Index of Modernist Magazines

  • Magazines
  • Titles A-Z
  • Definitions
  • Resources
  • Research

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

Jun 27 2016

The Transatlantic Review

Facts

Title: 
The Transatlantic Review

Date of Publication: 
Jan. 1924 (1:1) – Dec. 1924 (2:6)

Place(s) of Publication: 
Paris, France
London, England
New York, NY

Frequency of Publication: 
Monthly

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher: 
Transatlantic Review Company. 29 quai d’Anjou, Ile Saint-Louis, Paris.
Duckworth and Co., London, England
Thomas Seltzer, New York

Physical Description: 
Bound originally in Quarto with blue and white covers (later changed to blue and buff, as the white covers dirtied too easily). Generally ran approximately 120 pages in length. Often included a musical supplement or a literary supplement. Occasional illustrations.

Price: 
7.5 francs per issue  / 75 francs per year

Editor(s): 
Ford Madox Ford (1924)

Associate Editor(s):
Ernest Hemingway (Guest Editor) (Aug. 1924)

Libraries with Original Issues: 
Bodleian Library, British Museum, Cambridge University Library, Trinity College Library, UK.

Reprint Editions: 
Kraus Reprint, New York, 1967.

Description

Ford Madox Ford was walking the streets of Paris in 1923 when he chanced upon his brother Oliver, who offered him the editorship of the newly conceived Transatlantic Review. Ford joined James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, and lawyer-cum-financier John Quinn to form the editorial board of the monthly journal.

In its short, twelve-issue run, The Transatlantic Review became a major force in the literary scene of the mid-1920s. Publishing both English and French contributions, the review debuted selections from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake (in 1924 titled only “Work in Progress”), and gave Ernest Hemingway a jumpstart to his mounting career. The Transatlantic Review sought to establish its own brand of international literary cosmopolitanism, and was published simultaneously in London, Paris, and New York. Apart from regular contributions from the editorial staff, the magazine featured poetry, prose, and artwork from Djuna Barnes, e. e. cummings, H. D., Joseph Conrad, Juan Gris, Mina Loy, Man Ray, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, and other famed Modernists.

Eventually, the growing influence of the young expatriate American writers upon The Transatlantic Review pitted the older and more conservative Ford against the more contemporary prose styles of the American modernists. As Alvin Sullivan notes, the history of The Transatlantic Review is appropriately “the story of the aggressive American victory on the literary and cultural battlefield of post-war Europe” (463). It was thus ultimately fitting that the review’s motto Fluctuat – meaning “it wavers” – was adopted without the remainder of the Paris maxim, Nec Mergitur, – “and is not sunk.” The Transatlantic Review did indeed sink, but not before it left an indelible mark upon the history of early twentieth century literature.

Gallery

Manifesto

The editors of The Transatlantic Review offered an all-but-concise manifesto in their initial issue:

Paris, December, 1923

Purposes

The Transatlantic Review, the first number of which will appear on January 7th, 1924, will have two only purposes, the major one, the purely literary, conducing to the minor, the disinterestedly social.

The first is that of widening the field in which the younger writers of the day can find publication, the second that of introducing into international politics a note more genial than that which almost universally prevails. The first conduces to the second in that the best ambassadors, the only nonsecret diplomatists between nations are the books and the arts of nations. There is no British Literature, there is no American Literature; there is English Literature which embraces alike Mark Twain and Thomas Hardy with the figure of Mr. Henry James to bracket them. The aim of the Review is to help in bringing about a state of things in which it will be considered that there are no English, no French–for the matter of that, no Russian, Italian, Asiatic or Teutonic–Literatures: there will be only Literature, as today there are Music and the Plastic Arts each having Schools Russian, Persian, 16th Century German, as the case may be. When that day arrives we shall have a league of nations no diplomatists shall destroy, for into its comity no representatives of commercial interests or delimitators of frontiers can break. Not even Armageddon could destroy the spell of Grimm for Anglo-Saxondom or of Flaubert and Shakespeare for the Central Empires. And probably the widest propaganda of the English as a nation is still provided by Mr. Pickwick.

Why then Paris?

The Conductors and Proprietors of the Review have selected Paris as its home because there is no other home possible for a periodical which desires to spread comprehension between the three nations. What other centre could there be? London? Hear, New York leading, all the sons of Old Glory roar: “No!” Should it be New York? All immense London turns in its sleep to yawn: “We think…we decidedly think…not!” Berlin? Rome? Shiraz? …But the Conductors do not know German, Italian, or Persian so very well. They are, besides, out principally after young literature: there is no young man, be his convictions what they may, who, if he has saved up but his railway fare and sixty centimes, will not fly to Paris and cry: “Garçon, un bock!” How many hours may you not here spend at a little table, listening to young giants whose voices almost outsound the wheels of tram 91 and the rustle of the falling chestnut leaves as they cry: “You are ga-ga. Henry James was my great-grandmother! Who, anyhow, was Petronius? You must go to West-Middle-West-by-West to know what writing is and there is no painter but….” That may well be true: we labour in that hope. But the point is that they remain in Paris. You don’t from here have to write to Oklahoma for contributions: from all the other proud cities you must.

Persons and Politics.

The Home being determined, the Proprietors pitched upon Mr. F.M. Ford as Conductor. Mr. Ford, formerly–and perhaps better–known as Ford Madox Hueffer was the founder of the “English Review” which in its day made good along the lines on which this Review now proposes to travel. It published the work not only of such old and eminent writers as Mr. Henry James, President Taft, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mr. Thomas Hardy, Monsieur Anatole France and Herr Gerhardt Hauptmann, but it backed with energy such then only rising waves as Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Joseph Conrad. It printed the first words of Mr. D.H. Lawrence, Mr. Ezra Pound, Mr. Norman Douglas and many other writers now established, and it serialized the first novel of the late Mr. Stephen Reynolds and the first of the longer sociological novels of Mr. Wells, who will contribute also to the Transatlantic. So too will Mr. Joseph Conrad. The ever moving film has now progressed by a reel and it is such writers as Mr. James Joyce, M. Pierre Hamp, Mr. E.E.Cummings, M. Descharmes and Mr. A.E. Coppard that with the assistance of Mr. Ezra Pound, Mr. T.S. Eliot, Miss Mina Loy, Mr. Robert McAlmon and Miss Mary Butts to mix our liquors as singularly as possible–the Review will energetically back, whilst it will hope to print the first words of many, many young giants as yet unprinted. The politics will be those of its editor who has no party leanings save toward those of a Tory kind so fantastically old fashioned as to see no salvation save in the feudal system as practised in the fourteenth century–or in such Communism as may prevail a thousand years hence.

The Second Country.

Finally, as to affairs inter-tribal! There was a United States naval officer who once said: “My country right or wrong!” France being the second fatherland of every human being–for who, born in Luton would not put Luton first and then Paris second?–the Review will have but one motto: Our Second Country right; our Second Country wrong; but right or wrong Our Second Country: This because of Toutes les gloires de la France. For other countries have their Tamerlanes transcendant in their halls of fame; it is only in France that you will find an equal glory accorded to all writers from Racine back to Villon; it is only in France that you will find the Arts of Peace esteemed above the science of warfare; not Napoleon or eagles on the postage stamps! Or there is perhaps China. But Pekin is a long way off. At any rate no writer or artist will in the Transatlantic Review find flouting merely because he is of a former Enemy or Neutral nation–nor will any other being.

The Transatlantic Review will devote a quarterly supplement to reproductions of paintings, drawings and sculpture; and a quarterly section to the Art of Music.

It will be published in Paris, London and New York.

Price fifty cents per copy; annual subscription five dollars.

(Reprinted in Poli 37 – 41)

Editors

Ford Madox Ford (Dec. 17, 1873 – June 26, 1983)
Editor: Jan. 1924 – Dec. 1924

Remembered best for his master novel The Good Soldier (1915) and his landmark founding of The English Review, Ford Madox Ford (originally Ford Madox Hueffer) promoted the value of the arts and the importance of literature for literature’s sake throughout his life. Having published Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, and W.B. Yeats in The English Review, Ford sought with the creation of The Transatlantic Review to establish a magazine “that would create anew an international Republic of Letters for Anglo-Saxondom” (Sullivan 459).

Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961)
Guest Editor: August 1924

In the 1920s Ernest Hemingway was struggling to become established as an author. In August 1924 Ford Madox Ford hoped to travel to New York City to seek further financial support for his magazine. Despite their history of clashing personalities, Ford asked Hemingway to edit the August issue while he was gone. Left in Paris, free of the literary shadow Ford cast upon him, Hemingway excised all works then currently in serialization from the issue, including Ford’s own Some Do Not.

Contributors

Georges Antheil
“Mother of the Earth”
“Notes for Performers”

Djuna Barnes
“Aller et Retour”
“Gertrude Donovan”

Joseph Conrad
“The Nature of a Crime”

A. E. Coppard
“The Higgler”

E. E. Cummings
Various poems

H. D.
“Nossis”
“Flute Song”
“After Troy”

Ford Madox Ford
Some Do Not… (Serially)

Juan Gris
“Des possibilités de la peinture”

Ernest Hemingway
“Work in Progress” (draft of “Indian Camp”)
“Cross Country Snow”
“The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife”

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

Mina Loy
“Gertrude Stein”

Robert McAlmon
“Elsie”

John Dos Passos
“July”

Ezra Pound
“Two Cantos”

Gertrude Stein
Excerpt from Making

Bibliography

Anderson, Elliott, and Mark Kinzie, eds. The Little Magazine in America: A Modern Documentary History. Stamford, CT: Stamford UP, 1978.

Carpenter, Humphrey. Geniuses Together: American Writers in Paris in the 1920s. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988.

Ford, Ford Madox. It Was the Nightingale. London: William Heinemann, 1934.

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

Image, cover Oct. 1924. “Apprenticeship and Paris.” 10 Sept. 2002. Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. University of South Carolina. 13 July 2009 <http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/amlit/hemingway/hem3.html>.

Image, Ernest Hemingway bibliographic response. “Ernest Hemingway In His Time: Appearing in the Little Magazine.” 18 Nov. 2003.Special Collections Department. University of Delaware Library. 22 July 2009 <http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/hemngway/mags/htm>.

Korg, Jacob. “Language Change and Experimental Magazines, 1910-1930. Contemporary Literature 13.2 (1972): 144-161.

Pizer, Donald. American Expatriate Writing and the Paris Moment: Modernism and Place. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1996.

Poli, Bernard J. Ford Madox Ford and the Transatlantic Review. New York: Syracuse UP, 1967.

Pound, Ezra. “Small Magazines.” The English Journal 19.9 (Nov. 1930): 689-704.

Saunders, Max. Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life. Volume II: The After-War World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Sullivan, Alvin, ed. British Literary Magazines: The Modern Age, 1914-1984 (Historical Guides to the World’s Periodicals and Newspaper). New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.

The Transatlantic Review. 1924. New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1967.

“The Transatlantic Review” compiled by Joel Hewett (Class of ’07, Davidson College)

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: European

Jun 23 2016

Tambour

Facts

Title:
Tambour

Date of Publication: 
Nov. 1928 – June 1930

Place of Publication: 
Paris, France

Frequency of Publication:
Quarterly

Circulation:
Around 2,000

Publisher:
Howard J. Salemson

Physical Description:
Irregular pages. 5.5″ x 6.5”: 60 pages of texts and notes followed by advertisements.

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s):
Howard J. Salemson

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Libraries with Original Issues:
Unknown

Reprint Editions:
Salemson, Howard, ed. Tambour. Comp. Mark S. Morrison and Jack Selzer. Vol. 1-8. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2002. Print.

Description

Tambour ran from the end of 1928 until June of 1930. The magazine was under the sole direction of its editor and founder, Howard Salemson. Salemson created a “vigorous hybrid, combining the modernist little magazine’s emphasis on innovative and unknown authors with the revue genre’s emphasis on a wide-ranging review section at the end of each issue” (Morrison 20). With his goals for a hybrid publication, Salemson also aimed to bring Tambour to a multi-cultural audience.  He wished to create a dialogue between French and American expatriate audiences and beyond “what could be achieved by occasional publication of foreign work in translation” (21).

Salemson reached multi-cultural audiences by including texts in both their original French and in English translation (that Salemson translated himself). The body of texts he published also included “early work of American writers who went on to enjoy great success,” including the work of writers like Paul Bowles and James T. Farrell (25).

Though Salemson only published 8 issues of Tambour, its run produced a sizable list of paid subscribers and its circulation grew to be larger “than those of other, more famous, little magazines like the Egoist” (58). Among Tambour’s subscribers were writers, philosophers, composers, moviemakers (sic), editors, and journalists from France, Italy, and the United States (59).

Gallery

Manifesto

Tambour’s manifesto is provided at the beginning of its first issue and goes under the heading, “Presentation.”  It was written by editor Harold Salemson and is provided in both French and English.

“To interpret the past is to express the present; to express the present is to create the future.

Every form of artistic expression, past, present, or future, whatever be its tendency, is tolerable.  It is only by establishing the movement, forward or backward, of art, that we can bring out its meaning, its value.  The new direction can be conceived only in the light of the lessons learned of the past.

In questions of art or of literature, ideas, beliefs, races, all melt into one.  Whatever may be our origin or our convictions, we are all humans united in an overpowering search for the ultimate goal of art, beauty.

We shall assemble all the species, all the tendencies.  To our readers will be left the privilege of passing judgment.

BUT THE NEW GAIT WILL BE SOUNDED TO THE BEAT OF THE TAMBOUR.

H.J.S.”

Editors

Howard J. Salemson (1910 – ?)
Editor: 1928 – 1930

Howard J. Salemson was the editor of Tambour and exercised complete control over the magazine. Born in Chicago in 1910 as the son of a physician and teacher,  Salemson was 18 when he started editing Tambour. He enrolled in the Experimental College at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1927. By 1928 Salemson had acquired enough of a background in French that the Experimental College decided to support a new venture for Salemson in Paris in the form of a little magazine. In 1928, with the funding of the Experimental College, Salemson published the first issue of the French literary magazine, Tambour (Morrison 6) .

After the conclusion of Tambour’s publication, Salemson kept his “bilingual emphasis” and began translating “articles and literary pieces for literary and film magazines, and also translated some twenty books–primarily nonfiction–from French into English” (66). Salemson also took his affinity for film and film criticism to the United States when he moved to Hollywood, CA with the intention of “becoming creatively involved in the making of films” (66). Due to the Great Depression, however, Salemson was never able to break into the film industry creatively. In the years following his 1931 move to Hollywood, Salemson worked for several major movie studios, but as “assistant director, technical advisor, French lyricst, and recording supervisor, publicity writer, and publicity director” (67).

Contributors

Howard J Salemson (notable contributions)
“Presentation”
“Open Letter to Michael Gold”
“To A Group of Young Men.”

Julian Shapiro 
“You Drum Major”
“An Old Lady”

Edward Roditi
“Melanchole Au Grand Air”
“Often At Night”
“Poems”

H.R. Hays 
“A Necessary Dismissal”

Richard Thomas 
“Vie Et Cevre de Jean Cocteau”
“Portrait of a Writer”

Bibliography

Hoffman, Frederick J., Charles Allan, and Carolyn F. Ulrich. The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1947.

Mark Morrisson, “Tambour, the ‘Revolution of the Word,’ and the Parisian Reception of Finnegans Wake,” in Mike Begnal (ed) Joyce and the City: The Significance of Place. Syracuse University Press, 2002.

Salemson, Howard, ed. Tambour. Comp. Mark S. Morrison and Jack Selzer. Vol. 1-8. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2002. Print.

Scholes, Robert and Sean Latham. “Modernist Journals Project.” (n.d.): MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

“Tambour” compiled by Danny Weiss (Class of ‘11, Davidson College)

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: European

Jun 23 2016

Story

Facts

Title: 
Story: The Magazine of the Short Story
Subtitle varied:
The only magazine devoted solely to the short story (Apr./May 1931 – Apr. 1933)
Devoted solely to the short story (June 1933 – Jan. 1937)
The magazine of the short story (Feb. 1937 – 1964)

Date of Publication: 
April 1931 – Summer 1948
1960 – 1967

Place(s) of Publication:
Vienna, Austria
Majorca, Spain
New York, NY

Frequency of Publication: 
Bi-monthly (frequency varied from quarterly to monthly)

Circulation: 
600 copies in 1933, a figure that climbed to 21,000 copies by the late 1930s

Publisher:
Story Magazine, Inc., New York, NY (June 1933 – Sept. 1934; Sept. 1935 – Summer 1948; 1960-1967)
Random House Magazine, Inc., New York, NY (Nov. 1934 – Aug. 1935)

Physical Description: 
21 x 24 cm

Price: 
50 cents per issue / $2.50 per year (3.3)
Price varies between 25 – 50 cents per issue and $2 – $4 per year

Editor(s): 
Whit Burnett (1931 – 1967)
Martha Foley (1931 – 1941)

Associate Editor(s):
Bernardine Kielty (1933 – 1940)
Hallie S. Burnett (1942 – 1948)

Libraries with Complete Original Issues:
Princeton University

Reprint Editions: 
Kraus Reprint Corporation, New York, 1967

Description

Story Magazine was originally printed in Europe (Vienna and Majorca, Spain) for two years before it moved to the United States. Editors Whit Burnett and Martha Foley were dedicated to preserving the short story, concerned that it would be lost among the article-ridden magazines of America. Their manifesto, printed in the first issue of the magazine, rejected the commercial preoccupations that were associated with magazines during this time. The magazine tried its best to remain separate from theories and popular movements during this time by focusing exclusively on short stories instead of political issues.

Story was published from 1931 to 1967, but ceased publication from 1948 to 1960. The covers were often red or yellow with simple, black script denoting the contents of the magazine. For the most part, Story is devoid of advertisements or color pages, consisting mostly of the plain text of story stories written by various authors, with occasional black and white images during the later years of publication.  Story tried to distinguish itself from ubiquitous pulp magazines and to remain separate from mass consumer culture by emphasizing literary prestige. Around the time of World War II, Story started including various articles supporting the American troops, such as the spread of photos titled “Writers and Fighters” that appeared in the September/October 1945 edition of the magazine. Biographies of the authors often accompanied the title page of each issue. In later editions, the magazine included a “Plus & Minus” section that was a survey of reviews published during the time.

Gallery

Manifesto

The following manifesto appeared in Story: The only magazine devoted solely to the Short Story 1:1 (April-May 1931):

“The only purpose of Story is to present, regularly, from one place, a number of Short Stories of exceptional merit. It has no theories, and is part of no movement. It presents short narratives of significance by no matter whom and coming from no matter where.

It is not an anthology, but a sort of proof-book of hitherto unpublished manuscripts. Some of the stories will doubtless appear later in other, perhaps more permanent pages, and the rights remain vested in the authors, to whom communications may be addressed, or to the Editors of Story, 16 Poetzleinsdorferstrasse (xviii) Vienna. Thus the magazine is withheld by the editors from public sale in England and the United States, but may be obtained in Vienna, Paris, Nice, Budapest and Berlin.

Only Short Stories are considered, and if and when any articles are used, they will be as rare as Short Stories of creative importance are today in the article-ridden magazines of America.”

Editors

Whit Burnett (Aug. 14, 1899 – 1972)
Editor: 1931 – 1967

Whit Burnett was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on August 14th, 1899 (Burnett). He attended school at the University of Utah and the University of California. After school he worked at various newspapers before moving to Europe to be a correspondent for the New York Sun (Burnett; Hailey). While in Vienna, in 1931, he cofounded Story with his wife, Martha Foley. Two years later the couple moved back to the states and continued editing Story together until 1941, when they divorced. Burnett later married Hallie Southgate Abbett, who then joined him as associate editor from 1942 – 1948 (Hailey). Burnett continued as Story’s editor until 1967, despite a lapse in publication from 1948 to 1960. He contributed numerous short stories to the collection and was responsible for discovering many talented young short story writers.

Martha Foley (1897 – 1977)
Editor: 1931 – 1941

Martha Foley was born in Boston and studied at Boston University.  After she graduated, she became heavily involved in American feminist and labor movements.  She also became involved in newspaper work, which resulted in her becoming a correspondent in Vienna (Burnett). She continued functioning as its co-editor until 1941. During her time editing Story, she contributed numerous short stories and editorials.

Contributors

Whit Burnett
numerous contributions

Charles Bukowski
“Rejection Slip” (1944)

Truman Capote
“My Side of the Matter” (1945)

John Cheever
“Homage to Shakespeare” (1937)

William Faulkner
“Artist at Home” (1933)

Martha Foley
numerous contributions

Joseph Heller
“I Don’t Love You Anymore” (1945)

Zora Neale Hurston
“The Gilded Six-Bits” (1933)

Aldous Huxley
“Morning in Basle” (1936)

J.D. Salinger
“The Young Folks” (1940)
“The Long Debut of Lois Taggett” (1942)
“Once a Week Won’t Kill You” (1944)
“Elaine” (1945)

William Saroyan
“The Daring Young man on the Flying Trapeze” (1934)
“The Nurse, the Angel, the Daughter of the Gambler” (1936)
“The Cat” (1936)
“We Want a Touchdown” (1938)

Tennessee Williams
“The Field of Blue Children” (1939)

Richard Wright
“Fire and Cloud” (1938)

Bibliography

Archives of Story Magazine and Story Press; 1931-1999, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Burnett, Hallie. “Personal Recollections Of A Story Editor.” Connecticut Review 6.2 (1973): 5-12. Print.

Burnett, Whit, and Martha Foley, eds. Story: The Magazine of the Short Story. 1931. 32 vols. New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1967. Print.

Burnett, Whit, and Martha Foley, eds. Story: The Magazine of the Short Story. 1931. 32 vols. New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1967. Print.

Calder-Marshall, A. “A Story Anthology. Edited by Whit Burnett and Martha Foley (Book Review).” The Spectator 152, no. 5526 (May 25, 1934): 820. Web.

Hailey, Jean R. “Whit Burnett, Editor of Story Magazine.” The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973). April 25, 1973, sec. Metro Local News Obituaries Classified

Images. AbeBooks Advertisement of Story: The Magazine of the Short Story. Digital image. AbeBooks. Web. 15 Sept. 2015.

Neugeboren, Jay. “Story.” The American Scholar Vol. 52, No. 3 (Summer 1983): 396-400, 402-406. Web.

Stolts, Craig. “J. D. Salinger’s Tribute to Whit Burnett.” Twentieth Century Literature Vol. 27, No. 4 (Winter, 1981): 325-330. Web.

Thorp, Willard. “Whit Burnett and Story Magazine.” Princeton University Library Chronicle 27 (1966): 107–12.

“Story” compiled by Audrey Lane (Class of 2016)

Written by Peter Bowman · Categorized: American, European

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »
  • About this Site
  • Permissions

Copyright © 2023 · Altitude Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in