Title: 
The Hound and Horn: A Harvard Miscellany (1927 – 1929)
The Hound and Horn (1929 – 1934)

Date of Publication: 
Sept. 1927 (1:1) – July/Sept. 1934 (7:4)

Place(s) of Publication: 
Portland, Maine
Concord, New Hampshire
Camden, New Jersey

Frequency of Publication: 
Quarterly

Circulation: 
2500 to 3000, average

Publisher: 
The Hound and Horn, Incorporated

Physical Description: 
10″ x 6″. Approx. 150 pages. Featured poetry, fiction, reproductions of visual arts, and criticism of theater, film, music, dance, and architecture.

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s): 
Lincoln Kirstein
Bernard Bandler II
Varian Fry
A. Hyatt Mayor

Associate Editor(s): 
Yvor Winters, Allen Tate, R.P. Blackmur

Select Libraries with Original Issues: 
Harvard University Library; Duke University Library

Reprint Edition: 
New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1966.

Born from the mind and the bank account of Lincoln Kirstein, The Hound and Horn ran from 1927 until 1934. Although the undergraduates who started the magazine eventually dropped the subtitle – A Harvard Miscellany – the magazine showed its Harvard roots by featuring many alumi in its pages of criticism, poetry, and art. Editors Allen Tate, Yvor Winters, and R. P. Blackmur combined this 1929 title alteration with a shift in critical style, making The Hound and Horn an early home to the school of New Criticism.

Although The Horn and Hound focused primarily on these critical reviews, editors typically reserved a quarter of each issue for poetry and fiction (Hoffman 208). Though they did not “discover” any poets as other magazines did, they perpetuated the careers of authors like T. S. Eliot, Henry James, e. e. cummings, Conrad Aiken, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Henry Adams, while offering critical essays from modernist favorites like Marianne Moore (Hoffman 208-9). Their poetic picks leaned toward the experimental and revolutionary. Despite brief flirtations with Marxism, Humanism, and Agrarianism, Kirstein did his best to keep the magazine focused on art rather than on politics. Along with modernist poetry and prose were reproductions of visual art and criticism that touched upon many artistic fields, including theater, music, film, dance, and architecture (Chielens 144).

Kirstein’s true love turned out to be ballet rather than literature, and in 1934 he moved his interests (and with it, his money) to the founding of what would eventually become the New York City Ballet. Having become the sole editor in the final years of The Hound and Horn, this move marked the demise of the magazine (Chielens 142). Although Kirstein would go on to be remembered for his contributions to both the schools and literature of ballet, The Hound and Horn helped perpetuate literary careers, enhanced the school of New Criticism, and helped to inspire future magazines like The Southern Review and Kenyon Review (Hoffman 210).

When Lincoln Kirstein founded The Hound and Horn, he wanted it to strongly reflect its Harvard background:

“Its pages will be open to creative work in any field and on any subject, provided that work is of a sufficiently non-technical nature to assure a general Harvard interest. Of the miscellaneous nature of the proposed magazine the present issue can be but an indication: in addition to prose and verse, critical studies of art and architecture, reviews of current books and periodicals, and reproductions of painting and sculpture, future numbers will contain articles on music, history, philosophy, science, and sport. The Hound and Horn will supply a fresh medium for creative expression to all members of the University who desire it… It is the intention of The Hound and Horn to provide, in a measure, a point of contact between Harvard and the contemporary outside world, both here and abroad. It will endeavor to represent Harvard’s potential best, and it calls upon sympathetic subscribers, contributors, and critics to help reach such a goal.”

“Introduction.” The Hound and Horn 1:1 (1927): 5-6.

When the magazine shifted from being an undergraduate publication, it saw itself assuming a much broader role than at its conception:

“Started seven years ago by undergraduates of Harvard University as a college paper based on the London Criterion, it has come to take the place of the Dial in some respects, and in others has provided an American medium not unlike the Nouvelle Revue FranVaise. It has attempted to provide a repository for distinguished critics and creative writing which, on account of its technical or experimental nature, could not otherwise have been paid for or published, and to acquaint Americans with similar international work”

“Preface.” The Hound and Horn. 3:4 (1934): 563.

Lincoln Kirstein (May 14, 1907 – Jan. 5, 1966)
Editor: Sept. 1927 – Sept. 1934

While a sophomore at Harvard, Kirstein founded The Hound and Horn using “liberal funding” from his father that assured “both financial stability and high production standards” for his magazine (Chielens 141). He shared editorship with freshman Varian Fry when the magazine first began publishing, with eventual help from Alan Tate, Yvor Winters, Bernard Bandler II, and R.P. Blackmur. By 1931, however, he was the sole owner and head editor. During his tenure he helped transition The Hound and Horn from a “Harvard Miscellany” to a leader in New Criticism. He worked to keep the magazine away from politics: though various editors leaned towards Agrarianism, Humanism, and Marxism, he tried to keep their political influences from overtaking the pages. His choice to switch his focus from literature to the ballet in 1934 marked the demise of his little magazine, but also the beginning of a brilliant career directing ballet and founding what would go on to become the New York City Ballet, for which he is now famous (“Kirstein, Lincoln”).

R. P. Blackmur
“Night Piece”

John Cheever
“Bock Beer and Bermuda Onions”

e. e. cummings
“[so standing, our eyes filled with wind and the]”
“[somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond]”

John Dos Passos
Excerpts from 1919

T. S. Eliot
“Second Thoughts about Humanism”
“Difficulties of a Statesman”

James Joyce
“From a Banned Writer to a Banned Singer”

Marianne Moore
“The Jerboa”
“The Plumet Backet”

Pablo Picasso
Maternity
The Lovers
Still Life

Ezra Pound
Cantos: 
“XXVIII”
“XXIX”
“XXX”

Gertrude Stein
“Scenery and George Washington”

Wallace Stevens
“Academic Discourse in Havana”
“Autumn Refrain”

Vincent Van Gogh
Charcoal Drawing

William Carlos Williams
“Rain”
“In the ‘Sconset Bus”

Yvor Winters
“Hymn to Dispel Hatred at Midnight”
“The Fall of Leaves”

Chielens, Edward E., ed. American Literary Magazines: The Twentieth Century. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992.

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

The Hound and Horn. 1927 – 1934. New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1966

Image, rollover. “New Arrivals.” Stephen Rose Fine Arts and Books. January 2003. 28 Oct. 2008.

“Kirstein, Lincoln.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Davidson College Lib., Davidson, NC. 16 Sept. 2008.

“The Hound & Horn” compiled by Kelly Franklin (Class of ’09, Davidson College)

Title: 
The Glebe

Date of Publication: 
Sept. 1913 (1:1) – Nov. 1914 (2:4)

Place(s) of Publication: 
Ridgefield, NJ: Sept. 1913 (1:1)
New York, NY: Oct. 1913 – Nov. 1914 (1:2 – 2:4)

Frequency of Publication: 
Irregular: 10 numbers over 15 months

Circulation: 
300 copies

Publisher: 
The Glebe, Ridgefield, NJ (Sept. – Oct. 1913)
A. and C. Boni, New York (Nov. 1913 – Oct. 1914)

Physical Description: 
60 – 120 pages. All issues were devoted to a single author’s work, with the exception of the Imagiste number (1:5) which presented the works of eleven poets.
Sept. 1913 (1:1): Songs, Sighs and Curses, Adolf Wolff
1913 (1:2): Diary of a Suicide, Wallace Baker
1913 (1:3): The Azure Adder, Charles Demuth
1914 (1:4): Love of One’s Neighbor, Leonid Andreyev
1914 (1:6): Erna Vitek, Alfred Kreymborg
1914 (2:1): Collects, Horace Traubel
1914 (2:2): Poems, George W. Cronyn
1914 (2:3): Erdgeist, Frank Wedekind
1914 (2:4): Pandora’s Box, Frank Wedekind

Price:
60 cents per issue

Editor(s):
Alfred Kreymborg

Associate Editor(s): 
Man Ray

Libraries with Complete Original Issues: 
Northwestern University; Ohio State University; Pennsylvania State University; Brown University; University of California, Berkeley

Reprint Editions: 
Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI, 2004 (Little Magazines. American 1910 – 1919) [Microform]
New York: Kraus Reprint, 1967.
PDFs of selected issues available on Google Books.
PDFs available online at Princeton University’s Blue Mountain Project

Although the concept of The Glebe, a little magazine devoted exclusively to innovative poetry, had taken form in Alfred Kreymborg’s mind as early as 1908, it took until September 1913 for the first issue to appear. A panic attack defrayed Kreymborg’s efforts at establishing the magazine for five years until he met with artist Samuel Halpart and Man Ray in Grantwood, New Jersey in 1913 and the three men decided to go forth with Kreymborg’s concept. Unfortunately, the printing press they had planned to use was damaged beyond repair when they attempted to move it from New York to Grantwood, which forced Kreymborg to travel New York to find funding for his magazine. He found financial support from Albert and Charles Boni, the proprietors of a bookshop. The Bonis agreed to fund Kreymborg’s enterprise and allowed him full editorial license – although considering the large amount European writers within the magazine, it is likely that the Bonis claimed extensive editorial privileges over Kreymborg, who harbored a proclivity for the unknown American writer [Hoffman 44-46].

Early in the magazine’s career Ezra Pound sent Kreymborg a collection of poetry, Des Imagistes which became the magazine’s fifth, and most renown, issue. This Imagiste number was the only issue during the magazine’s run to contain multiple authors – all other issues were of a single writer or poet – and it included the work of Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, Richard Aldington and Ford Maddox (Ford) Hueffer (Hoffman 45). Despite the success of this issue, the increased editorial presence of the Bonis spurned Kreymborg’s resignation; without his guidance, the magazine was dissolved in November 1914 (Hoffman 46). The Glebe served as a precursor for Others which Kreymborg went on to edit in 1915.

Alfred Kreymborg’s asserted his editorial policy very clearly in one of his early issues of The Glebe:

“The only editorial policy of THE GLEBE is that embodied in its declaration of absolute freedom of expression, which makes for a range broad enough to include every temperament from the most radical to the most conservative, the only requisite being that the work should have unmistakable merit. Each issue will be devoted exclusively to one individual, thereby giving him an opportunity to present his work in sufficient bulk to make it possible for the reader to obtain a much more comprehensive grasp of his personality than is afforded him in the restricted space allotted by the other magazines. Published monthly, or more frequently if possibly, THE GLEBE will issue twelve to twenty books per year, chosen on their merits alone, since the subscription list does away with the need of catering to the popular demand that confronts every publisher. Thus, THE GLEBE can promise the best work of American and foreign authors, known and unknown.”

Alfred Kreymborg. 1:5 (1914).

Alfred Kreymborg (Dec. 10 1883 – Aug. 14 1966)
Editor: Sept. 1914 – Nov. 1914

Alfred Kreymborg grew up in a working class family in New York City. While living in Greenwich Village, he became interested in modern art, photography, and writing. He founded The Glebe in 1913, which was “one of the first periodicals to sponsor experimental writing” (Hoffman 46). With a donation of $276 from Walter Conrad Arensberg, Kreymborg went on to found Others, a magazine dedicated to experimental poetry. Editor of Broom and American Caravan and contributor to little magazines well into the 1950s, Kreymborg achieved popular acclaim touring America with his puppet plays (1920-1) and a radio play he produced (1938). When he died in 1966, he had published forty books and served as president of the Poetry Society of America and as judge for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Richard Aldington
“Choricos”
“To a Greek Marble”
“The River”

Leonid Andreyev
“Love of One’s Neighbor”

Skipwith Cannell
“Nocturnes”

George W. Cronyn
“Poems”

H. D.
“Sitalkas”
“Priapus”
“Acon”

Charles Demuth
The Azur Adder

F. S. Flint
“I”
“II Hallucination”
“III”
“IV”
“V The Swan”

Ford Maddux Hueffer
“In the Little Old Market-Place”

James Joyce
“I Hear an Army”

Alfred Kreymborg
“Erna Vitek”

Amy Lowell
“In a Garden”

Ezra Pound
“The Return, After Ch’u Yuan”
“Liu Ch’e”
“Fran-Piece for Her Imperial Lord”
“Ts’ai Chi’h”

Horace Traubel
“I’m So Glad I Was Born”
“Pankhurst”
“What Is the Color of Your Skin?”

Allen Upward
“Scented Leaves from a Chinese Jar”

Frank Wedekind
Erdgeist (Earth Spirit): A Tragedy in Four Acts
Pandora’s Box: A Tragedy in Three Acts

William Carlos Williams
“Postlude”

Adolph Wolff
“Songs, Sighs and Curses”

Allen, Charles. “Glebe and Others.” College English. 5.8 (1944): 418-423.

The Glebe. 1913 – 1914. New York: Kraus Reprints, 1967.

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

Image, cover Sept. 1913. Department of Special Collections, 990 Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Murphy, Russell Elliott. “Kreymborg, Alfred Francis.” American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Davidson College Lib., Davidson, NC. 5 Dec. 2004.

“The Glebe” compiled by Sabrina Rissing (Class of ’06), David Tulis (Class of  ’05) & Ruthie Hill (Class of ’07, Davidson College)

Title:
The Fugitive

Date of Publication:
Apr. 1922 – Dec. 1925

Place(s) of Publication:
Nashville, Tennessee

Frequency of Publication: 
Quarterly: (Mar. 1925 – Dec. 1925)
Bimonthly (irregular) (Feb. – Mar, 1923 – Dec. 1924)
Quarterly (Apr. 1922 – Dec. 1922)

Circulation:
Self-described as “very limited” (1.1 [April 1922]: 2)

Publisher:
The Fugitives, Nashville
Jacques Black (Business Direction, October 1923-December 1924)

Physical Description:
4 volume; 23 cm

Price:
$1 per year  (Mar. 1925 – Dec. 1925)
$1.50 (June 1923 – Dec. 1924)
$1.00 (Apr. 1922 – June 1923)

Editor(s):
Robert Penn Warren (Mar. 1925 – Dec. 1925)
John Crowe Ransom (Mar. 1925 – Dec. 1925)
Donald Davidson (Aug. 1923 – Dec. 1924)

Associate Editor(s):
Jesse Wills (June 1924 – Dec. 1924)
Allen Tate (Aug. 1923 – Apr. 1924)

Libraries with Original Issues:
Vanderbilt University Library, Stanford University Library

Reprint Editions:
Fugitives (Group). The Fugitive: A Journal of Poetry. 1922-1925. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1966. Print.

The publication of The Fugitive in April 1922 came as an organic step for a preexisting collective of poetry enthusiasts in Nashville, Tennessee, many of whom were affiliated with Vanderbilt University (though the magazine itself and the college remained completely separate). Sidney Hirsch, host since 1915 of bimonthly meetings to critique the members’ poetry and engage in philosophical debates, suggested that they publish their work, thus publicizing the efforts of a group who became known as the “inaugurators of the Southern literary renaissance,” as well as the “founders of New Criticism” (Cowan xv; Brooker and Thacker 504).

Poetry dominated the pages of The Fugitive but the publication also featured editorial pieces about poetry, details about the affiliated members’ upcoming titles, book reviews, and contest announcements. The magazine did not specify the board of editors until its third issue, and contributors published under pen-names before this point as well. Though the style and content varied among the published pieces, a the publication’s common theme was communicated in the “Forward” to the first issue: “THE FUGITIVE flees from nothing faster than the high-caste Brahmins of the Old South” (1.1 [April 1922]: 2). These “Brahmins” are not specifically defined, but the Forward shows the member’s dislike of “sentimentality” and “regional stereotyping” (Cowan 44; Kreyling 512).

The Fugitive was not what one might consider a distinctively or intentionally Southern magazine; Hoffman, Allen and Ulrich assert that “these poets showed no concern with promoting a scheme for reconstructing Southern life, except insofar as they wished to inject a fresh note into its verse” (121), and according to John Egerton, “What [the Fugitives] cared about was the craft of poetry and the intellectual stimulation they derived from writing it” (61). The board of editors stayed fairly consistent throughout the course of this publication, with a few additions along the way. It remained a predominantly male, white group. Laura Riding Gottschalk (later Laura Riding Jackson) became a member in March 1925 and was the first and only female Fugitive. Scholars frequently draw attention to the collaboration among the board of editors; indeed, even when the magazine began electing editors and associate editors in Volume II, Issue 8, the essence of the group hinged upon “the ancient policy of group-action” [2.8 (August-September 1923) 98].

The Fugitive began on an amicable note, and its discontinuation followed suit. Rather than the result of fiscal woes, the magazine’s end came about from logistical constraints and lack of a viable editor, as dramatically stated in the final issue: “The fugitives are busy people, for the most part enslaved to Mammon, their time used up by vulgar bread-and-butter occupations. Not one of them is in a position to offer himself on the alter of sacrifice” [4.4 (December 1925): 125]. Several of the writers, however, continued their salon and correspondences well past the publication of the magazine: in particular, Tate, Davidson, Ransom, and Warren became known as some of the most influential literary figures of their time.

Though not specifically deemed a manifesto, John Crowe Ransom offers the following statement of purpose in the editorial section of Volume I, Issue 2:

“THE FUGITIVE EXISTS for obvious purposes and has the simplest working system that we know of among periodicals. It puts in a single record the latest verses of a number of men who have for several years been in the habit of assembling to swap poetical wares and to elaborate the Ars Poetica. These poets acknowledge no trammels upon the independence of their thought, they are not overpoweringly academic, they are in tune with the times in the fact that to a large degree in their poems they are self-convicted experimentalists. They differ so widely and so cordially from each other on matters poetical that they all were about equally startled and chagrined when two notable critics, on the evidence of the two previous numbers, construed then as a single person camouflaging under many pseudonyms. The procedure of publication is simply to gather up the poems hat rank the highest, by general consent of the group, and take them down to the publisher.”

Ransom, John Crowe. “Editorial.” The Fugitive 1.3 (1922): 66. Rpt. in The Fugitive: A Journal of Poetry. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1966. Print.

John Crowe Ransom (Apr. 30, 1888 – Jul. 3, 1974)
Co-Editor with Warren: Mar. 1925 – Dec. 1925

John Crowe Ransom was born on April 30, 1888 in Pulaski, Tennessee. He was one of the more established members of the Fugitives group at its inception, having had the prestige of being a Rhodes scholar at Oxford after graduating from Vanderbilt. Ransom was a literature professor at Vanderbilt until 1937, after which point he relocated to Kenyon College where he would create and edit The Kenyon Review from 1939 to 1959. He shifted his primary focus away from poetry, and in 1941 he published perhaps the most famous critical work of his career, The New Criticism, which called for a close, analytical approach to texts. Ransom’s fellow Fugitives influenced his volume, and New Criticism became the preeminent model for literary criticism and analysis for much of the twentieth century.

Robert Penn Warren (Apr. 24, 1905 – Sept. 15, 1989)
Co-Editor with Ransom: Mar. 1925 – Dec. 1925

Robert Penn Warren was born on April 24, 1905 in Guthrie, Kentucky. Warren impressed Ransom and Davidson with his work in their classrooms at Vanderbilt, and Tate encouraged him to get involved with the Fugitives. His first published poem appeared in the June/July 1923 edition of The Fugitive, and he joined the board of editors in February 1924. Warren would go on to have a prestigious career for his poetic and critical publications. Among the accolades for his creative work, he received the Pulitzer Prize three times, once for a novel and twice for poetry, and he was also named the national Poet Laureate in 1986. He and Cleanth Brooks edited The Southern Review from 1935 to 1942 and published three critical works that would help shape New Criticism: An Approach to Literature (1936), Understanding Poetry (1938), and Understanding Literature (1943).

Donald Davidson (Aug. 18, 1893 – Apr. 25, 1968)
Editor: (Aug. 1923-Dec. 1924)

Donald Davidson was born in Campbellsville, Tennessee on August 18, 1893. Davidson had strong ties to Vanderbilt: he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University, with brief interruptions due to financial struggles and World War I. He eventually became an English professor at his alma mater. Davidson was at the heart of the Fugitive group, and he had a key role in bringing each editor into a literary circle. In 1915 he met Sidney Hirsch, who would later host the official Fugitive gatherings; introduced Ransom to the Hirsch family and their literary friends; asked Tate to join the Fugitives; and Tate would later invite Warren. Davidson served as the first official editor of The Fugitive when the group created this position in September 1923, and his work on the magazine resulted in an increasing interest in “defining Southern identity” throughout his career (McDonald 247). He published several volumes of poetry, with his piece “Fire on Belmont Street” earning the South Carolina Poetry Society’s Southern Prize in 1926; reviewed southern literature from 1924 to 1930 in his column “The Spy Glass” in the Tennessean; and wrote a two part historical work called The Tennessee (1946 and 1948).

Allen Tate (Nov. 19, 1899 – Feb. 9, 1979)
Associate Editor: Aug. 1923 – Apr. 1924

Allen Tate was born on November 19, 1899 in Winchester, Kentucky. Davidson introduced Tate to the Fugitives in 1921, and Tate became the associate editor of the magazine in 1923. Tate was the “modernist zealot” of the Fugitives, with a strong interest in T.S. Eliot, and his intrigue and adamant opinions on the state of modern poetry fueled his studies and publications (Kreyling 511). In 1924 he resigned from his position as associate editor of The Fugitive and relocated to New York with the conviction that the magazine “set out to introduce a group of new poets and, that done, it has no more to say” (Tate qtd. in Cowan 197). He remained in touch, however, with his fellow Fugitives, particularly Davidson and considered him one of his closest friends. In addition to his continual success as a poet, Tate was a professor, and editor for The Sewanee Review from 1944 to 1946.

Each Fugitive editor would go on to be pioneering figures of Southern Agrarianism, which urged a return to agrarian ways in the age of industrialism. These four men, along with eight other writers who collectively identified themselves as the Twelve Southerners, outlined their philosophies and Agrarianism in 1930 through the essays of I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition.

Walter Clyde Curry
“Will-o’-the Wisp”

Donald Davidson
“Pot Macabre”
“A Dead Romanticist”
“Certain Fallacies in Modern Literature” (Editorial)

William Yandell Elliott
“Epigrams”
“Before Dawn”

James M. Frank 
“The Helmeted Minerva”
“Mirrors”

William Frierson
“Reactions on the October Fugitive”

Laura Riding Gottschalk
“Dimensions”
“Initiation”
“Daniel”

Sidney Mttron Hirsch
“Quodlibet”
“To a Dead Lady”

Stanley Johnson
“The Wasted Hour”
“Earth”

Merrill Moore
“Charleston Nights”
“Dawn Honey”
“John’s Threat”

John Crowe Ransom
“Grandgousier”
“First Travels of Max”
“Bell for John Whitesides’ Daughter”
“The Future of Poetry” (Editorial)

Alec Brock Stevenson
“Swamp Moon”
“Complaint of a Melancholy Lover”

Allen Tate
“Nuptials”
“Mary McDonald”
“The Wedding”
“One Escape from the Dilemma” (Editorial)

Robert Penn Warren
“Crusade”
“To a Face in the Crowd”
“Images on the Tomb”

Jesse Ely Wills
“Consider the Heavens”
“The Hills Remember”

Ridley Wills
“Calvary”
“The Experimentor”

Brooker, Peter and Andrew Thacker. “The South and West: Introduction.” The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume II North America 1894-1960. Eds. Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. 501-507. Print.

Cowan, Louise. The Fugitive Group: A Literary History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP. 1959.

Egerton, John. Speak Now Against the Day : The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South. New York: Knope, 1994. Print.

Fugitives (Group). The Fugitive: A Journal of Poetry. 1922-1925. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1966. Print.

Hoffman, Frederick J., Charles Allen, and Carolyn F. Ulrich. “Modern Poetry and the Little Magazine.” The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1946. 109-127. Print.

Kling, Bridget. The Fugitives. Nashville Public Television, 2008. Web.

Kreyling, Michael. “Fugitive Voices: The Reviewer (1921-5); The Lyric (1921-); and The Fugitive (1922-5).” The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume II North America 1894-1960. Eds. Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. 508-522. Print.

McDonald, Gail. “The Fugitives.” In A Companion to Modernist Poetry: Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture. Eds. David E. Chinitz and Gail McDonald. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. 246-255. Wiley Online Library. Web. 16 Sept. 2015.

“The Fugitive” compiled by Eliana Ferreri (Class of 2016, Davidson College)

Title: 
Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists

Date of Publication: 
November 1926 (1.1)

Place(s) of Publication: 
New York, NY

Frequency of Publication: 
Once

Circulation: 
Approx. 500

Publisher: 
Fire!! Board of Editors

Physical Description: 
Fire!! had a bright red cover with Primitivist, cubist-inspired art by Aaron Douglas. Inside covers were ads for other little magazines: New Masses in the front, Opportunity in the back. Within Fire‘s 48 pages were sections entirely devoted to visual and literary arts, with subdivisions for poetry, drawing, short fiction, plays, and a brief editorial comment.

Price: 
$1 per issue

Editor(s): 
Wallace Thurman

Associate Editor(s): 
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Gwendolyn Bennett
Aaron Douglas
Richard Bruce
John Davis

Libraries with Original Issues: 
New York Public Library; University of Texas, Austin; California State University, Los Angeles;

Reprint Editions: 
Metuchen, New Jersey: FIRE!! Press, 1982
Westport, Connecticut: Negro University Press, 1970
Nendeln, Lichtenstein: Kraus Reprint Co.

Fire!! was instigated in 1926 by Wallace Thurman and a few struggling artists looking for their niche in the literary and artistic movement now known as the Harlem Renaissance. While other magazines of the period were more concerned with social and political ills, artist and contributor Aaron Douglas claimed that Fire!! was different: “We are all under thirty. We have no get-rich-quick complexes. We espouse no new theories of racial advancement, socially economically or politically. We have no axes to grind. […] We are primarily and intensely devoted to art” (qtd. in Kirschke 78).

Although the contributors were more concerned with literary and visual images – especially those related to the creation of a vibrant youth culture – their apolitical declaration was a political stance in and of itself. Within the pages of this radical little magazine, contributors accepted all levels of class, race, gender and sexuality that other magazines of the period would deem illicit and “disreputable [for] more proper Afro-Americans” (Johnson 80). Langston Hughes admitted that the creators of Fire!! wanted “‘to express’ themselves ‘freely and independently – without interference from old heads, white or Negro,’ and specifically that they hoped ‘to provide… an outlet for publishing not existing in the hospitable but limited pages of The Crisis or Opportunity‘” (Johnson 77, 78). The contributors wanted to display the dark, unreported realities of black life – as Thurman stated, to “go to the proletariat rather than to the bourgeoisie for characters and material… [to those] who still retained some individual race qualities and who were not totally white American in every respect save color of skin” (Goeser 89). Fire!!‘s depiction of authentic African-American youth culture valued life experience and individualism as education, and did not limit their scope to the pre-professional university programs that upwardly mobile African-Americans paraded through their magazines.

Fire!! was received with mixed reviews. Opportunity “endorsed the journal enthusiastically,” whereas The Crisis ignored it, as did most white-owned presses (Johnson 82). Alain Locke criticized Fire!! within the pages of Survey, and Rean Graves had only harsh words to say. Of Aaron Douglas’ drawings, he said that the artist, “in spite of himself and the meaningless grotesqueness of his creations, has gained a reputation as an artist, [and] is permitted to spoil three perfectly good pages and a cover with his pen and ink hudge pudge” (Goeser 158). The illustrations were not the only recipients of Graves’ scathing remarks – he dismissed the entire publication: “I have just tossed the first issue of Fire— into the fire, and watched the cackling flames leap and snarl as though they were trying to swallow some repulsive dose” (Johnson 83).

After the publication and reviews of the first number, the necessary funds for a continuation of the magazine were unavailable, and Fire!! ceased after its first publication. Ironically, the bulk of the copies left unsold were “burned to ashes in the basement of the apartment in which it was stored,” adding additional humor to the editor’s sendoff on autographed copies: “Flamingly, Wallace Thurman” (Johnsno 79).

In place of a clear manifesto, the Fire!! contributors composed a more artistic statement of purpose:

FIRE… flaming, burning, searing, and penetrating far beneath the superficial items of the flesh to boil the sluggish blood.

FIRE… a cry of conquest in the night, warning those who sleep and revitalizing those who linger in the quiet places dozing.

FIRE… melting steel and iron bars, poking livid tongues between stone apertures and burning wooden opposition with a cackling chuckle of contempt.

FIRE… weaving vivid, hot designs upon an ebon bordered loom and satisfying pagan thirst for beauty unadorned… the flesh is sweet and real… the soul an inward flush of fire…. Beauty?… flesh on fire–on fire in the furnace of life blazing….
“Fy-ah,

Fy-ah gonna burn ma soul!”

Fire!!. 1:1 (Nov. 1926): 1.

Wallace Henry Thurman (Aug. 16, 1902 – Dec. 22, 1934)
Editor: 1926

From an early age Wallace Thurman possessed a great appetite for reading and writing. Langston Hughes even called him “strangely brilliant” for his ability to read a great number of works in a short time (Klotman). Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he chose to move to the East Coast in 1925 after his first little magazine, Outlet, failed to last more than six months. After a year in Harlem he financed the publication of Fire!!, which only lasted one issue. The same fate awaited Thurman’s next little magazine, Harlem: A Forum of Negro Life. His Harlem play garnered more success, but reflected the same decadence Thurman’s personal life contained: “illicit sex, liquor, wild parties thrown to collect rent money, and gambling” (Klotman). Like Fire!!, his play simultaneously portrayed the reality and worst aspects of black life. Thurman died of tuberculosis in 1934 after collapsing during a reunion party on his return to New York from California.

Langston Hughes (Feb. 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967)
Associate Editor: 1926

Born in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes was a prolific writer and well-known figure of the Harlem Renaissance. His career as “Poet Laureate of Harlem” produced multiple volumes of poetry that include “Dream Deferred,” “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “I, Too,” and novels including Not Without Laughter. Music, particularly jazz and blues, influenced much of Hughes’s work; this musical influence allowed him to imitate “the sound cadence, and rhythms of the blues style as well as [to capture] the humor, despair, and loneliness depicted in the music,” especially with vernacular dialogue (CLC). Hughes is also known for his depiction of African-Americans’ struggles in the modern world. Hughes died of congestive heart failure on May 22, 1967.

Zora Neale Hurston (Jan. 7, 1891 – Jan. 28, 1960)
Associate Editor: 1926

Although at her death in 1960 she was virtually unheard of, Zora Neale Hurston has gained posthumous acclaim for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, which Alice Walker helped bring to fame. Having grown up in “the first incorporated all-black town in America,” Hurston had a sense of pride “not tragically colored”; her work was a “celebration of black cultural heritage” that equated “home-spun vernacular and street-corner cosmology […with] grammar and philosophy of white, Western culture” (“Hurston”). This viewpoint likely helped her as she traveled the country collecting folklore. The “blacklove” exhibited in her famed novel drew from these bits of local color, but her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, reveals unflattering racial views that probably did little to foster a widespread black audience in her own time.

Gwendolyn Bennett (July 8, 1902 – May 20, 1981)
Associate Editor: 1926

Gwendolyn Bennett was considered one of the “most promising” poets, but today only a few of her works are in print and she is considered a minor figure of the Harlem Renaissance (Daniel “Bennet”). Even less information is known about her visual artistic efforts. Bennett’s greatest claim to fame is her column “The Ebony Flute” in Opportunity. The column is a brief chronicle of the regular news in the artistic “who’s who” of Harlem.

Aaron Douglas (May 26, 1899 – Feb. 2, 1979)
Associate Editor: 1926

When Aaron Douglas moved to Harlem in 1925 from Topeka, Kansas, he quickly became involved with the Harlem Renaissance; he would come to be considered “the most significant visual artist” of the period and “the father of African-American art” (DeLombard “Douglas”). His illustrations generally resembled woodcuts, and they “blended elements of art deco, art nouveau, cubism, Egyptian art, and West African sculpture” (DeLombard). In his later years Douglas was the president of the Harlem Artists Guild and the chairman of Fisk University’s Art Department.

Richard Bruce Nugent (July 2, 1906 – May 27, 1987)
Associate Editor: 1926

Richard Bruce Nugent can be best remembered as “the ultimate bohemian, thumbing his nose at social, political, and sexual conventions” (Garber). After meeting Langston Hughes, Nugent quickly became enthralled with the idea of become a part of the New Negro Movement and began producing works like his famous “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade,” which was “the first literary work on an explicitly homosexual theme” to be published by a black person (Garber).

 

Compiled by Nakia Long (Class of ’08, Davidson College)

Lewis Alexander
“Little Cinderella”
“Streets”

Richard Bruce
Drawings

Gwendolyn Bennett
“Wedding Day: A Story”

Arna Bontemps
“Length of Moon”

Waring Cuney
“The Death Bed”

Countee Cullen
“From the Dark Tower”

Aaron Douglas
Cover designs, three drawings, incidental art decorations

Arthur Huff Fauset
“Intelligentsia: An Essay”

Langston Hughes
“Elevator Boy”
“Railroad Avenue”

Zora Neale Hurston
Color Struck: A Play in Four Scenes

Helene Johnson
“A Southern Road”

Edward Silvera
“Jungle Taste”
“Finality”

Wallace Thurman
“Cordelia the Crude: A Harlem Sketch”
“Fire Burns: Editorial Comment”

Daniel, Walter C. Black Journals of the United States: Historical Guides to the World’s Periodicals and Newspapers. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.

—. “Gwendolyn Bennett.” Dictionary of Literary Biography: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. Ed. Trudier Harris. Vol. 51. Chapel Hill: UNC, 1987. 3-10. Dictionary of Literary Biography Online. Thompson Gale. Davidson College Lib., Davidson, NC. 14 May 2007.

DeLombard, Jeannine. “Douglas, Aaron.” American National Biography Online. Davidson College Lib., Davidson, NC. 15 May 2007.

Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists. 1926. Metuchen, New Jersey: FIRE!! Press, 1982.

Garber, Eric. “Richard Bruce Nugent.” Dictionary of Literary Biography: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. Ed. Trudier Harris Vol. 51. Chapel Hill: UNC, 1987. 213-221. Dictionary of Literary Biography Online. Thompson Gale. Davidson College Lib., Davidson, NC. 14 May 2007.

Goeser, Caroline. Picturing the New Negro: Harlem Renaissance Print Culture and Modern Black Identity. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 2006.

“Hughes, Langston.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Thompson Gale. Davidson College Lib., Davidson, NC. 14 May 2007.

“Hurston, Zora Neale.” Contemporary Authors Online. Thompson Gale. Davidson College Lib., Davidson, NC. 14 May 2007 <http://galenet.galegroup.com>.

Johnson, Abby Arthur, and Ronald Maberry Johnson. Propaganda and Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of African-American Magazines in the Twentieth Century. Amherst: UP of Massachusetts, 1979.

Kirschke, Amy H. “Oh Africa! The Influence of African Art during the Harlem Renaissance.” Temples for Tomorrow: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance. Eds. Geneviève Fabre and Michael Feith. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001.

Klotman, Phyllis R. “Wallace Henry Thurman.” Dictionary of Literary Biography: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. Ed. Trudier Harris Vol. 51. Chapel Hill: UNC, 1987. 260-273. Dictionary of Literary Biography Online. Thompson Gale. E. H. Little Lib., Davidson. 14 May 2007.

“Fire!!” compiled by Nakia Long (Class of ’08, Davidson College)