Index of Modernist Magazines

The Favorite Magazine

Cover Page. The Favorite Magazine. August 1920.

Facts

Title:
The Favorite Magazine: The World’s Greatest Monthly

Date of Publication:
Aug. 1918 (1:1) – Jan. 1920 (10:1)

Place(s) of Publication:
3518 South State Street, Chicago, IL

Frequency of Publication:
Monthly

Circulation:
Exact circulation unknown, but presumably small due to debt issues and lack of prominent contributors

Physical Description:
Black and white print.  Nearly each page contains two columns of small text with phrase boxes following, such as “Co-Operation Will Solve the Race Problem.”  Each author has two or three articles extending over at least two pages.  Three or four pages feature poetry and a like number of pages feature photographs.  Advertisements comprise the final two or three pages.

Price:
15 cents per issue / $1.50 per year (foreign, $2.00 per year)

Editor(s):
Fenton Johnson

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Publisher:
Fenton Johnson

Libraries with Original Issues:
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Reprint Editions
Unknown

Description

Fenton Johnson founded The Favorite Magazine in 1918 as “the first and only weekly magazine published by and for colored people.” While Johnson targeted African-American readers, the magazine called for racial unity and was not meant to exclude white readers.

From the start The Favorite Magazine faced bleak prospects. Johnson states in his memoir, Tales of Darkest America, that “I had nothing save a meager allowance from a relative but I was determined to have a magazine and conceived the idea that I could accomplish a large number of reforms and the creation of a new literature through a magazine of my own” (6). The magazine served as a forum for Johnson and other African-American writers to define what Johnson termed “The Reconciliation Movement,” which sought to articulate and advocate reforms that would bring about racial harmony and social stability. Johnson wrote many of the magazine’s first articles under various pseudonyms, until he managed to convince other authors to join his cause.

Due to the magazine’s small circulation, Johnson accumulated a $900 debt that threatened to bankrupt his publication.  During these “dark days,” as he called them, Johnson’s aunt died and left him enough money to save the magazine.  Johnson could not withdraw these funds from his aunt’s estate, however, because the firm Conkling, Price, Webb, & Company refused to lend the necessary surety bonds on the grounds “that colored people’s estates were too risky” (Johnson 7).  In January 1920 Johnson terminated The Favorite Magazine in order to self-publish two books of essays and short stories.

The magazine’s failure led Johnson to question the the possibility of racial reform in America. “I wonder,” he wrote,  “if the Reconciliation Movement is not a grand dream, The Favorite Magazine a foolhardy venture and I, myself a failure.  I wonder if I was wise in trying to follow the star of the Muse in America or if I should have gone to England or even Paris and cast my lot where I would not have had to climb over the barrier of race” (Johnson 8).

Manifesto

From the First page of the June 1920 issue:

“The World’s Greatest Monthly. Articles of current interest to colored people, short stories, verses, photographic studies of Negro life desired. Co-Operation Will Solve the Race Problem.”

Johnson hoped that his magazine would promote the expansion of his “Reconciliation Movement.” In Johnson’s words, “this movement […] was to me not only the solution of the problem of race but also the problem of law and order” (7).  Despite the magazine’s cancellation, Johnson continued to promote the ideals of “The Reconciliation Movement” in both his literature and his career as a civil servant.

Editors

Fenton Johnson was born in Chicago on May 7, 1888, to Jessie Taylor and Elijah Johnson. As a railroad porter Elijah Johnson was one of the wealthiest African-Americans in Chicago. His son attended two high schools in Chicago, and from a young age Fenton Johnson wrote poetry and drama. After attending Northwestern University and graduating from the University of Chicago, Johnson taught at Louisville State University. Unable to support himself on a $40 monthly salary, he returned to Chicago.

Johnson wrote poetry that focused on race relations in the modern era, and in his memoir he articulates his hopes of becoming a great literary figure able to inspire social change in America and the difficulties he encountered: “It seemed to me like trying to walk the Atlantic ocean to obtain recognition in the literary world and especially when one was attempting to present the life of the race to which I belong” (5).  After his first poetry book, A Little Dreaming, received favorable reviews from Albert Shaw, editor of the American Review of Reviews, Johnson moved to New York and enrolled in the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia University.  There Johnson again enjoyed favorable reviews for two new poetry volumes, Visions of the Dusk and Songs of the Soil, which encouraged his return to Chicago to begin work as a journalist. In Chicago Johnson was a founding editor of The Champion (1916), which celebrated black achievement. The Champion only lasted one year.

In August 1918 Johnson founded The Favorite Magazine, which ran until January 1920. During this time Johnson married Cecilia Rhone and continued to contribute poetry to magazines such as Poetry and Others. After working for the Federal Writers’ Project as part of the Works Progress Administration in Chicago for a number of years, Johnson died on September 17, 1958.  Along with other prominent African-American writers of the era, Johnson’s work anticipated the dynamic racial and social movements of the Harlem Renaissance.

Contributors

Fenton Johnson
“The Carnival”
“Prayer”
“A Woman of Good Cheer”
“Through the Valley Despair”

James H. Moody
“Plain Facts” (monthly column)

Will Sexton
“A Visit to State Street”
“Chiseled Gems”

Moses Jordan
“An Echo of Wartime”
“In the Ruined Church at Mandres”

H. Georgiana Whyte
“At the General Conference”
“Conservation of the Family”
“Our Women” (monthly column)

Frank M. Livingstone
“A Negro’s Prayer”

Bibliography

The Favorite Magazine.  Ed. Fenton Johnson.  Davidson College Library microfilm.  June 1920-January 1921. New York: New York Public Library.

“Fenton Johnson.”  Double-Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology.  Ed. Maureen Honey & Venetria Patton. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. 2001. Google Books, p. 268.

“Fenton Johnson.”  Encyclopedia Britannica 11th Edition.  Ed. Hugh Chisholm.  Jrank website.

Johnson, Fenton.  “The Story of Myself.”  Tales of Darkest America.  Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, LLC.  Pp. 5-8.

Wagner, Jane.  Black Poets of the United States.  University of Illinois Press.  1973.  Google Books, pp. 179-183.

“The Favorite Magazine” compiled by John Evans (Class of ‘11, Davidson College)

The Exile

Facts

Title: 
The Exile

Date of Publication: 
Spring 1927 – Autumn 1928

Place(s) of Publication: 
Dijon, France (Spring 1927)
Chicago (Autumn 1927, Spring 1928, Autumn 1928)

Frequency of Publication: 
Semiannual

Circulation: 
The initial print run of the first issue was 500 copies.

Publisher: 
Maurice Darantière, Dijon, France (Spring 1927)
Pascal Covici, Inc., Chicago (Autumn 1927, Spring 1928)
Covici Friede, New York (Autumn 1928)

Physical Description: 
19 cm. Red-orange cover with black text; no cover illustration. 110-120 pages of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.

Price: 
50 cents per issue

Editor(s): 
Ezra Pound

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Libraries with Original Issues: 
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Kent State University; Yale University; Columbia University; Michigan State University; Adelphi University; Hamilton College; University of Massachusetts, Amherst; University of Rhode Island; University of Nebraska, Lincoln; University of Texas; University of California, Santa Cruz; Stanford University; University of Delaware; University of Florida

Reprint Editions: 
New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1967

Description

Ezra Pound has long been considered a major player in the world of little magazines. From 1905 on he was published frequently and widely across little magazines and edited several, including Poetry, The Egoist, Blast, and The Little Review. He became well known for his domineering editorial style and his unwillingness to compromise with coeditors and contributors.

Pound’s motivation to start a little magazine came with the death of American poet and editor Ernest Walsh in October 1926. Walsh’s magazine, This Quarter, had provided a venue for publication for American expatriates writing in Europe; the community feared that Walsh’s death, and that of his magazine, would leave a void. Pound began to develop The Exile that same year, writing to his father that he was “having foolish ideas about starting a magazine” (Monk 430).

The Exile provided a place for Americans in Europe to publish their work: in its four issues, the magazine published both poetry and fiction by writers of varying degrees of recognition, including Ernest Hemingway, W.B. Yeats, and William Carlos Williams. The Exile is also known for its endorsement of the emerging Objectivist movement and the poets Louis Zukofski and Carl Rakosi.

The Exile is, however, first and foremost an organ for Pound’s personal and aesthetic philosophies. He wonders in the first issue “whether there is any mental activity” in the “colossal monkey house” that is America, and he calls Fascism and the Russian revolution “interesting phenomena,” reprinting news of the “Bolshevik atrocities” from the Chicago Tribune (88-92). Pound does, however, state his primary desire to “produc[e] something that will be enjoyable even after a successful revolution” and argues that art and artists exist above and beyond politics (90). The Exile is also notable for its complete exclusion of female contributors; Pound even instructed his American partner John Price not to “waste postage” sending him works by women, writing that “the whole of american publicationdom [sic] is submerged with females. Until a female invents something let us conduct this magazine by male effort” (Pound, qtd. in Monk 437).

Though The Exile was short-lived, it did, as Craig Monk aptly states, “illustrat[e] the ingenuity that coloured the creativity of modernism and the exclusivity that anticipated its limitations” (444).

Manifesto

In The Exile’s inaugural issue, Ezra Pound introduces his creation: “In 1917 [the year Pound became London editor of the Little Review], I presented a certain program of authors; in starting this new review I intend to present, or at least to examine the possibility of presenting an equally interesting line-up. If the job bores me I shall stop at the end of Vol. 1″ (88).

Pound’s initial ambivalence is somewhat disingenuous, and he goes on to explain his larger goals for Exile:

“At present, in that distressed country [America], it would seem that neither side ever answers the other: such ignoring, leading, in both cases, to ignorance. I should like to open a small forum in which the virtues or faults of either side might be mentioned without excessive animus.

Both Fascio and the Russian revolution are interesting phenomena; beyond which there is historic perspective. Herrin and Passaic are also phenomena, and indictments” (89).

Despite professing a surface interest in politics and current events, he clarifies that his true cause is art and the artist:

“As to our ‘joining revolutions’ etc. It is unlikely. The artist is concerned with producing something that will be enjoyable even after a successful revolution. So far as we know even the most violent bolchevik [sic] has never abolished electric light globes merely because they were invented under another regime. [. . .] The artist, the maker, is always too far ahead of any revolution, or reaction, or counter-revolution or counter-re-action for his vote to have any immediate result; and no party program ever contains enough of his program to give him the least satisfaction. The party that follows him wins; and the speed with which they set about it, is the measure of their practical capacity and intelligence. Blessed are they who pick the right artists and makers” (90-1).

“The Exile.” The Exile 1:1 (Spring 1927): 88-92.

Editors

Ezra Pound (Oct. 30, 1885 – Nov. 1, 1972)
Editor

Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho in 1885 and grew up in Pennsylvania (Moody 4). He studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and began an affair with Hilda Doolittle, better known as the poet H.D. He transferred to, and eventually graduated from, Hamilton College in New York in 1905, and he returned to the University of Pennsylvania to complete his master’s in 1906 (14-18). In 1908 Pound moved to Europe and settled in London, where he found a home in the literary expat community, and began to publish his own poetry (68). In 1912 Pound and H.D. collaborated to launch the Imagist movement, which grew to include Richard Aldington, Amy Lowell, Marianne Moore, and others. Pound’s interest in Imagism gave way to Vorticism, which he promoted alongside his friend and Blast editor Wyndham Lewis (218). Pound continued to write his own poetry and develop a discerning aesthetic philosophy, publishing in and editing several little magazines in Europe, including Blast, Poetry, and the Little Review (226; 235; 280). In 1915 Pound began his Cantos, a work that would consume the rest of his writing career. He was devoted to discovering and publishing new poets and writers, including T.S. Eliot and James Joyce (307; Wilmer n.p.). In 1924 Pound moved to Rapallo, Italy, where he was inspired to create The Exile. He lived in Italy until 1945, when he was arrested for his Fascist sympathies and his opposition to the war. Pound was institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital to avoid a prison sentence, and he continued to write during his incarceration. Pound moved back to Italy after his release, where he died in 1972 (Wilmer n.p.).

Contributors

Richard Aldington 
“Natal Verses for the Birth of a New Review”

Morley Callaghan
“Ancient Lineage”

John Cournos
“Poems”

Ralph Cheever Dunning
“Poems From the Four Winds”
“Threnody in Sapphics”

Clifford Gessler
“Waikiki”

Joe Gould
“Art”

Ernest Hemingway
“Neo-thomist Poem”

Guy Hickock
“Or those synthetic states”

Payson Loomis
“Don’t Wake Me Up Yet”

Robert McAlmon
“Truer Than Most Accounts”
“Gertrude Stein”

Benjamin Peret
“Les Cheveux dans les  Yeux”

Ezra Pound
“Canto XXIII”
“Desideria”

Carl Rakosi
“Characters”
“Wanted”

John Rodker
“Adolphe 1920”

G.S. Seymour
“My Five Husbands”

Herman Spector
“Cloaks and Suits”

Howard Weeks
“Stunt Piece”

William Carlos Williams
“The Descent of Winter”

W.B. Yeats
“Sailing to Byzantium”
“Blood and the Moon”

Louis Zukofsky
“Poem Beginnning ‘The’”
“Mr. Cummings and the Delectable Mountains”

Bibliography

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

MacDonald, John W. “The Exile 3 Edited by Ezra Pound.” John W. MacDonald’s Weblog, 8 March 2005.

Monk, Craig. “The Price of Publishing Modernism: Ezra Pound and the Exile in America.” Canadian Review of American Studies 31.1 (2001): 429-446.

Moody, Anthony David. Ezra Pound: Poet: A Portrait of the Man and His Work, Volume I, The Young Genius 1885–1920. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Page, Douglass D. The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941. London: Faber and Faber, 1982.

Wilhelm, James J. Ezra Pound: The Tragic Years, 1925-1972. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.

Wilmer, Clive. “Pound’s Life and Career,” The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Rpt. in Modern American Poetry. ed. Cary Nelson and Bartholomew Brinkman. University of Illinois, 2000. n.p.

“The Exile” compiled by Abby Perkins (Class of ’13, Davidson College) 

The Evergreen

Title Page, 1:4 (Winter 1896-97).

Facts

Title:
 The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal (not to be confused with The Evergreen Review).
Also in the series are The New Evergreen, “the Christmas book of University Hall,” vol 1, 1894, and Evergreen Almanac, vol 4, 1897.

Date of Publication: 
Spring (Vol. 1, 1895), Autumn (Vol. 2, 1895), Summer (Vol. 3, 1896), Winter (Vol. 4, 1896-97).

Place(s) of Publication: 
Edinburgh, Scotland
London, England
Philadelphia, PA.

Frequency of Publication: 
Quarterly (only four volumes ever published)

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher: 
Edinburgh: The Lawnmarket of Edinburgh by Patrick Geddes and colleagues
London: T. Fisher Unwin
America: J.B. Lippincott Co.

Physical Description: 
150-160 pages per issue; all issues had both color and black and white illustrations.

Price: 
5 cents per issue

Editor(s): 
Patrick Geddes
William Sharp (pseudonym of Finona MacLeod)

Libraries with Original Issues:
Unknown

Reprint Editions: 
A full run of the publication available online at Archive.org: Spring (Vol. 1, 1895), Autumn (Vol. 2, 1895), Summer (Vol. 3, 1896), Winter (Vol. 4, 1896-97)

Description

In the spring of 1895, Robert Geddes, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, founded a small quarterly publication called The Evergreen as a forum for contemporary Celtic literature and illustration. In addition to his interests that ranged from city planning to Irish art, Geddes was passionate about ecology and he saw The Evergreen as a place to draw attention to the natural beauty of the earth in order to increase awareness and concern for ecological preservation.

The following quotation is a description of The Evergreen as posted in an exhibit at the Patrick Geddes Memorial Trust in Edinburgh, Scotland:

The journal entitled The Evergreen was the principal mouthpiece of Geddes’ Celtic revivalism. It is not certain whether the four issues were all that were intended but each one proclaimed a season of the year as the focal point for a series of widely differing studies. The first edition appeared in 1895 containing essays, poems, and illustrations devoted to the theme of Spring in each of Nature, Life, The World and the North respectively. But the season also provided a metaphor for Geddes’ belief in a ‘Scots Renascence’ in which cultural awareness would be restored by a return to ‘local tradition and living nature. (“The Scottish Renaissance Movement”)

The Evergreen was consistent in its portrayal of nature as sublime, mysterious, and beautiful.  The publication promoted the natural landscape of Ireland as intrinsic to the country’s artistic heritage and of necessary importance to the blossoming new literature and visual art of the Celtic Revival and Renaissance. The Evergreen folded after four issues, however, likely due to a lack of funding (Cevasco 194).

Manifesto

The Evergreen never published an official manifesto, but an epigraph was published in the front of the first volume that served as a succinct statement of purpose:

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;

there are four seasons in mind of man.

(The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal, 1.1)

Besides its implication that man’s intellect is multifaceted and influenced by his natural surroundings, this statement also hints at the political aim of the publication, conveying a desire for the publication to unite natural and human concerns and conditions.  Geddes’s position was at the helm of Edinburgh’s Celtic “renascence” and he hoped to elevate Edinburgh to the status of a “European capital” (Harvard 150).  Geddes’s friend and colleague Israel Zangwill commented that, “While the Men of ‘The Evergreen’ would renew local feeling and colour,’ they ‘would also express the larger view of Edinburgh,’ an aspiration with which all intelligent men must sympathize” (Harvard 150).  The Evergreen would represent the multifaceted, micro- and macrocosmic political, artistic, and ecological concerns of the modern era.

Editors

Patrick Geddes (Oct. 2, 1854 – Apr. 17, 1932)
Editor

Patrick Geddes was Evergreen’s founder and head editor. Geddes called the 19th century “the Scottish Renaissance,” a movement in the Scottish verbal and visual arts that combined interests in modern philosophy and technology with Scotland’s folkloric and linguistic traditions. Geddes used The Evergreen as a mouthpiece for the Scottish Renaissance and published in it the best naturalist fiction and art he could collect. A writer himself, he published on subjects ranging from economics, geology, printing, and public health. Biographer Philip Boardman heralded Geddes as being “what Leonardo [da Vinci] had been 400 years before: a prodigy in physical endurance, range of interests, and imaginative powers” (Grewar). Besides publishing the magazine, Geddes traveled across Europe, Asia, and America, lecturing about and designing towns and spreading the word about ecological concerns resulting from industrial development. Biographers characterize Geddes as intensely erudite but charismatic; in her article “Patrick Geddes: The Practical Visonary,” Wendy Lesser writes, “Descriptions by acquaintances, Geddes’ own letters, and even his published works reveal a man who was so intense and so vibrant that one could be overwhelmed by his style without really understanding or judging what he was saying” (Lesser 311).

William Sharp (Sept. 12, 1855 – Dec. 12, 1905)
Contributing Editor

Scottish prose and poetry writer William Sharp also edited and contributed to The Evergreen, publishing in the magazine under the pseudonym Fiona MacLeod. Sharp was a colorful, elusive character in late 19th century Scottish literary circles.  A love affair with a woman named Edith Rinder inspired his pseudonym, which allegedly “arose from the inspiration and arousal that Sharp felt in Edith’s presence” (Scotland Channel). In a biography about his life and work, Alaya Harvard characterizes Sharp as, “a self-romanticized madman, frenzied wanderer, religious cultist, and literary opportunist” (Harvard 3). His contributions to The Evergreen were largely in the voice of MacLeod.

Contributors

Patrick Geddes
“Life and its Science”
“The Sociology of Autumn”
“Flower of the Grass”
“The Megalithic Builders”

William Sharp (pseudonym Fiona MacLeod)
“The Borland Wind”
“The Hill Water”
“Oceanus”
“Day and Night”
“The Bandruidh”
“The Anointed Man”
“Mary of the Gael”
“A Summer Air”
“The Kingdom of the Earth”
“Under the Rowans”
“When the Dew is Falling”
“The Love-Kiss of Dermid and Grainne
“The Snow Sleep of Angus Ogue”

Helen Hay
“Almanac”
“Proem” (initial by Helen Hay)
“Four Easter Letters” (initial by Helen Hay)
“The Anointed Man” Head-piece illustration
“Almanac” illustration
“A Summer Air” illustration
“Vers L’Unite” illustration
“To Robert Burns” illustration
“Nannack” illustration

Nellie Baxter
Headpieces and Tailpieces

Marion A. Mason
Headpieces and Tailpieces

Annie Mackie
Headpieces and Tailpieces

John Duncan
Illustrations

Bibliography

Cevasco, G.A. “Evergreen, The.” The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture. New York: Garland, 1993. 194. Print.

Evergreen Description. Digital image. Sir Patrick Geddes Memorial Trust. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2012.

Geddes, Sir Patrick. The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal 1-4 (1854-1932): n. p. Internet Archive. Web. 28 Sept. 2012.

Grewar, Mindy. “Patrick Geddes – a Man Ahead of His Time.” Leopard: The Magazine for North-East Scotland. N.p., Sept. 2004. Web. 1 Oct. 2012.

Harvard, Alaya. William Sharp– “Fiona MacLeod,” 1855-1905. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1970. Print.

Lesser, Wendy. “Patrick Geddes: The Practical Visionary.” The Town Planning Review45.3 (1974): 311-27. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.

“New Evergreen, The.” The Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals 1800-1900, N-O. Ed. Johns S. North. Vol. 8. Waterloo: North Waterloo Academic, 2003. 109-110. Print.

North, John S. “Evergreen, The.” The Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals 1800-1900, E-D. Waterloo: North Waterloo Academic, 2003. 619. Print.

Scotland Channel. “William Sharp – The Personality behind Fiona Macleod.” Scotland.com: The Scotland Channel, n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2012.

“The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal.” Internet Archive. University of Toronto Libraries, n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2012.

“The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal.” Modernist Magazines Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2012.

“The Scottish Renaissance Movement.” Exhibition: The Modern Scot. National Galleries of Scotland, n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2012.

“The Evergreen” compiled by Emily Romeyn (Class of ’13, Davidson College)

The English Review

Facts

Title:
The English Review

Date of Publication:
Nov. 1908 – Jul. 1937

Place(s) of Publication:
London, England

Frequency of Publication:
Monthly

Circulation:
A range of 1,000 – 18,000

Publisher:
Duckworth & Co., Chapman & Hall

Physical Description:
25 cm in length. A blue/grey cover and uniform, single column black type; approximately 175 pages; includes a range of works from poetry and short stories to political pieces.

Price:
2 shillings and sixpence

Editor(s):
Ford Madox Hueffer  (1908 – 1909)
Austin Harrison (1909 – 1923)
Ernest Remnant (1923 – 1931)
Douglas Jerrold (1931 – 1935)
Wilfrid Hindle (1936)
Derek Walker-Smith (1936 – 1937)

Libraries with Original Issues:
US Library of Congress; University of California at Los Angelos; University of NC at Chapel Hill; Newberry Library Chicago

Reprint Editions:
London : Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1908 – 1937

Description

The English Review sought to provide intelligent commentary on contemporary political events as well as social and cultural life. The English Review was started by Ford Madox Heuffer at the end of November, 1908 with the idea of promoting Impressionism and its literary equivalents.  The English Review attracted well-read, culturally and politically informed citizens with questions about contemporary life. It includes a range of works from poetry, to short stories, to political pieces by a mix of Victorian and Edwardian authors like Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and D. H. Lawrence.  In 1937 the magazine was absorbed by the National Review.

Manifesto

The English Review did not publish an official manifesto, but these quotations by it’s founder, Ford Madox Hueffer, demonstrate his dreams and intentions for the publication:

“The state of the present world of poetry is curious and worthy of attention [__] poets and publishers declare that there are no readers: poets and readers declare that there are no publishers: and publishers and readers declare that there are no poets.”  “We wait, in fact, for the poet who, in limpid words, with clear enunciation and, without inverted phrases, shall give the mind of the time sincere frame and utterance.”

Editors

Ford Madox Hueffer (Dec. 17, 1873 – Jun. 26, 1939)
Editor: 1908 – 1909

Ford Hermann Hueffer was born in Wimbledon in 1873 to a German father and English mother. He would use the name Ford Madox Hueffer before changing it to Ford Madox Ford in 1919 (possibly because Hueffer sounded too Germanic after World War I). Hueffer began The English Review in December  1908 as a venue for some of the most well-known modernist writers of the day. As he was from an aristocratic family and had a wide range of literary, social and political contacts, Hueffer was in an ideal position to launch his own cultural journal. He was at the center of innovative 20th century writers and saw publishing their literature as the magazine’s primary goal. After just fifteen issues, Hueffer lost control of The English Review due to his lack of organization, tendency to quarrel with important contributors and supporters, and incompetence with finances.

Austin Frederic Harrison (1873 – 1928)
Editor: 1909 – 1923

Harrison was named editor of The English Review by Alfred Mond, who purchased the magazine in 1909. Harrison’s primary goal was to make a profit with the periodical. To do so, he increased advertising, lowered the cost of the magazine, and asked writers to shorten their work.  He was able to increase circulation as well as publish works by authors as diverse as Katherine Mansfield, George Bernard Shaw, and William Butler Yeats.

Bibliography

MacShane, Frank. “The English Review”. South Atlantic Quarterly 60:3 (Summer 1961).

Saunders, Max. “Ford Madox Ford: Further Bibliographies”. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Volume 43, Number 2, 2000.

Sullivan, Alvin, ed. “The English Review”. British Literary Magazines. vol.3.Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,1983.

Vogeler, Martha S. Austin Harrison and the English Review. Columbia : University of Missouri Press, 2008.

“The English Review” compiled by Susan Ramsay (Class of ‘11, Davidson College)

The Enemy

Facts

Title: 
The Enemy

Date of Publication: 
Feb. 1927 (1:1); Sept. 1927 (1:2); March 1929 (1:3)

Place(s) of Publication: 
London, England

Frequency of Publication:
The editor noted in the opening issue’s “Preliminary Note” that “It is regrattable that this paper cannot be definitely advertised as quarterly… the leisure required to organise and bring out a fresh number, at a stated time, is not always available (vii). It appeared irregularly.

Circulation: 
1500 copies (1:1)
5000 copies (1:2)

Publisher: 
Arthur Press, London

Physical Description: 
100 – 150 pages in length. Most of the work in the magazines, including occasional photographs and drawings, were those of Wyndham Lewis.

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s): 
Wyndham Lewis

Associate Editor(s):
None

Libraries with Original Issues: 
Huntington Library (with signed copy 1:1); University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Library of Congress; Columbia University; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art

Reprint Editions: 
New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1967.
Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1994.
PDFs online at The Modernist Magazines Project

Description

A review of art and literature, The Enemy was first published in the first quarter of 1927 and ran until 1929. Founder, editor, and primary contributor Wyndham Lewis hoped that his periodical, in keeping with its title, “secures for it this virtue: that it does not arrive under the misleading colours of friendship or of a universal benevolence” (Hoffman 283). In short, Lewis wanted The Enemy to challenge the social and cultural norms of his era, as many Modernists sought to do. Unlike many of these Modernist contemporaries, Lewis was a loner; he looked to distance himself from London’s avant-garde scene and with it, many of his former associates. Lewis used The Enemy to release his critical estimates of Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, D. H. Lawrence, Sherwood Anderson, and others. He even used the magazine to engage in an extended literary battle with fellow little magazine, transition.

Manifesto

The following quotation, from Plutarch’s Moralia, appeared inside the front cover of each issue of The Enemy:

“A MAN of understanding is to benefit by his enemies…. He that knoweth that he hath an enemy will look circumspectly about him to all matters, ordering his life and behaviour in better sort … therefore it was well and truly said of Antisthenes, that such men as would be saved and become honest ought of necessity to have either good friends or bitter enemies. But forasmuch as amity and friendship nowadays speaketh with a small and low voice, and is very audible and full of words in flattery, what remaineth but that we should hear the truth from the mouth of our enemies? Thine enemy, as thou knowest well enough, watcheth continually, spying and prying into all thine actions. As for our friends, it chanceth many times that they fall extreme sick, yea, and die while we defer and put off from day to day to go and visit them, or make small reckoning of them; but as touching our enemies we are so observant, we curiously enquire even after their very dreams.

“The end of all those combats that our forefathers in the old world had against wild beasts was that they might not be wounded or hurt by strange or savage beasts; but those who came after have learned, moreover, how to make use of them; not only take order to keep themselves from receiving any harm or damage by them; but (that which more is) have the skill to draw some commodity from them, feeding of their flesh, clothing their bodies with their wool and hair, curing their maladies with their gall and rennet, arming themselves with their hides and skins.”

The following lines, printed on the front cover of Wyndham Lewis’ final issue of The Enemy, provide insight into both the magazine’s style and Lewis’ Enemy persona.

The “Enemy” is the notorious author, painter and publicist, Mr. Wyndham Lewis. He is the Diogenes of the day: he sits laughing in the mouth of his tub and pours forth his invective upon all passer-bys, irrespective of race, creed, rank or profession, and sex. This paper, which appears occasionally, is the principal vehicle of his criticism.”

The Enemy. 1:3 (Mar. 1929).

Editors

Wyndham Lewis (Nov. 18, 1882 – Mar. 7, 1957)
Editor: Feb. 1927 – Mar. 1929

Percy Wyndham Lewis, editor for BLAST‘s two-issue run and sole editor of The Enemy, was born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada. Described as an “English Cubist” painter and writer, Lewis enjoyed a respected reputation among London’s young avant-garde and teamed with Ezra Pound in 1912 to form the Vorticist movement. Lewis published BLAST to explain the aesthetic theory and showcase the achievements of the “Anglo-Saxon Genius” of the Vorticists (Lewis, qtd. in Seshagiri 582). The short-lived movement died out after World War I and demand for Lewis’ art floundered as he shifted to studying political theory, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology (Cassidy 5). By the mid 1920s Lewis contributed frequently to a variety of modernist Littles and furiously published dozens of books and manifestos. In a 1922 issue of Criterion Lewis proclaimed his role as an adversary to those he labeled “amateurs”, “apes”, and “mock artists” who stole valuable studio space and column inches from “professionals” like him; a few weeks later, Lewis published again in Criterion to announce his new “Enemy” persona against such artistic imposters (Hanna 4). Five years later, Wyndham Lewis created The Enemy as a space for him to distance himself from the disdained avant-garde scene. Despite the scathing reviews he published in his magazine of such widely-acclaimed authors as James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, and even Sigmund Freud, T. S. Eliot described Lewis as ”the most fascinating personality of our time…the most distinguished living novelist” (von der Ropp).

Contributors

Roy Campbell
“The Albatross”

T. S. Eliot
“A Note on Poetry and Belief”

Wyndham Lewis
“What’s in a Namesake?”
“The Revolutionary Simpleton”
“An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce”
“The Blessings of the Sophisticated School of Literature”

Laura Riding
“Fine Fellow Son of a Poor Fellow”

Bibliography

Campbell, Sue Ellen. “The Enemy Opposite: The Outlaw Criticism of Wyndham Lewis.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism 104 (2001): 165-90.

Cassidy, Victor. “Who Was Wyndham Lewis?” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism 104 (2001): 26-38.

The Enemy. 1927 – 1929. New York: Kraus Reprints, 1967.

Hanna, Julian. “Blasting After Blast: Wyndham Lewis’ Late Manifestos.” Journal of Modern Literature 31 (2007): 124.

Hoffman, Frederick J., Charles Allen, and Carolyn F. Ulrich. The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1947. 283-84.

Image, rollover. “The Enemy 1: A Review of Art and Literature (Jan 1927).” Ginko Press. 23 July 2009.

Pound, Omar, and Philip Grover. Wyndham Lewis: A Descriptive Bibliography. Kent: Wm Dawson & Sons Ltd, 1978. 85-90.

Seshagiri, Urmila. “Racial Politics, Modernist Poetics.” Modernism: A Comparative History of Literature in European Languages. Astradur Eysteinsson and Vivian Liska, eds. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2007. 582.

“The Enemy” compiled by Frank Swain (Class of ’09, Davidson College)