backwardness, will be ” explored,” as the newspapers say. Again, this paper will especially address itself to those living in England who do not consider that the letter of any fashion (whether coming to us with the intelligent prestige of France, or the flamboyance of modern Italy) should be subscribed to by English or American painters. A painter living in a milieu like Paris has a great advantage, it is obvious, over one working (especially in his commencements) in England. But it would be absurd not to see that the very authority and prestige of the Gallic milieu, that so flutters and transports our friend Mr. Bell, for example, also imposes its faults on those working in Paris, in the very middle of the charm. The Tyro will keep at a distance on the one hand this subjection to the accidental of the great European centre of art, and on the other hand the aesthetic chauvinism that distorts, and threatens constantly with retrogression, so much of the otherwise most promising painting in England to-day.

A paper run entirely by painters and writers, the appearance of the “Tyro” will be spasmodic: that is, it will come out when sufficient material has accumulated to make up a new number; or when something of urgent interest hastens it into renewed and pointed utterance.

One further point. The Editor of this paper is a painter. In addition to that you will see him starting a serial story in this number. During the Renaissance in Italy this duplication of activities was common enough, and no one was surprised to see a man chiselling words and stone alternately. If, as many are believing, we are at present on the threshold of a Renaissance of Art as much greater than the Italian Renaissance as the Great War of 1914-18 was physically bigger than preceding ones (substitute however intensity and significance for scale), then this spectacle may become so common that the aloofness of the Editor of this paper from musical composition would, retrospectively, be more surprising than his books of stories and essays. In the same way kindred phenomena, in letters, science or music, to the painting of such pictures as this paper is started to support and discuss, will be welcomed and sought for in its pages.

Editors

Wyndham Lewis (1882 – 1957)
Editor: 1921 – 1922

Wyndham Lewis was the founder and editor of The Tyro. As a painter, author, and editor of other modernist magazines such as BLAST and The Enemy, he was closely associated with the Vorticist movement in art and played a salient role in modernist thought in England.

Contributors

No. 1

Wyndham Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Guz Krutzsch, Robert McAlmon, John Adams, John Rodker, David Bomberg, William Patrick Roberts, O. Raymond Drey, Frank Dobson, and Herbert Read.

No. 2

Wyndham Lewis, T.S. Eliot, O. Raymond Drey, Jessie Dismorr, Stephen Hudson, John Adams, John Rodker, Herbert Read, Waldeman George, Jaques Lipschitz, Austin Dobson, Frederick Etchells, and Edward Wadsworth.

Bibliography

Brooker, Peter. The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2009. Print.

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

Tyro. Modernist Journals Project. Brown University Library, Center for Digital Initiatives. Web. 08 Oct. 2010.

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: British

Jun 25 2016

TIME

Facts

*This is an example entry for student contributors*

 

Title:
TIME: The mausoleum of all hope

Date of Publication: 
Stylized as: Jan. 4, 1914 – Feb. 1923

Place(s) of Publication:
Stylized as: New York, NY ; Paris, France

Frequency of Publication: 
Stylized as: Monthly

Circulation:
Number. Use ~ to designate approximation

Publisher: 
Name of Publisher, Street Address if Available

Physical Description: 
Describe the physical magazine. Do not comment on the content. Dimensions, coloring, number of pages, inserts, foldouts – anything that describes the material magazine.

Editor(s): 
Provide full name. If more than one, list them like:
Peter Bowman
T.S. Eliot

Associate Editor(s):
Provide full name. If more than one, list them with specific titles in parentheses like:
Peter Bowman (Associate Editor)
T.S. Eliot (Contributing Editor)

Libraries with Original Issues: 
List all libraries as such: Bodleian Library; British Museum; Cambridge University Library; King’s College London; National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Trinity College Library; University of London Library
If there are online PDFS, include that here, with a hyperlink. NEVER paste the hyperlink directly into the text! What is this, middle school? Always highlight the text and add a link that way.

Reprint Editions: 
List the same way you would list the libraries above.

For all entries, if you are sure there are no relevant data, put “None.” If you aren’t 100% sure, put “Unknown”

Description

Give an overview of the magazine here. Remember that you are writing a bibliographic entry, not an essay.

Do not:

  • Offer unsubstantiated claims like “One of the most influential magazines ever printed.” Your job is to provide cold, hard facts, not offer some profound observation or personal opinion.
  • Write so much about the editors that the Editors section becomes redundant
  • Write any “filler” material. Some magazines simply do not have much information that’s been published about them. You won’t be penalized for a shorter entry if it’s good and thorough, so don’t try to make it longer by restating what you’ve said or adding meaningless comments.
  • Misspell foreign words. If it’s in French, and you don’t speak French, look up which way that accent goes
  • Forget to follow basic stylistics: italicize titles of publications; don’t use comma splices; don’t screw up apostrophes

Gallery

Manifesto

Copy the manifesto of the publication here. If there is no manifesto, explain that there is no manifesto and copy whatever you can find in the magazine that might be similar. If there simply is no manifesto, just say so and move along.

Editors

Stylize the heading as follows:

Peter Bowman (Jan. 31, 1909 – Nov. 18, 1995)
Editor: 1941 – 1995

Provide basic biographical information. This includes place of birth, schooling, notable family members, traumatic or transformative experiences, cities of residence, reasons for publishing a magazine, hobbies and interest, love affairs – basically anything you’d find at the top of a Wikipedia entry (though, of course, you’re not about to copy and paste from Wikipedia)

Contributors

The vaguest section, Contributors is supposed to provide a snapshot of contributing writers. For some publications, the amount of individual contributors is staggering – by no means do you have to list them all.

Be sure to list notable authors and artists, but do not restrict your entries to canonical figures.

Stylize as follows:

Nicholas Bentley
Cover design (No. 400)

P. Bien
“A Hartley Biography”

T.S. Eliot  
“Reflections on the Unity of European Culture” (No. 158)
“The Amis of Poetic Drama” (No. 200)
“Rhapsody on a Windy Night”
“The Hollow Men”
“A Song for Simeon”

Bernard Kaps
Wrote a drama of Ezra Pound’s despair after his imprisonment in 1945

D. Day Lewis
“The Watching Post”

Charles Moncheur
Published French translations of T.S. Eliot poems, including:

Raymond Mortimer
Issue celebrating Beethoven’s centenary

Jeremy Reed
“The Ides of March”

Ronald Searle
Cover design (No. 200)

Bibliography

Follow standard practice for MLA citation. If you are citing online resources, highlight the title, click the chainlink icon just above this text box, paste the URL, and press ENTER. And there you have your hyperlink. Include your name in italics at the bottom of the entry. Follow this example for formatting:
“Adam International Review.” British Literary Magazines: The Modern Age, 1914-1984. 1st ed. 1986. Print.
“Adam International Review.” British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000: A History and Bibliography of ‘Little Magazines’. 1st ed. 2006. Print.
Adam International Review: H.G. Wells issue. Digital image. Galactic Central. N.p., 2012. Web.

Grindea, Miron. Adam International Review. Digital image. Derringer Books. N.p., 2012. Web.

–. Adam, International Review. Digital image. Trussel. N.p., 2010. Web.

–. Adam International Review 200th issue. Digital image. Bibliopolis. N.p., 2012. Web.

Kemsley, Rachel. “Adam International Review.” King’s College London Archives Services – Summary Guide. King’s College London, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.

Schüler, C.J. “Miron Grindea: The Don Quixote of Kensington.” The Independent. 1 Apr 2006. Web. 23 Feb 2016.

“Adam” compiled by Bettina Lem (Davidson College, Class of ’13)

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: American, British

Jun 20 2016

Rhythm

Facts

Title: 
Rhythm: Art Music Literature Quarterly
Continued by The Blue Review

Date of Publication: 
Summer 1911 (1:1) – Mar. 1913 (2:14)

Place of Publication: 
London, England

Frequency of Publication: 
Quarterly (Summer 1911 – Spring 1912)
Monthly (June 1912 – Mar. 1913)

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher: 
The St. Catherine Press, Norfolk Street, London (Summer 1911 – Spring 1912)
Stephen Swift and Co., Ltd., 16 King Street Covent Garden, London (June – Aug. 1912)
Martin Secker, 5 John Street, Adelphi London W.C.: (Sept. 1912 – Mar. 1913)

Physical Description: 
36 pages of content followed by 4 pages of advertisements. Cover featured a nude woman sitting on a rock under a tree.

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s): 
John Middleton Murry

Associate Editor(s):
Katherine Mansfield (June 1912 – Mar. 1913)
John Duncan Fergusson (Art Editor)

Libraries with Original Issues: 
University of Michigan; Columbia University; University of Chicago; University of California, Santa Barbara; Princeton University; Stanford University; Rutgers University; University of California, Berkeley

Reprint Editions:
Searchable PDFs of full run available online at Brown University’s Modernist Journals Project

Description

Oxford undergraduate John Middleton Murry’s inspiration for Rhythm came from a 1910 trip to Paris, which at the time was a hub of avant-garde art and literature. In In Paris Murry visited the Scottish painter John Duncan Fergusson, who signed on to be the art editor. Murry published the first issue of Rhythm in London in June 1911. It was an elegant periodical of art, music, and literature that appealed to a small, cosmopolitan readership whose enthusiasm (and money) allowed a second issue to be printed that fall.

In June 1912 writer Katherine Mansfield joined as Murry’s co-editor. By that time Rhythm had garnered enough support, most notably that of Mansfield’s publisher Stephen Swift, to become a monthly rather than a quarterly periodical. Blue covers replaced the gray of Rhythm‘s first volume, and the magazine expanded to include reviews and criticism. When Stephen Swift declared bankruptcy in September, the magazine was able to continue with financial assistance from Edward Marsh and publisher Edward Secker. In March 1913, however, financial problems arose again, and Murry and Mansfield were forced to end Rhythm after its fourteenth issue. The magazine reappeared briefly in 1914 as The Blue Review, but lasted for only three issues.

Rhythm showcased an impressive group of contributors during its short span. In addition to several studies by Pablo Picasso, established Fauvist artists such as Albert Marquet, Othon Friesz, and Auguste Herbin appeared in Rhythm‘s pages. Anne Estelle Rice, S. J. Peploe, Georges Banks, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, J. D. Fergusson, and Paul Cézanne were also included.

Gallery

Manifesto

Rhythm‘s manifesto appeared in its first issue.

AIMS AND IDEALS

RHYTHM is a magazine with a purpose. Its title is the ideal of a new art, to which it will endeavour to give expression in England. Aestheticism has had its day and done its work. Based on a reaction, on a foundation essentially negative, it could not endure; with a vision that saw, exquisitely, it may be, but unsteadily and in part, it has been inevitably submerged by the surge of the life that lay beyond its sphere. We need an art that strikes deeper, that touches a profounder reality, that passes outside the bounds of a narrow aestheticism, cramping and choking itself, drawing its inspiration from aversion, to a humaner and a broader field.

Humanity in art in the true sense needs humanity in criticism. To treat what is being done to-day as something vital in the progress of art, which cannot fix its eyes on yesterday and live; to see that the present is pregnant for the future, rather than a revolt against the past; in creation to give expression to an art that seeks out the strong things of life; in criticism to seek out the strong things of that art–such is the aim of RHYTHM.

‘Before art can be human it must learn to be brutal.’ Our intention is to provide art, be it drawing, literature or criticism, which shall be vigorous, determined, which shall have its roots below the surface, and be the rhythmical echo of the life with which it is in touch. Both in its pity and its brutality it shall be real. There are many aspects of life’s victory, and the aspects of the new art are manifold.

To leave protest for progress, and to find art in the strong things of life, is the meaning of RHYTHM. The endeavour of art to touch reality, to come to grips with life is the triumph of sanity and reason. ‘What is exalted and tender in art is not made of feeble blood.’”John Middleton Murry. 1:1 (Summer 1911): 36.

Editors

John Middleton Murry (Aug. 6, 1889 – Mar. 13, 1957)
Editor: Sept. 1911 – Mar. 1913

John Middleton Murry was an English writer, editor, and critic. Though his fiction, poetry, and drama were not well-received, Murry wrote over 40 books on literary theory, politics, religion, and social issues. Murry’s career launched when he published Rhythm as an undergraduate at Oxford. The magazine caught the attention of England’s avant-garde elite, who introduced Murry to the literary establishment as the “bright, particular star” of English criticism (Cassavant 1). During his tenure as editor of Rhythm he became friends with D. H. Lawrence and fell in love with his co-editor Katherine Mansfield, whom he married in 1918. Following the demise of Rhythm and its successor, The Blue Review, Murry became editor of the literary magazine Athenaeum (1919-21), which published the works of many members of the Bloomsbury Group. After Mansfield died in 1923, Murry founded the magazine Adelphi (1923-48), in which he explored his spiritual beliefs. In 1935 Murry wrote his autobiography, Between Two Worlds, and continued to publish Mansfield’s work for the remainder of his life. After editing the Peace News (1940-46), Murry married for a fourth time and spend the final decade of his life developing Lodge Farm in Norfolk.

Katherine Mansfield (Oct. 14, 1888 – Jan. 9, 1923)
Associate Editor: June 1912 – Mar. 1913

Katherine Mansfield was a Modernist short story writer whose delicate, poetic prose is often compared to that of Virginia Woolf. Born in New Zealand, she went to England at the turn of the century to develop her career as a writer. In London Mansfield lived a tumultuous life, dabbling in sexual relationships with both men and women. Mansfield’s work was published regularly in the avant-garde magazines New Age and Rhythm. She joined John Middleton Murry as co-editor of Rhythm in 1912 and married him six years later. During the late 1910s and early 1920s, Mansfield developed a reputation as one of the best short story writers of the time. She continued publishing until her death from tuberculosis in 1923, publishing her best-known work, The Garden Party, a year before she died. Murry published her final stories and journals posthumously.

Contributors

Georges Banks
“Stagecraft”
“Salomé”
“Caricature of Katherine Mansfield”
“New Spirit in Art and Drama”

Rhys Carpenter
“Autumn in Three Lands”
“Imagination”

Paul Cezanne
The Bathers

William H. Davies
“Young Beauty”
“Two Lives”

Lord Dunsany
“Moral Little Tale”
“Thlobbon of Sappanal: Act VII”

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Bird
Whitechapel Jew

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
“Crane”
“Geraniums”
“Mortadello or the Angel of Venice: A Comedy”

Katherine Mansfield
“Sea Child”
“Spring in a Dream”
“Confessions of a Fool”
“Sea Song”

John Middleton Murrry
“Art and Philsophy”
“Life”
“Little Boy”
“Pan’s Garden”
“Torment” “Squirrel”

Yone Noguchi
“Utamaro”
“Koyetsu”
“What is a Hokku Poem?”
“From a Japanese Ink-Slab Part I”
“From a Japanese Ink-Slab Part II”

S. J. Peploe
Place de l’Observatoire
Head
Nude Study

Pablo Picasso
Portrait of Himself

Anne Estelle Rice
Schérézade
Ballet Russe
Spectre de la Rose

Henri Rousseau
Centénaire 1793

Michael T. H. Sadler
“Fauvism and a Fauve”
“Letters of Vincent Van Gogh”
“Esprit Vielle”

Jack B. Yeats
In a Dublin Waxworks Show

Bibliography

Alpers, Anthony. The Life of Katherine Mansfield. New York: Viking Press, 1980.

Cassavant, Sharron Greer.  John Middleton Murry: The Critic as a Moralist. Birmingham: The University of Alabama Press, 1982.

Griffin, Ernest G.  John Middleton Murry. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1969.

Images. “Rhythm: Art Music Literary Quarterly.” The Modernist Journals Project. Brown University. 14 July 2009.

Mansfield, Katherine. Letters to John Middleton Murry, 1913-1922. Ed. John Middleton Murry.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951.

The Modernist Journals Project. Brown University. 14 July 2009.

Weinig, Mary Anthony. “Rhythm.”  British Literary Magazines. Ed. Alvin Sullivan. Vol. 3.  Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986. 360-65.

“Rhythm” compiled by Ruchi Turakhia (Class of ’07, Davidson College)

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: British

Jun 20 2016

Poetry and Drama

Facts

Title:
Poetry and Drama

Date of Publication:
15 Mar. 1913 – Dec. 1914

Place(s) of Publication:
London

Frequency of Publication:
Quarterly

Circulation:
Editor Harold Monro did not record circulation figures.

Publisher:
Poetry Bookshop, London

Physical Description:
26 cm tall; cloth bound; volume one published in brown, volume two in blue

Price:
2 shillings, 6 pence per issue / 10 shillings, 6 pence per year

Editor(s):
Harold Monro

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Libraries with Original Issues:
UNC Chapel Hill, Library of Congress, Indiana University, The Morgan Library & Museum, Columbia University, Emory College, University of Chicago, Hamilton University, Vassar College, Yale University, York University, Calvin College, Dartmouth College, Amherst College, University of Vermont, University of Kansas, University of Texas at Austin, UCLA, Trinity College Dublin

Reprint Editions: 
Poetry And Drama. Ed Harold Monro. Vol. 1 & 2. Rpt in New York: Kraus, 1967.1-440. Print

Description

Out of the ashes of his failed work on The Poetry Review, Harold Monro picked himself up and opened The Poetry Bookshop; from there he would publish Poetry and Drama, a relatively short-lived magazine that focused on various types of literature. Most issues began with an editorial on topics of special interest, although the order of the other subjects tended to change from issue to issue. Usually included were articles on the following topics: poems, criticism of new novels, poetry, works of theatre, and a list of recently released books. Special topics included surveys on French poetry and London theatre, reports on American poetry, as well as lists of reprints and anthologies. One issue even focused on Italian futurists poets—one of the more radical movements the periodical covered. Images didn’t frequent the pages of the magazines. Advertisements were mostly designated to the the first and last few pages, and focused on literary subjects (the Bookshop, other periodicals, and recently released books). Additionally, each issue of Poetry and Drama was sold containing a ticket to a reading at The Poetry Bookshop.

Gallery

Manifesto

Poetry and Drama was not published with an official manifesto. Editor Harold Monro laid out some of his beliefs in his “Personal Explanation” in the first issue of the magazine, but most of what he covered was his (forced) departure from his former periodical, The Poetry Review. He stated his purpose for the periodical to serve as “‘a testing-shop for the poetry of the present, and a medium for the discussion of tendencies which may combine to make the poetry of the future’” (Hibberd). It was also important to Monro that this magazine was not restricted to an elite few. He voiced his desire for the periodical to form “a practical relation between poetry and the public” (Hibberd). Where the main focus of some other magazines was in profit or political concerns, Monro intended Poetry and Drama to popularize poetry and make it available to the masses.

Editors

Harold Monro (Mar. 14, 1879 – Mar. 16, 1932)
Editor: Mar. 1913 – Dec. 1914

Poetry and Drama had a single editor for the full two years it ran: Harold Monro. He was born in Brussels in 1879 to an English family, the youngest of three children. In Brussels he was schooled in French and English, until his father’s death in 1889, after which his mother brought him back to London. There he went to St. Peter’s College, Radley, where he struggled after his brother’s death, excelled, and was finally expelled after being caught in physical intimacy with a younger boy. Monro moved on to study at Cambridge, where he became devoted to poetry, even in the midst of studying to be a lawyer, similarly to his college friend, Maurice Browne. In 1903, soon after school, he married Maurice’s sister, Dorothy, with whom he would have a rocky marriage. In late 1911 Monro approached London’s Poetry Society, with the idea of editing their journal, which he renamed The Poetry Review—a pursuit that was short-lived, as the Society’s council forced Monro to step down in November 1912. He did not stay down for long, however, and used some of his inheritance to open The Poetry Bookshop the following month. It would serve for more than two decades as a gathering place for English poets, home to popular readings. At that same time, Monro began making plans for Poetry and Drama, which would be released in March of the next year. The magazine enjoyed a relatively successful run, but in its second year, war was declared on Germany. Monro postponed the journal and went to war, although he did not serve on the front lines. Upon returning he started up a new journal, The Monthly Chapbook, or just The Chapbook. Somewhat later in life, his spending and drinking caught up with him: bankruptcy, alcoholism, and a nearly twenty year relationship with Alida Klemantaski (a frequenter of the Bookshop) drove him and his family apart. He eventually died of tuberculosis, with Alida by his side, in 1932.

Contributors

Harold Monro 
“Personal Explanation”
Fancies
Studies in Emotion
“English Poetry”

 Rupert Brooke
“A Note on John Webster”
“John Donne”

Edward Thomas 
“Ella Wheeler Wilcox”
“Thomas Hardy of Dorchester”
“Reviewing: An Unskilled Labor”
“War Poetry”

Gilbert Cannan 
“Dramatic Chronicle”
“The Drama: A Note in War Time”

F.S. Flint  
“French Chronicle”

F.T. Marinetti
“Against the Earth”
The New Futurist Manifesto

Thomas Hardy
“My spirit will not haunt the mound”

Robert Frost
“The Fear”
“A Hundred Collars”

W.H. Davies
“The Bird of Paradise”

Frances Cornford
“The Old Witch in the Copse”

Ezra Pound
“Albatre”
“Society”
“The Faun”
“Tempora”

John Gould Fletcher
“Cherokee Ballads”

Edward Storer
Helen
“Translations”

Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer)
On Impressionism

T.E. Hulme
“German Chronicle”

Robert Bridges
“A Letter to a Musician on English Prosody”

Rose Macaulay
“The Pond”
“Dust and Dust”

Amy Lowell
“On ‘The Cutting of an Agate’”
“Flame Apples”
“Grotesque”
“Pine, Beech and Sunlight”

Remy De Gourmont
French Literature and the War

Bibliography

Hibberd, Dominic. Harold Monro: Poet of the New Age. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001. Print.

–––. “The New Poetry, Georgians, and Others.” The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. V. 1, Britain and Ireland 1880-1955.Ed. Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

Morrisson, Mark S. “Performing the Pure Voice: Poetry and Drama, Elocution, Verse Recitation, and Modernist Poetry in Prewar London.” The Public Face of Modernism: Little Magazines, Audiences, and Reception, 1905-1920.Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001. Print.

Images. “Poetry and Drama.” Modernist Magazines Project. University of Sussex. Web. 17 September 2015.

Poetry And Drama. Ed Harold Monro. Vol. 1 & 2. Rpt in New York: Kraus, 1967.1- 440. Print.

“Poetry and Drama” compiled by Rachel Wiltshire (Davidson College, Class of 2016)

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: British

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