Title:
New Masses

Date of Publication:
May 1926 – Jan. 12, 1948

Place of Publication:
New York City, NY.

Frequency of Publication: 
Monthly (1926 – 1933)
Weekly (1934 – 1948)

Circulation:
The circulation of the magazine fluctuated, but it reached tens of thousands, with 25,000 issues printed weekly in 1934, and and peaking at 100,000 issues printed in December 1936.

Publisher: 
The New Masses, Inc. 39 West Eighth Street, New York, NY.

Physical Description:
11”X14,” 32 pages, 4 columns, colored ed. (May 1926 – Oct. 1926).
9⅓”X12¼,” 32 pages, black ink. (Nov. 1926 – Sept. 1928). 
9&13/16”X11¾,” 24 pages, black ink. (October 1928 – ?).

Price:
 10 – 25 cents.

Editor(s):
Mike Gold (1926 – 1934)
Joseph Freeman (1926 – 1927).

Associate Editor(s):
Egmont Arens
Hugo Gellert
James Rorty
John Sloan
Robert Evans
Louis Lozowick

Libraries with Original Issues:
E.H. Little Library, Davidson College; Holt Labor Library of San Francisco; Stanford University’s Hoover Library. PDF Archive at Marxists.org.

Reprint Editions:
Unknown.

Mike Gold and Joseph Freeman founded New Masses in 1926 with explicit intentions to recapture the characteristics of Max Eastman and Floyd Dell’s The Masses, a magazine both Gold and Freeman enjoyed and contributed to in their youth. New Masses’ contents included prose, poetry, editorials, reviews, and letters, often with a leftist bend. The magazine was distinguished by its support of the visual arts, publishing “acerbic cartoons and mordant political drawings” (Langa 25), as well as reproductions of prints and paintings that addressed relevant social issues.

New Masses published monthly in 1926 until it went weekly in January 1934. The magazine tackled political topics such as labor unions, birth control, and civil rights, with long time contributing editors such as Sherwood Anderson, Art Young, Claude Mckay, John Dos Passos, Floyd Dell, and Carl Sandburg. Other notable writers include Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, and Ernest Hemingway. Gold and others wanted the magazine to be “interesting above everything else” (Klein 70), in ways that came across as youthful, new, biting, and brave, but they were by no means in pursuit of beauty. Gold continued as the central editor for New Masses until 1934, and the magazine published its last issue on January 12, 1948.

The New Masses offers a manifesto in an editorial entitled “IS THIS IT?” (1.1 May 1926):

“Is this the magazine our prospectuses talked about? We are not so sure. This, however, is undoubtedly the editorial which, in all our prospectuses, we promised faithfully not to write.

As to the magazine, we regard it with almost complete detachment and a good deal of critical interest, because we didn’t make it ourselves.

We merely “discovered” it.

We were confident that somewhere in America a NEW MASSES existed, if only as a frustrated desire.

To materialize it, all that was needed was to make a certain number of prosaic editorial motions.

We made the motions, material poured in, and we sent our first issue to the printer.

Next month we shall make, experimentally, slightly different motions, and a somewhat different NEW MASSES will blossom profanely on the news-stands in the midst of our respectable contemporaries, the whiz-bangs, the success-liturgies, the household aphrodisiacs, the snob-baedekkers and the department store catalogues.

It’s an exciting game, and we’d like very much to draw you, our readers, into it. What would you like to see in the NEW MASSES? Do you want more cartoons? More labor stories? More satire—fictions—poetry? How about criticism of books, theatre, art music, the movies?

How would you feel if the NEW MASSES went in for some confession articles? America is going through a queer period of stock-taking. Maybe we’ll get some well-known tired radicals to tell what made them tired; or induce some quite unknown people, who are, however, rich both in experience and in honesty, to describe their experience in print.

We would like to fill a page with letters from all over the country telling of industries, occupations, changing social customs, the daily work and play of Americans everywhere. We see this as a possible feature—a monthly mosaic of American life, in which the tragedy and comedy, the hopes and dreams of the most obscure American mill town or cross-roads village will be chronicled with as much respect and sympathy by our correspondents as if they were reporting the political or artistic events of a European capital. Will you write us a letter of this sort? Will you send us ideas for other features?”

Michael “Mike” Gold (Apr. 12, 1894 – May 14, 1967)
Editor: May 1926 – Jan. 1934

Mike Gold was the pen name for Jewish American writer Itzok Isaac Granich, who was born to Romanian parents in the Lower East Side of New York City. He published a poem in 1914 in Masses, and soon thereafter fell into the inner circle of Floyd Dell and Max Eastman, contributing regularly to the magazine at the age of only twenty-one. Gold would later recognize Dell and Eastman as his teachers. Two of Gold’s most notable publications were his semi-autobiographical novel Jews Without Money, published in 1930, and an article in New Masses titled “Gertrude Stein: A Literary Idiot.” Gold was often fierce in his writing and recognized later on as a strong voice in the Communist party.

Joseph Freeman (Oct. 7, 1897 – Aug. 8, 1965)
Editor: May 1926 – Nov. 1926

Joseph Freeman was born in the village of Piratin, Ukraine, which was under control of the Russian Empire at the time. Freeman, of Jewish decent, lived through a period of strong anti-Semitism and pogroms across the Russian Empire. Freeman’s family fled Russia in 1904 and emigrated to the United States, where Freeman became a naturalized citizen in 1920. Freeman graduated from Columbia University in 1919 and worked as a writer or editor for several magazines in the United States and abroad. Freeman co-founded New Masses with Mike Gold and acted as an international correspondent in Moscow for its first year of publication. Freeman also co-founded The Liberator, but would eventually leave the Communist party and work in the private sector for the later part of his life.

Michael Gold
“Proletarian Realism”
“Go Left, Young Writers!”
“Why I Am A Communist”
“A Night in the Million-Dollar Slums”

Max Eastman
“Class War In Colorado”

Claude Mckay
“Song of New York”

Upton Sinclair
“What We Have Learned”
“My Secrets”

John Dos Passos
“Review of The Sun Also Rises”
“The New Masses I’d Like”
“They Are Dead Now”

Langston Hughes
“Not Without Laughter”
(excerpts from before publication)

William Carlos Williams
“The Five Dollar Guy”
“Letter to the Editor”

Ernest Hemingway
“Who Murdered The Vets?”

Sherwood Anderson
“At Amsterdam”
“A Writer’s Note”
“How I came to communism, symposium.”

Ralph Ellison
“Recent Negro Fiction”
“Stormy Weather”
“Big White Fog”
“The Great Migration”

Hugo Gellert
Cover Artwork

Anderson, Jervis. A. Philip Randolph. A Biographical Portrait. [1st ed.]. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. Print. A Harvest book, HB 280.

Bassett, John Earl. Harlem in Review : Critical Reactions to Black American Writers, 1917-1939. Susquehanna University Press, 1992. Print.

Burnett, Colin. “The “Albert Maltz Affair” And The Debate Over Para-Marxist Formalism In New Masses, 1945–1946.” Journal Of American Studies 48.1 (2014): 223-250. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.

Coyle, Michael. Ezra Pound and African American Modernism.Orono, Me.: National Poetry Foundation, 2001. Print. Ezra Pound scholarship series; Ezra Pound scholarship series.

Gold, Michael, et al. New Masses. New York, 1926. Print.

Goodman, Martin, ed. “New Masses.” Marxists Internet Archive. Web. 15 Jun 2016.

Klein, Marcus. Foreigners : The Making of American Literature, 1900-1940. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981. Print.

Langa, Helen. “‘At Least Half The Pages Will Consist Of Pictures’: New Masses And Politicized Visual Art.” American Periodicals: A Journal Of History, Criticism, And Bibliography 21.1 (2011): 24-49. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.

Tadié, Benoît. “The Masses Speak: The Masses (1911-17); The Liberator (1918-24); New Masses (1926-48); And Masses & Mainstream (1948-63).” The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume II, North America 1894-1960. 831-856. Oxford, England: Oxford UP, 2012. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.

Therborn, G. “New Masses?” New Left Review 85 (2014): 7-18. Print.

Wald, Alan M. Exiles from a Future Time : The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Print.

“New Masses” compiled by Scott Cunningham (Class of ’16, Davidson College)

Title: 
Mother Earth

Publication Date: 
Mar. 1906 – Aug. 1917

Place(s) of Publication: 
New York, NY

Frequency of Publication: 
Monthly

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher:
Unknown

Physical Description: 
21 cm.

Price: 
10 cents per issue / $1.00 per year

Editor(s): 
Emma Goldman (Mar. 1906 – Oct. 1908; Apr. 1915 – Apr. 1918)
Alexander Berkman (Nov. 1908 – Mar. 1915)

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Libraries with Complete Original Issues: 
Cornell University; Columbia University; Ohio State University

Reprint Editions: 
New York: Greenwood Reprint Co., 1968
Full searchable PDF of April 1911 issue available online at Brown University’s Modernist Journals Project.
Full images of February 1915 issue available online at PBS’s American Experience.

Emma Goldman, a renowned anarchist and acclaimed orator, published the first issue of Mother Earth in March 1906. In Mother Earth Goldman advocated radical political causes, labor agitation, and even opposition to the U.S. government in a number of issues. Goldman envisioned a magazine of not only criticism but of verse. However, during its twelve-year run, Goldman drew upon her favorite realist writers such as Ibsen and Emerson to fulfill the literary component of the magazine. The magazine is not frequently associated with the up-and-coming radical and experimental poets of the time as much as it is considered a collection of Goldman’s anarchist writings. Friend and ally Alexander Berkman joined the project after his release from prison in May of 1908. Goldman’s lecture circuit, which at times led to her arrest, furnished the revenue to allow the dup to publish 136 consecutive issues of Mother Earth.

In June of 1917 Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act, which set penalties for aiding the U.S.’s enemies, interfering with the draft, or encouraging disloyalty in the armed forces. Later that day officials raided the Mother Earth office and arrested Goldman and Berkman. The confiscated documents included letters, magazine subscription lists, and membership lists for the No-Conscription League. With Mother Earth barred from the postal system, Goldman and Berkman released their first issue of the Mother Earth Bulletin in September of 1917. Its opening number blasted the government, describing how “the Postmaster General has become the absolute dictator over the press” and explaining that because “MOTHER EARTH will not comply with these regulations and will not appear in an emasculated form, it prefers to take a long needed rest until the world has regained its sanity.” Goldman and Berkman continued to release the Mother Earth Bulletin in the magazine’s stead until April 1918.

The following manifesto outlines Emma Goldman and Max Baginski’s beliefs on the relationship between mankind and mother earth. The concluding paragraph details the goals the editors have for their magazine.

HERE was a time when men imagined the Earth as the center of the universe. The stars, large and small, they believed were created merely for their delectation. It was their vain conception that a supreme being, weary of solitude, had manufactured a giant toy and put them into possession of it.

“When, however, the human mind was illumined by the torch-light of science, it came to understand that the Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space, a mere speck of dust.

“Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth, but he knew it not, nor recognized her, to whom he owed his life. In his egotism he sought an explanation of himself in the infinite, and out of his efforts there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself. Interpreters and prophets of the infinite sprang into being, creating the “Great Beyond” and proclaiming Heaven and Hell, between which stood the poor, trembling human being, tormented by that priest-born monster, Conscience.

“In this frightful scheme, gods and devils waged eternal war against each other with wretched man as the prize of victory; and the priest, self-constituted interpreter of the will of the gods, stood in front of the only refuge from harm and demanded as the price of entrance that ignorance, that asceticism, that self-abnegation which could but end in the complete subjugation of man to superstition. He was taught that Heaven, the refuge, was the very antithesis of Earth, which was the source of sin. To gain for himself a seat in Heaven, man devastated the Earth. Yet she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. But ever the air grew thick with mephitic darkness, ever a hollow voice was heard calling: “Touch not the beautiful form of the sorceress; she leads to sin!”

“But if the priests decried the Earth, there were others who found in it a source of power and who took possession of it. Then it happened that the autocrats at the gates of Heaven joined forces with the powers that had taken possession of the Earth; and humanity began its aimless, monotonous march. But the good mother sees the bleeding feet of her children, she hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs!”

“To the contemporaries of George Washington, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, America appeared vast, boundless, full of promise. Mother Earth, with the sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands–Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children. But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. They, who had fought for independence from the British yoke, soon became dependent among themselves; dependent on possessions, on wealth, on power. Liberty escaped into the wilderness, and the old battle between the patrician and the plebeian broke out in the new world, with greater bitterness and vehemence. A period of but a hundred years had sufficed to turn a great republic, once gloriously established, into an arbitrary state which subdued a vast number of its people into material and intellectual slavery, while enabling the privileged few to monopolize every material and mental resource!”

“During the last few years, American journalists have had much to say about the terrible conditions in Russia and the supremacy of the Russian censor. Have they forgotten the censor here? a censor far more powerful than him of Russia. Have they forgotten that every line they write is dictated by the political color of the paper they write for; by the advertising firms; by the money power; by the power of respectability; by Comstock? Have they forgotten that the literary taste and critical judgment of the mass of the people have been successfully moulded to suit the will of these dictators, and to serve as a go od business basis for shrewd literary speculators? The number of Rip Van Winkles in life, science, morality, art, and literature is very large. Innumerable ghosts, such as Ibsen saw when he analyzed the moral and social conditions of our life, still keep the majority of the human race in awe!”

“MOTHER EARTH will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation in the face of mountains of riches. The Earth free for the free individual!”

“Mother Earth.” 1:1 (Mar. 1906): 1.

Emma Goldman (Jun. 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940)
Editor: Mar. 1906 – Oct. 1908; Apr. 1915 – Apr. 1918

“Red Emma” was a Russian-born sexual revolutionist and an outspoken anarchist. While working in New York factories she befriended Alexander Berkman, and together they founded Mother Earth magazine to dispense their anarchist philosophies. She flirted with jail time throughout the first two decades of the 20th century, as her lengthy lecture circuits regarded such taboos and illegalities as birth control, anarchism, refusal to join the draft, and riot-mongering. She was even arrested as an accessory to the assassination attempt of President McKinley, although the case was dropped for lack of evidence. Goldman’s No Conscription League finally doomed her anarchism career in the United States: the same day that Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act, the Mother Earth offices were raided, Goldman and Berkman were sent to jail, and as soon as they had finished their two years in prison, they were deported to Soviet Russia. She expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the Bolsheviks and tried in vain to regain citizenship in the United States. She later lived in England and France and continued lecturing and writing memoirs and autobiographies, including Living My Life. She died in Canada at the age of 70.

Alexander Berkman (Nov. 21, 1870 – Jun. 28, 1936)
Editor: Nov. 1908 – Mar. 1915

Rebellious even as a child, Alexander Berkman emigrated to New York City in 1887 after being expelled from his Russian school for submitting an essay espousing atheism. There he became active in anarchism, speaking out on behalf of the perpetrators in the Haymarket Bombing. He found a kindred spirit in Emma Goldman, with whom he became a lover and co-founder of Mother Earth. Later, he published his own magazine, The Blast. A wild attempt on the life of notorious industrialist Henry Clay Frick in 1892 conferred him a 22-year sentence in jail, of which he served 14 years. After his release, he published the celebrated Prison Memoirs, reflecting on his time in jail, but his hand in the No Conscription League returned him to prison until his deportation to Russia in 1919. Like Goldman, he was distraught by Russia’s state, and published The Bolshevik Myth to outline the problems with Communism. He moved to France in 1925 and spent the rest of his life there until the pain associated with a prostrate condition drove him to shoot himself in 1936.

Max Baginski
“Without Government”

Frances Wauls Bjorkman
“Vive le Roi”

Emma Goldman
“On the Road”

Hippolyte Havel
“An Immoral Writer”

H. Kelly
“Socialism and Fatalism”

Rudyard Kipling
“The Cry of Toil”

Peter Kropotkin
“Brain Work and Manual Work”

Emma Lee
“The Law of the ‘Survival of the Fittest’”

Wim C. Owen
“Marx v. Nietzsche”

Grace Potter
“Try Love”

Alvan F. Sanborn
“The Revolutionary Spirit in French Literature”

Leo Tolstoy
“The Power of the Plutocrat”

“Alexander Berkman – Biographical Material.” Anarchy Archives. 12 Feb. 2000. Pitzer College. 6 July 2009.

Brennan, Carol. “Emma Goldman.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit, Gale 2000. Literature Resource Center. Davidson College Lib., Davidson, NC. 1 July 2009.

“Emma Goldman.” American Experience. PBS. 13 July 2009.

Goldman, Emma and Max Baginski. “Mother Earth.” Mother Earth. 1 (1906): 1-3. 1 May 2007.

Goldman, Emma.  “What I Believe.” Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader. Ed. Alix Kates Shulman. New York: Schocken Books, 1983.

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

Images, Feb. 1915 issue. “Mother Earth Magazine.” American Experience: Emma Goldman. 11 Mar. 2004. PBS. 21 July 2009.

Image, handbill. “Emma Goldman and Free Speech.” 2 July 2003. Berkley Digital Library SunSITE. 13 July 2009.

Images, June 1912 issue. “Mother Earth.” Modernist Journals Project: 1910 Collection. Brown University. 21 July 2009.

Image, police photograph. “Index of /bleed/Encyclopedia/GoldmanEmma.” Recollection Books. 13 July 2009.

Monk, Craig.  “Emma Goldman, Mother Earth, & The Little Magazine Impulse in Modern America.” ‘The Only Efficient Instrument’ American Women Writers & the Periodical, 1837-1916. Eds. Aleta Feinsod Cane and Susan Alves. Iowa City: Iowa UP, 2001.

“People & Events: Henry Clay Frick (1849 – 1919).” American Experience: Emma Goldman. 11 Mar. 2004. PBS. 6 July 2009.

“Timeline: Anarchism and Emma Goldman.” American Experience: Emma Goldman. 11 Mar. 2004. PBS. 6 July 2009.

“Mother Earth” compiled by Kristen Psaki (Class of ’07, Davidson College)

Title:
The Midland: A Magazine of the Middle West (1915 – 1929)
The Midland: A National Literary Magazine (1930 – 1933)

Date of Publication:
Jan. 1915 (1:1) – May/Jun. 1933 (20:2/3)

Place(s) of Publication:
Iowa City, IA (1915 – 1933)
Moorhead, MN (1917 – 1919)
Glennie, MI (1919 – 1921)
Pittsburgh, PA (1922-1923)
Chicago, IL (1930 – 1933)

Frequency of Publication:
Monthly (1915 – 1917; 1923 – 1927)
Bimonthly (1918 – 1919; 1928 – 1933)
Monthly and bimontly (1920 – 1922)

Circulation:
200-500 until it moved to Chicago; 1,200-2,000 in Chicago

Publisher:
John Springer at Economy Advertising Company in Iowa City, IA

Physical Description:
23-28 cm in height.  Issues around 30 pages in length. Tan cover.  Water-marked, deckle-edged octavo pages. Published mostly short fiction, but also poetry and essays.

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s):
John T. Frederick (1915 – 1933)
Frank Luther Mott, co-editor, (1925-1930)

Associate Editor(s):
C.F. Ansley
Edwin Ford Piper
Ival McPeak
Roger Sergel
Esther Paulus (wife of John T. Frederick)
Roy Tower
Mary Grove Chawner
Nelson A. Crawford
Hartely Alexander

Libraries with Original Issues:
Iowa State University, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Harvard University; Searchable PDF of select volumes available at the Hathi Trust Digital Library

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

The Midland “encourage[d] the making of literature in the Middle West” (Frederick 1:1). It sought to question the legitimacy of the Northeast’s power in the publication of literature and to encourage young writers stay in their region and write about it. Showcasing writers from the region located between the Allegheny and Rocky Mountain ranges, The Midland became one of the most influential regional little magazines. The Midland emphasized the regional diversity of the country and the special worldview found in the Midwest, especially the rural areas (Reigelman 44). Meant to be a non-commercial enterprise, The Midland depended on subscriptions to support its publication, though it did print advertisements for other literary magazines.

In the first three years of its publication, The Midland divided its space equally to essays, poetry and short fiction. By 1918, however, it had moved to featuring mostly short fiction, the arena in which it gained the most fame from critics such as Edward J. O’Brian, the editor of the Best Short Stories series (200). Another change was in the regional scope of the magazine: by 1930 only two-thirds of contributions came from Midwestern states. This precipitated the change in subtitle of the magazine from “A Magazine of the Middle West” to “A National Literary Magazine” (31).

John T. Frederick, the editor and founder of the magazine, used The Midland both to fight against and to gain access to academia and big New York publishers. The style of social realism and main themes of The Midland, including the family, rural lifestyles, and the war, reflected his tastes. The Midland debuted in Iowa City just after Frederick finished at the University of Iowa, and though he edited the magazine from several different locales due to his various career moves, it was printed in Iowa City by John Springer’s firm throughout its run. Frederick and Springer carefully designed and printed The Midland in order to contrast intentionally more cheaply made commercial magazines (5). Frederick was supportive of new writers from the region, and responded personally to every submission and letter to the magazine (24). Frederick’s high expectations came crashing down when his large amount of debt forced Frederick to ask the editor of The Frontier to combine the magazines.

“The First Person Plural” by John T. Frederick

The Midland is not a commercial enterprise, and it is not endowed. Its publishers, editors and contributors receive no payment for their work. Obviously, miscellaneous advertising is not sought or accepted. Possibly subscriptions will meet the only expenses of the magazine, — the cost of printing and mailing. With that faint hope its commercialism ends.

The magazine is merely a modest attempt to encourage the making of literature in the Middle West. The region is already renowned for certain material products and for financial prosperity; but the marker of its literary and other artists has commonly been beyond the mountains, and the producers have commonly gone to their market. Possibly the region between the mountains would gain in variety at least if it retained more of its makers of literature, music, pictures, and other expressions of civilization. And possibly civilization itself might be with us a somewhat swifter process if expression of its spirit were more frequent. Scotland is none the worse for Burns and Scott, none the worse that they did not move to London and interpret London themes for London publishers.

Makers of art do not moralize; yet they are artists because they have something to say. They have the faith of Saint Francis in something above the material, and for it they must at least have the will to take poverty as bride. So it happens that the Middle West has a few publishers, editors and writers who wish to do some of their work strictly in the amateur spirit. They will try to make and print some literature.

It is all an experiment, of course; but everybody who works at it will have some pleasure in the work and will hope to lighten and brighten life, even if slightly, for the Gentle Reader who may indeed wish to share also the joy of the work.

Dying, the Venerable Bede repeated the words of Saint Ambrose: “I have not lived so as to be ashamed to live among you; nor do I fear to die.” When The Midland dies, late or soon, may it die unashamed and leave pleasant memories.

from The Midland 1:1 (January 1915), pages 1-2.

John T. Frederick (Feb. 1, 1893 – Jan. 31, 1975)
Editor: 1915 – 1933

John T. Frederick, born in 1893 near Corning, Iowa, studied at the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa). Contemporary American literature was his academic focus. He began publishing his Midwestern-focused magazine at the end of his senior year of college when he was only 21 years old. C.F. Ansley, the head of the English Department at the time who believed in the importance of regionalism, helped him find contributors and subscribers. The magazine was shaped by Frederick’s “modest personality and literary preferences,” and he edited it while teaching and lecturing at universities in Iowa City, IO; Moorhead, MN; Pittsburg, PA; Chicago, IL; and also his stint farming in Glennie, MI for two years (Reigelman 200). Despite his career as a professor, it remained important to Frederick throughout The Midland’s run to keep it independent from academic affiliation, perhaps due to the common view at universities at the time that American literature was not worth studying (17).

Frank Luther Mott (Apr. 4, 1886 – Oct. 23, 1964)
Co-Editor: 1925 – 1930

Also born in Iowa, Frank Luther Mott studied at University of Chicago and Columbia University before taking a faculty post at University of Iowa. He was a contributor to The Midland before becoming Frederick’s co-editor in 1925. Mott complimented Frederick’s modesty with energy and aggressiveness. Frederick and Mott worked well together, and alternated writing the book reviews in the magazine (Reigelman 22).

William Ellery Leonard

“A Cycle of Love-Lyrics”

“Flower-Lyrics”

“Above the Battle: 1616-1916 and Thereafter”

Howard Mumford Jones

“Drigsby’s Universal Regulator”

“Love Divided: A Sequence of Sonnets”

Edwin Ford Piper

“The Land of the Aiouswas”

“The Movers”

“The Well”

Lizette Woodworth Reese

“Lilac Dusk”

“Cupboards”

Maxwell Anderson

“Despair”

“Autumn Again”

Vincent Starrett

“God’s Riding”

“Poetry”

Grace Stone Coates

“Crickets”

“Black Cherries”

Raymond Weeks

“How I Burned for Heloise”

“The Fat Woman of Boone”

Allen, Charles. “Regionalism and the Little Magazines.” College English.7.1 (Oct. 1945): 10-16.

Campbell, Douglas S. “The Midland: Magazine of the Middle West.” Regional Interest Magazines of the United States. Sam G. Riley and Gary W. Selnow, eds. Greenwood Press: New York, 1991. Web. 14 Jun 2016.

Chielans, Edward. The Literary Journal in America, 1900-1950: A Guide to Information Sources. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1977.

Hathi Trust Digital Library. “The Midland.” University of Michigan. Web. September – October, 2010.

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

Lutz, Tom. “The Cosmopolitan Midland.” American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography. 15.1 (2005): 74-85.

Lutz, Tom. “The Cosmopolitan Midland and the Academic Writer.” Little Magazines and Modernism: New Approaches. Ed. Suzanne W. Churchill and Adam McKible. Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate, 2007.

Reigelman, Milton M. “The Midland.” American Literary Magazines. 199-203

Reigelman, Milton M. The Midland: A Venture in Literary Regionalism. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1975.

“The Midland” compiled by Rachel Andersen (Class of ‘11, Davidson College)