Title: 
The Voice of the Negro

Date of Publication:  
1904 (1:1) – 1907 (4:10)

Place(s) of Publication: 
Atlanta, Georgia (Jan. 1904 – July 1906)
Chicago, Illinois (Aug. 1906 – Oct. 1907)

Frequency of Publication: 
Monthly

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher: 
J.L. Nichols and Company (Jan. 1904 – Apr. 1904)
Hertel, Jenkins, and Company (May 1904 – July 1906)
Voice Publishing Company (Aug. 1906 – Oct. 1907)

Physical Description: 
4 v. in 3. ill. 26 cm

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s): 
J.W.E Bowen
Jesse Max Barber

Associate Editor(s): 
Emmet Jay Scott (Editorial Contributor)

Libraries with Original Issues: 
UNC-Chapel Hill

Reprint Editions: 
Johnson C. Smith, New York, Negro University Presses, 1969.  Wake Forest University, Duke University, Georgia State University, University of Georgia, University of Virginia

The Voice of the Negro was founded in January 1904, the first journal edited by African Americans for a general audience of readers (Walter 369). The four leading editors of the little magazine – John Wesley Edward Bowen, Emmett J. Scott, Booker T. Washington, and Jesse Max Barber – began this magazine in Atlanta, Georgia, the city with the largest number of black institutes at the time, in order to foster the black literary and political voice in the “New South” (369). J Max Barber, as he was formally known, soon took the reins of the magazine’s editing and produced what seemed to be a “split-personality” magazine (Harlan 47): African American contributors either accommodated white influence and policy on race issues, or radically supported an assertive Negro voice (371). The magazine published essays on education and race politics at state, national, and international levels (370). The Voice of the Negro also addressed issues such as the term “Negro,” black marginalization, and women’s rights through the mediums of poetry, essays, and short stories (45).

Over time, J Max Barber’s editing grew more passionate and radical, which caused contention between him and other black writers in the area. His commitment to Negro rights erupted in controversy following an anonymous letter he wrote to a local newspaper setting the record straight about a massacre of black Atlantas by whites in 1906 (374). Although his account was factually accurate, such historical truth-telling was unacceptable to white audiences. When he was discovered as the author, Barber had to flee town to Chicago. There, he attempted to start the magazine again in October 1906 rebranding it as The Voice (374). Barber lost financial support following his relocation, his publisher Hertel and Johnson folded, and the magazine ceased publication the following year (56). Publication records indicated that the magazine ended with 12,000 subscribers (46). Overall, The Voice of the Negro attempted to elevate the Negro race in the south, in the hopes of giving future generations of African Americans  a voice in American and global affairs (370).

The Voice of the Negro published their manifesto in the January 1904 edition at the start of the magazine’s publication:

“The Voice of the Negro for 1904 will keep you posted on Current History, Educational Improvements, Art, Science, Race Issues, Sociological Movements and Religion. It is the herald of the Dawn of the Day. It is the first magazine ever edited in the South by Colored Men. It will prove to be a necessity in the cultured colored homes and a source of information on Negro inspirations and aspirations in the white homes” (Voice of the Negro 1:1).

“1904 will be a year of great things. The country is becoming altruistic and the Negro is emerging from his age of Fire and Blood. We shall study carefully the trends of the times…Our pictures and illustrations will be very interesting. Sparks from Editor J.W.E Bowen’s pen will illuminate many a pessimistic home” (Voice of the Negro 1:1).

John Wesley Edwards Bowen (Dec. 3, 1855 – Jul. 20, 1933)
Editor: Jan. 1904 – Aug. 1906

John Wesley Edwards Bowen was born in New Orleans in 1855 to former slaves in New Orleans. Bowen’s father Edward purchased his wife and son out of slavery in 1858. To ensure a better future for their son, the Bowens secured him the finest education. He received his undergraduate degree from New Orleans University, a bachelor’s degree from the School of Theology at Boston University, and doctorate degree from Boston University (the second African American to do so). Bowen led a life of teaching starting at Central Tennessee College (1878-82) then to Gammon Theological Seminary (’93-’32) where he eventually became president in 1910. While teaching, and before his years at  Gammon, Bowen served as pastor of Centennial Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore (Bowen, J.W.E [1855-1933]). His value for African American education, faith, and liberation of his race shaped his contributions and edits to the Voice of The Negro journal. Bowen remained a social activist especially in the church when he published An Appeal for Negro Bishops, But No Separation in 1912 (Bowen, J.W.E [1855-1933]).

Jesse Max Barber ( July 5, 1878 – Sept. 20, 1949)
Editor: Jan. 1904 – Oct. 1907

Born in South Carolina, J. Max Barber worked in his early years – rather fittingly – as a barber. In pursuing a better life through education, Barber went on to study at the Virginia Union University in Richmond where his literary life commenced.  There he became the student editor of the University Journal and president of Literary Society. After graduating in 1903 he assumed the position of editor on The Voice of the Negro in 1904 and shaped the journal into a radical and progressive literary form. Abby Johnson, in her book Propaganda and Aesthetics, provides Barber’s vision for the Voice of the Negro: “We want it to be more than a mere magazine. We expect of it current and sociological history so accurately given and so vividly portrayed that it will become a kind of documentation for the coming generations” (Johnson, 1).

Barber continued to support civil rights through his membership in the Niagara Movement and the NAACP. After The Voice of the Negro folded, Barber briefly edited for the Chicago Conservator. He turned to a career in dentistry while still remaining active in the social rights for African Americans. From 1919 to 1921 Barber served as president for the Philadelphia branch of the NAACP and then became president of the John Brown Memorial Association. He published regularly in Abbott’s Monthly from 1930 to 1933 ( Barber, J. Max [1878-1949]).

John H. Adams
“Rough Sketches”
“Easter”

Azalia E. Martin
“Spring”
“Phantoms”

J.W.E. Bowen
“Doing things at Tuskegee Institute”

William Pickens
“Southern Negro in Northern University”

Benjamin Griffith Brawley
“The Dawn -Poem”

Nannie H. Burroughs
“Not Color but Character”

James D. Corrothers 
“The Peace of God”
“Lincoln”
“A Face”

W.E.B. DuBois
“Debit and Credit – The American Negro in Account with the year of grace nineteen hundred and four”
“The Beginning of Slavery”
“Slavery in Greece and Rome”
“Serfdom”
“The Beginning of Emancipation”

Silas X. Floyd
“Wayside”
“October”
“Story: She Came at Christmas”
“The tried and the true”

T. Thomas Fortune
“The filipino”
“The Voteless Citizen”

J.R.E. Lee
“The National Association of Teachers of Colored Youths”
“The National Negro Business League”

Mrs. Josephine B. Bruce
“The Farmer and the City Folk”

Kelly Miller
“Roosevelt and the Negro”
“An Estimate of Frederick Douglass”

Daniel Murray
“Bibliographia- Africana”
“The Industrial Problem of the United States and the Negro’s Relation To It”
“Who Invented the Cotton Gin? Did a negro do the work and Eli Whitney get all the credit?”

W.S. Scarborough
“The Negro and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition”
“Roosevelt – The Man, The Patriot, The Statesman”
“The Emancipation of the Negro”

Emmett J. Scott
“Tuskegee Negro Conferences”
“The Louisiana Purchase Exposition”

Mrs. Mary Church Terrell
“The Berlin International Congress of Women”
“Christmas at the White House”

C.H. Turner
“Spontaneous Generation”
“Atoms are complex bodies”

Fannie Barrier Williams
“The Smaller Economies”
“The Women’s Part in a Man’s Business”
“The Timely Message of the Simple Life”

Mrs. Josephine Silone Yates
“The Equipment of the Teacher”
“The National Association of Colored Women”
“Thought Power in Education”

Blue, Christopher T. “Barber, J. Max (1878-1949) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed.” Barber, J. Max (1878-1949) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2012.

Bowen, J.W.E; Barber J. Max. Voice of the Negro: The Black Experience in America- Negro Periodicals in the United States, 1840- 1960. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969. Print.

“Bowen, J. W. E. (1885-€“1933) – Educator, Minister, Writer, Lecturer, Chronology, Provides Shelter during Atlanta Riot.” Bowen, J. W. E.(1885-€“1933). N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2012.

Daniel, Walter C. Black Journals of the United States. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1982. Print.

Harlan, Louis R. “Booker T. Washington and the Voice of the Negro, 1904-1907.” Journal of Southern History. February (1979): 45-62. Print.

Johnson, Abby. Propaganda and aesthetics : the literary politics of African-American magazines in the twentieth century.Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. Print.

Johnson, Charles S. “Rise of the Negro Magazine.” Journal of Negro History. October (1977): 325-38. Web.

Title:
VVV

Date of Publication:
Oct. 1942 (no. 1); Mar. 1943 (no. 2); Feb. 1944 (no. 3)

Place(s) of Publication:
Office of VVV Room 3308, 10 East 40^th Street, New York, N.Y

Frequency of Publication:
Annually (not necessarily intentionally, however, as the second issue was a merging of what would have been the second and third issues)

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher:
Published Independently by David Hare

Physical Description:
no. 1: 28.6 × 21.9 cm. 72 pages, colored ed. (Oct. 1942)
no. 2-3 (double issue): 28.6 × 21.9 cm. 143 pages, colored ed. (Mar. 1943)
no. 4: 28.6 × 21.9 cm. 87 pages, colored ed. (Feb. 1944)

Editor(s):
David Hare

Associate Editor(s):
André Breton (Editorial Advisor)
Marcel Duchamp (Editorial Advisor)
Max Ernst (Editorial Advisor)

Libraries/Databases with Complete Original Issues:
New York Public Library; Duke University’s Perkins Library; University of Virginia Library; National Gallery of Art Library; Library of Congress; Maryland Institute College of Art’s Decker Library; Johns Hopkins University’s Milton S. Eisenhower Library; Indiana University Library; Cleveland Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; University of Michigan Library; Museum of Modern Art; Cornell University Library

Reprint Editions:
None

Published from 1942 through 1944, VVV offered surrealist and expressionistic views of Western culture to Americans, specifically New York City youths seeking international perspectives and art. Surrealism, and VVV in particular, sought to redefine American avant-garde through irrational thought processes that required tapping into a deeper level of consciousness, often invoking revolutionary approaches and techniques to art and literature by challenging traditional forms. Each issue of VVV published photographs, sculptures, poetry, and prose; however, VVV’s avant garde presentation of these materials was highly experimental and radical.

Each issue’s cover art featured the magazine’s VVV logo along with colorful art. The first issue featured a drawing by Max Ernst; the second, an illustration by Marcel Duchamp; and the final, a design by Matta. The magazine was filled with lavish illustrations and poetry with cross-cultural influences. Readers might turn from a page written completely in French to English, only to switch back to French a few pages later. The final issue included many fold-out pages of varying size, adding to the creativity and depth of thought (Hoffman 24).

VVV, in all of its colorful, creative, and transformative beauty, worked to unite and bring together new artists and direct them towards a bountiful array of new thought. Expanding beyond art into the realms of sociology, anthropology, and psychology, VVV deepened the scope of intellectual thought through transformative exploration of the mind and forms of expression; pushing intellectualists and artists, alike, to attempt revolutionary new approaches to every day applications like architecture, writing, and art.  In this way, VVV, along with other abstract expressionist little magazines like View – a magazine that VVV commonly referenced and co-dominated the surrealist scene – authored a public critique of standard Western culture.

VVV’s intent was simple–to fill the streets of New York (youths, internationals, and abstract expressionists alike) with surrealism.  The following is an “editorial credo,” as Lucy R. Lippard would refer to it, that was included at the beginning of each of the magazine’s three published issues (Lippard 212).  VVV’s manifesto’s abstract form mimics the content, tone, and revolutionary material included in the magazine.

VVV

That is, V + V + V. We say . . . –– . . . –– . . . ––

that is, not only

V               as a vow—and energy—to return to a habitable and conceivable world,

Victory over the forces of regression and of death unloosed at present on

The earth, but also V beyond this first Victory, for this world can no more,

And ought no more, be the same, V over that which tends to perpetuate the

Enslavement of man by man,

And beyond this

VV            of that double Victory, V again over all that is opposed to the emancipation

Of the spirit, of which the first indispensable condition is the liberation

Of man,

Whence,

VVV         towards the emancipation of the spirit, through these necessary stages: it

Is only in this that our activity can recognize its end

Or again:

One knows that to

V               which signifies the View around us, the eye turned towards the external

World, the conscious surface,

Some of us have not ceased to oppose

VV            the View inside us, the eye turned toward the interior world and the depths

Of the unconscious,

Whence

VVV         towards a synthesis in a third term, of these two Views, the first V with

Its axis on the EGO and the reality principle, the second VV on the SELF

And the pleasure principle—the resolution of their contradiction tending

Only to the continual, systematic enlargement of the field of consciousness

Towards a total view,

VVV

                  Which translates all the reactions of the eternal upon the actual, of the

Psychic upon the physical, and takes account of the myth in process of

Formation beneath the VEIL of happenings. (VVV 1:1)

David Hare (Mar. 10, 1917 – Dec. 21, 1992)
Editor: 1942 – 1944

David Hare, an American artist who was born in New York in 1917, was mainly known for his magnificent sculptures, though he was also a prominent painter and photographer. As he himself concluded, “I was good with my hands, but I chose art, too, for the independence of it” (Kimmelman). Hare attended the Fountain Valley School, a high school that his mother helped to found, before moving to Roxbury, Connecticut and working as a photographer. After working as a color photographer for some years, Hare was introduced to some of the world’s leading avant grade artists – Max Ernst, Andre Breton, and, renowned dadaist, Marcel Duchamp – with whom he would eventually begin publishing the revolutionary VVV magazine in New York. As its editor he would also frequently submit pieces of his own. After the magazine’s final issue was published in 1944, Hare continued submitting pieces to various magazines and museums around New York, including an exhibit in the Guggenheim that featured a decade-long collection of his work in 1977. Hare became a member of the early New York School Abstract Expressionists and helped to found The Subjects for Artist School in 1948.  Hare continued teaching, painting, and sculpturing into the 1970’s and 80’s before moving to Victor, Idaho in 1985.  Hare died in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on December 21, 1992.

Alain Bosquet
“Tu Tournes”
“Tu Te Precises”

André Breton
“Prolegomena to a Third Manifesto of Surrealism or Else”
“Froleuse”
“Passage a Niveau”
“Premiers Transparents”
“Guerre”
“Mot a Mante”
“Interieur”
“Situation Du Surréalisme Entre les Deux Guerres”

Leonora Carrington
“La Dame Ovale”
“Down below”

Aimé Césaire
“Batouque”
“Annonciation”
“Tam-Tam I”
“Tam-Tam II”

Charles Duits
“Le Jour Est Un Attentat”

Max Ernst
“Les Etats Généraux”
“Portrait of a Gypsy Rose Lee”
“First Memorable Conversation With the Chimera”

Wifredo Lam
“La Chanteuse Des Poissons”

Robert Allerton Parker
“Cannibal Designs”

William Seabrook
“The Door Swung Inward”

Kurt Seligmann
“Les Quatre Saisons”

Brooker, Peter, and Andrew Thacker. “Europe in America: Remapping Broken Cultural Lines: View (1940-7) and VVV (1942-4).” The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.

Hadler, Mona. “David Hare, Surrealism, and the Comics.” The Space Between 2.1 (2011): 93-108. Web.

Hofman, Irene. “Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection.” Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL. 2001. Print.

Kimmelman, Michael. “David Hare, Sculptor and Photographer, Dies at 75.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Dec. 1992. Web. 06 Oct. 2015.

Lippard, Lucy R., ed. Surrealists on Art. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970. Print.

VVV. New York, N.Y: 1:1, 1942. Print.

VVV. New York, N.Y: 1:2-3, 1943. Print.

VVV. New York, N.Y: 1:4, 1944. Print.

“VVV” compiled by Nathan Thomas Argueta (Class of ’16, Davidson College)

*This is an example entry for student contributors*

Title:
TIME: The mausoleum of all hope

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

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

Frequency of Publication: 
Stylized as: Monthly

Circulation:
Number. Use ~ to designate approximation

Publisher: 
Name of Publisher, Street Address if Available

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do not:

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

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

Stylize the heading as follows:

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

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

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

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

Stylize as follows:

Nicholas Bentley
Cover design (No. 400)

P. Bien
“A Hartley Biography”

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

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

D. Day Lewis
“The Watching Post”

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

Raymond Mortimer
Issue celebrating Beethoven’s centenary

Jeremy Reed
“The Ides of March”

Ronald Searle
Cover design (No. 200)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Physical Description: 
21 x 24 cm

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

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

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

Libraries with Complete Original Issues:
Princeton University

Reprint Editions: 
Kraus Reprint Corporation, New York, 1967

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whit Burnett
numerous contributions

Charles Bukowski
“Rejection Slip” (1944)

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

John Cheever
“Homage to Shakespeare” (1937)

William Faulkner
“Artist at Home” (1933)

Martha Foley
numerous contributions

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

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

Aldous Huxley
“Morning in Basle” (1936)

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

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

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

Richard Wright
“Fire and Cloud” (1938)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Title: 
St. Nicholas: Scribner’s Illustrated Magazine for Girls and Boys 
Our Young Folks (Jan. 1874)
Children’s Hour (July 1874, Philadelphia, PA)
Little Corporal (May 1875)
Schoolday Magazine (May 1875)
Wide Awake (Sept. 1893, Boston, MA)

Date of Publication: 
Nov. 1873 (1:1) – Feb. 1940 (67:4),
Suspended Mar. 1940 – Feb. 1943
Mar. 1943 (70:1) – June 1943 (70:4)

Place(s) of Publication: 
New York, NY

Frequency of Publication: 
Monthly

Circulation:
Unknown

Publisher: 
Scribner & Co., New York (1873 – July 1881)
Century Company, New York (Aug. 1881 – May 1930)
Educational Pub. Corp, Darien, CT (June 1930 – Feb. 1940)
St. Nicholas Magazine (1943)

Physical Description: 
Standard paper size, 8.5″ x 11.″ Contained children’s stories, poems, current events, and illustrations, including “The Watch Tower” and “For Country and For Liberty” during the First World War. “The St. Nicholas League” started in 1881, allowing readers to submit their own writing, artwork, and puzzles. (“A Tribute to St Nicholas: A Magazine for Young Folks“)

Price:
Unknown

Editor(s):
Mary Mapes Dodge (1873 – 1905)
William Fayal Clarke (1905 – 1927)
George F. Thompson (1927 – 1929)
Albert Gallatin Lanier (1929 – 1930)
Mary Lamberton Becker (1930 – 1932)
Eric J. Bender (1932 – 1934)
Chesla Sherlock (1934 – 1935)
Vertie A. Coyne (1936 – 1940)
Juliet Lit Sterne (1943)

Associate Editor(s):
William Fayal Clarke
Alexander Drake (Art Director)

Libraries with Original Issues: 
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1:1 – 59:2, 60:3 – 62:2);
James Madison University (v. 1 – v. 50);
Duke University (v. 1 – v. 15, v. 18, v. 21 – v. 52, v. 54 – 59, v. 64);
University of Chicago (v. 7, v. 8 – v. 35, 37:1, 38:1 – 40:1, v. 41 – v. 45)
University of Florida

Reprint Editions: 
Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1973 (American periodical series: 1850 – 1900) [microfilm]
Full searchable PDFs of 1873 (1:1) – 1897 (24:12) avaialble online at the University of Florida Digital Collections’ George A. Smathers Libraries
Full searchable tables of contents of 1873 – 1907 (1:1 – 34:12) available online at ProQuest Historical Newspapers

In 1873 Mary Mapes Dodge wrote an article titled “Children’s Magazines” for Scribner’s Monthly, arguing for a new approach to children’s magazines: “A good magazine for little ones was never so much needed, and such harm is done by nearly all that are published” (Dodge 13). Dodge’s article described how children’s magazines were not properly geared to their youthful audience, and instead were merely water-downed versions of adult journals or overly didactic publications designed to discipline, rather than entertain, their audiences. Scribner’s editors J. G. Holland and Roswell Smith had already planned to launch a new children’s magazine; after reading Dodge’s article they knew they had found their chief editor.

The first issue hit stands in November, 1873, and quickly became the most-read children’s magazine in the United States. The magazine was based out of New York but was widely embraced throughout the country and even in Europe. Dodge employed the aid of Scribner’s Monthly’s art director Alexander Drake to find the best artists to decorate the magazine’s stories and nonfiction, and St. Nicholas’s vibrant illustrations delighted readers. Along with the established adult writers who contributed to the magazine were numerous up-and-coming children writers: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Rachel Carson, and Eudora Welty saw their names for the first time in print in St. Nicholas. “The St. Nicholas League” allowed young readers to contribute writing, artwork, and puzzles, and offered monetary incentives to those who published regularly.

After Dodge passed away in 1905, the magazine continued strongly for twenty-two years under the leadership of William Fayal Clarke. After his tenure ended, no editor maintained the position for more than four years and the magazine ended in 1940. In 1943 new ownership attempted to revitalize the famed publication, but only four more issues appeared before St. Nicholas shut its doors forever. It has been hailed as the most influential children’s magazine to date.

The following quotations embody the spirit with which Mary Mapes Dodge began St. Nicholas.

“To give clean, genuine fun to children of all ages.

To give them examples of the finest types of boyhood and girlhood.

To inspire them with an appreciation of fine pictorial art.

To cultivate the imagination in profitable directions.

To foster a love of country, home, nature, truth, beauty, and sincerity.

To prepare boys and girls for life as it is.

To stimulate their ambitions-but along normally progressive lines.

To keep pace with a fast-moving world in all its activities.

To give reading matter which every parent may pass to his children unhesitatingly (“St. Nicholas Tribute Page”).”

“The child’s magazine must not be a milk-and-water variety of the periodical for adults. In fact, it needs to be stronger, truer, bolder, more uncompromising than the other; its cheer must be the cheer of the bird-song; it must mean freshness and heartiness, life and joy…A child’s magazine is its playground” (Dodge “Children’s Magazines”).

“But what delights us in Milton, Keats, and Tennyson, children often find for themselves in stars, daisies, and such joys and troubles as little ones know” (Dodge “Children’s Magazines” 14).

Mary Mapes Dodge (Jan. 26, 1831 – Aug. 21, 1905)
Editor: Nov. 1873 – Aug. 1905

Mary Mapes Dodge began her career writing various essays and short fiction for adult readers. After a short span of freelancing, Dodge shifted her writing toward a young audience with the release of Irvington Stories, a book of children’s tales, in 1864 (Clarke 19). William Fayal Clarke noted, “So great was [the book’s] popularity that the publisher begged for a second series or sequel” (19-20). She obliged, releasing A Few Friends in 1869. Impressed with her work, Donald G. Mitchell and Harriet Beecher Stowe offered her a position with Heart and Home, a family-oriented paper, as editor to the juvenile and household sections (20). With each issue her reputation as an editor grew until she eventually caught the interest of Dr. J. G. Holland and Roswell Smith, editors of Scribner’s Monthly, with her essay “Children’s Magazines.” They offered her the position of chief editor of a new children’s magazine, St. Nicholas, which she conducted for the final thirty-two years of her life. For her entire run as editor, Dodge did her best to recruit the best writers and illustrators for the magazine, and operated under the mission to bring children a ‘magical playground’ and ‘escape’ through literature.

Louisa May Alcott
An Old-Fashioned Girl
Under the Lilacs
Jack and Jill
Eight Cousins
Jo’s Boys

John Bennett
Master Skylark

William Cullen Bryant
“The Boys of my Boyhood”
“The Planting of the Apple-tree”

Frances Hodgson Burnett
Little Lord Fauntleroy

Sara Crewe
Behind the White Brick

Susan Coolidge
“The Mastiff and his Master”

Susan Fenimore Cooper
“The Cherry-Colored Purse”

Richard Harding Davis
“The Great Tri-Club Tennis Tournament”

Emily Dickinson
“The Sleeping Flowers”

Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Understood Betsy

Sarah Orne Jewett
“Perserverence”
“A Bit of Color”

Charles Kingsley
“A Farewell”
“The Three Fishers”

Rudyard Kipling
The Jungle Book (Serially)

Thomas Nelson Page
“Two Little Confederates”
“The Long Hillside”

Theodore Roosevelt
“Buffalo Hunting”
“Daniel Boone”

Robert Louis Stevenson
“Letters to Young Friends”

Frank Stockton
“The Castle of Bim”
“The Emergency Mistress”
“The Floating Prince”
“The Griffin and the Minor Canon”
“Huckleberry”
“Old Pipes and the Dryad”

Albert Payson Terhune
“One Minute Longer”

Mark Twain
Tom Sawyer Abroad
“A Wonderful Pair of Slippers”

Kate Douglas Wiggin
“A Valentine”
“Cuddle Down Dolly”
“Polly Oliver’s Problem”
“The Red Dolly”

Altstetter, Mabel F. “American Magazines for Children.” Peabody Journal of Education 19.3 (Nov. 1941): 131-136.

Clarke, William Fayal. “In Memory of Mary Mapes Dodge.” St. Nicholas and Mary Mapes Dodge: The Legacy of a Children’s Magazine Editor, 1873-1905. Eds. Susan R. Gannon, Suzanne Rahn & Ruth Anne Thompson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. 18-26.

Dodge, Mary Mapes. “Children’s Magazines.” St. Nicholas and Mary Mapes Dodge: The Legacy of a Children’s Magazine Editor, 1873-1905. Eds. Susan R. Gannon, Suzanne Rahn & Ruth Anne Thompson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. 13-17.

Gannon, Susan. “Introduction: What Was St. Nicholas Magazine?” St. Nicholas and Mary Mapes Dodge: The Legacy of a Children’s Magazine Editor, 1873-1905. Eds. Susan R. Gannon, Suzanne Rahn & Ruth Anne Thompson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. 1-9.

Images. “St. Nicholas Magazine.” George A Smathers Libraries. 13 Feb. 2009. University of Florida. 9 July 2009.

Joseph, Michael S. “Illustrating St. Nicholas and the Influence of Mary Mapes Dodge.” St. Nicholas and Mary Mapes Dodge: The Legacy of a Children’s Magazine Editor, 1873-1905. Eds. Susan R. Gannon, Suzanne Rahn & Ruth Anne Thompson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. 54-75.

Rahn, Suzanne. “St. Nicholas and Its Friends: The Magazine-Child Relationship.” St. Nicholas and Mary Mapes Dodge: The Legacy of a Children’s Magazine Editor, 1873-1905. Eds. Susan R. Gannon, Suzanne Rahn & Ruth Anne Thompson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. 93-110.

“St. Nicholas Magazine.” George A Smathers Libraries. 13 Feb. 2009. University of Florida. 9 July 2009.

Tager, Florence. “A Radical Culture for Children of Working Class: ‘The Young Socialists’ Magazine, 1908-1920.’” Curriculum Inquiry 22.3 (Autumn, 1992): 271-290.

“The St. Nicholas Tribute Page.” Flying Dreams. 9 May 2007.

“St. Nicholas” compiled by Hall Carey (Class of ’07, Davidson College)

Title: 
Secession

Date of Publication:  
Spring 1922 (1) – Spring 1924 (8)

Place(s) of Publication:
Vienna, Austria (no. 1)
Berlin, Germany (no. 2; 4)
Reutte, Austria (no. 3)
Florence, Italy (no. 5 – 6)
New York, NY (no. 7 – 8)

Frequency of Publication: 
Tri-yearly

Circulation: 
~500 copies per issue, of which ~350 issues were distributed free of charge. Each issue cost approximately $25 to print and distribute, according to an August 26, 1937 letter from Gorham B. Munson to Charles Allen.

Publisher:
Julius Lichtner in Vienna, Austria (no. 1 – 3)
Gustav Ascher G. m. b. H. in Berlin, Germany (no. 4)
John Brooks Wheelwright in Florence, Italy (no. 5 – 6)
Gorham B. Munson in New York, New York (no. 7 – 8)

Physical Description: 
Issues ran approx. 23 – 40 pages. One indication to Secession’s page size is noted in Hoffman et. al.’s The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography, when he writes that the first issues’ pages were “book-sized leaves.”

Price: 
20 cents / 2.50 francs / 1 shilling per issue
$1 / 12 francs / 5 shillings per subscription (six issues)
(no. 1 –2)
20 cents / 2.50 francs / 1 shilling / 50 marks per issue
$1 / 12 francs / 5 shillings / 400 marks per subscription
(no. 3)
20 cents / 3 francs / 1 shilling per issue
$1 / 15 francs / 5 shillings per subscription
(no. 4)
25 cents / 4 francs / 1 shilling / 5 lira per issue
$1 / 15 francs / 5 shillings / 25 lira per subscription
(no. 5 – 6)
Prices for no. 7 – 8 is not available.

Editor(s):
Gorham B. Munson (no. 1 – 2; 4 – 8)
Matthew Josephson (no. 3)
Kenneth Burke (no. 4 – 6)

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Library with Complete Original Issues: 
Princeton University; PDFs available online at Princeton University’s Blue Mountain Project

Reprint Editions:
Unknown

In late 1921 Secession founder Gorham B. Munson met Matthew Josephson at a Paris cafe. Both were American expatriates in their mid-twenties, drawn to the bohemian scene in Paris as well as its growing experimentalism in art, including Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, and Surrealism. Drawing on these various movements, Munson and Josephson wanted to create a little magazine that would connect and promote European avant-garde literature to select American audiences. They were also partly responding to Malcolm Cowley’s call, as published as “The Youngest Generation” in the October 18, 1921 issue of the New York Evening Post, to bring together certain young, rebellious writers into a single magazine. In a dingy hotel room in Vienna on August 1922, Munson edited and published the first issue of Secession with a budget of 20 U.S. dollars. Munson was in charge of editing the magazine under the title of “Director”; Josephson was in charge of scouting potential contributors. They intended for the magazine to run for only two years, from 1922 to 1924, because “[b]eyond a two year span, observation shows, the vitality of most reviews is lowered and their contribution, accomplished, becomes repetitious and unnecessary. Secession will take care to avoid moribundity” (1).

The editorial office changed locations during the magazine’s two year run, and such locations included Vienna, Berlin, Reutte, Florence, and then finally, New York.  After Munson left for the United States, Josephson became editor of the third issue.  He included his own story, “Peep-Peep-Parish,” in the issue after Munson had rejected it, and this marked the beginning of conflict between the two men. Kenneth Burke was listed as co-editor starting with the fourth issue of the magazine to settle disagreements between Munson and Josephson with a vote. This plan, however, was foiled when Josephson disregarded Burke’s and Munson’s votes and reduced a 100-line Richard Ashton poem to 3 lines in Secession‘s fourth issue. It was also around this time that Josephson took an editorial job at Broom, another European little magazine and Secession’s rival. The conflict became bitter when Munson accused Josephson of sabotaging the printing of the fifth issue of the magazine; he claimed that Josephson had gotten the publisher, John Brooks Wheelwright, drunk in a cafe near Paris and convinced him to include a haphazard, damaged poem, “Faustus and Helen” by Hart Crane, into the pages. The conflict reached an all-time high in late 1923, as Munson and Josephson engaged in a physical and verbal brawl on the muddy grounds of Woodstock, New York. During the Woodstock brawl until Secession’s eighth and final issue, Munson and the magazine were experiencing financial difficulties. Munson quietly published the last issue of Secession in New York City, which featured only an essay by Ivor Winters.

The aim of the magazines – and the general aims of its various, and at times competing editors – were to print work, reviews, and criticisms of contemporary and experimental works that Munson and Josephson believed “would ordinarily experience a great difficulty in finding a hearing among the established periodicals of America and Europe” (3). Despite its limited 500 print circulation, Secession reached and stirred controversy with a select American audience: every number was reviewed and criticized in other periodicals, including The Nation, The Dial, The Double Dealer, The Little Review, The Nation and Athenaeum, The New York Times, and T.S. Eliot’s Criterion.

In criticizing The Little Review and Broom as “Horrible Examples of perils between which Secession is to steer,” Munson expands further this notion of “steer[ing from]” or “secession” that has provided inspiration for the magazine’s title:

“There is emphatically something from which to secede: the American literary milieu of the past decade, a milieu which believed that literature was social dynamics and that its social significances were paramount.  There are, in addition, bitter necessities inherent in this milieu which demand secession. One of them is precisely the lack of opportunity for development by others which the valuable work of Brooks and Mencken exemplifies. And there is, at least, a small group of writers able by reason of the different direction of their work to organize a secession.

“For secession is not a revolt. It is rather a resignation from a milieu whose objects are other than ours. It is an unemotional sloughing-off by writers who profit by the gains of that milieu, but have never been bound to it. It is, in essence, a prompt deviation into immediate esthetic concerns. Our warfare is not denying, but tangential” (4).

While not an explicitly stated manifesto, Gorham B. Munson’s “A Bow to the Adventurous” in Issue No. 1 details the aims of Secession. Below is the last paragraph of Munson’s essay: 

“‘Secession’ exists for those writers who are preoccupied with researches for new forms.  It hopes that there is ready for it an American public which has advanced beyond the fiction and poetry of Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson and the criticism of Paul Rosenfeld and Louis Untermeyer.

“Interested readers may look up an important origin and a general program for ‘Secession’ in an essay by Malcolm Cowley entitled ‘This Youngest Generation’ N.Y. Evening Post ‘Literary Review,’ Oct. 18, 1921.” (1)

Gorham B. Munson (May 26, 1896 – Aug. 15, 1969)
Editor: 1922 – 1924

Shortly after his graduation from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Gorham Bockhaven Munson became involved with the Greenwich Village scene of avant-garde writers in the late 1910s, where he developed his ideas on contemporary literature. He later settled in Paris, where he met colleague – and eventually bitter rival – Matthew Josephson. Both were co-founders of the magazine, first published in Vienna. Differences between Munson and Josephson contributed to Josephson’s departure the more widely circulating Broom. After the closing of Secession in 1924, Munson was also assistant editor of s4N, another transatlantic little magazine devoted to experimental literature. Munson’s works also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Saturday Review, and Yale Review. He spent his remaining years in New York as an academic and professor at The New School, a private university located in Greenwich Village. Munson passed away in Hartford, Connecticut on August 15, 1969.

Matthew Josephson (Feb. 15, 1899 – Mar. 13, 1978)
Editor: Aug. 1922 – Jan. 1923

Josephson’s varied interests ranged from poetry to nineteenth-century French literature to twentieth-century American economics. Josephson was also the associate editor of another little magazine, Broom, during the same years as Secession. He resigned as director and contributor to Secession after the fourth issue due to managerial and literary differences, as claimed by Munson in Issue 7.  These differences culminated in a physical and verbal brawl between Munson and Josephson in late 1923 in Woodstock, New York. Munson saw Josephson’s departure to Broom as evidence of being “an intellectual fakir” and an opportunist.  After Broom‘s closing in 1924 due to financial difficulties, Josephson took a position on Wall Street which sparked his interest in American capitalism, as evidenced in his 1934 publication of The Robber Barons, a probing look into the post-Civil War rise of great American capitalist giants, including Carnegie, Morgan, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt. He is credited with coining the term “robber baron.”  Josephson was also the editor of transition, a quarterly little magazine that featured Expressionist, Surrealist, and Dadaist works.  In his late years Josephson was a renowned biographer, publishing works on Emilie Zola and Jean-Jacques Rosseau. He passed away on March 13, 1978 in Santa Cruz, California.

Kenneth Burke (May 5, 1897 – Nov. 19, 1993)
Editor: Jan. – Sept. 1923

After dropping out of Ohio University and later Columbia University, Kenneth Burke met Gorham B. Munson in the late 1910s, at the height of the Greenwich Village avant-garde scene. His friendship with both Munson and Josephson resulted in his co-editorship of Secession in 1923. After the closing of Secession, Burke worked for The Dial as an editor in 1923 and later as the music critic from 1927 – 1929. He was also the music critic for The Nation from 1934 – 1936, and he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935. Burke is perhaps most well-known as a literary theorist, developing ideas on “dramatism,” “the dramatistic pentad,” and “the Terministic screen.” His principal work is a collection of essays known as Language as Symbolic Action, published in 1966, in which he fleshed out his ideas regarding the “definition of man,” which, according to Burke, is a symbol for animal, and that man interprets reality through a set of symbols. He was awarded the National Medal for Literature at the American Book Awards in 1981.  Burke passed away on November 19, 1993 in Andover, New Jersey.

Richard Ashton:
“In the Copley Ballroom”
“The Jilted Moon”
“Moon-Garden”
“A Motorcycle, and Off to the Beach!”
“Searchlights”
“Star-Wind”

Slater Brown:
A Garden Party
“Plots for Penpushers”

Kenneth Burke:
The Book of Yul
First Pastoral
A Progression
In Quest of Olympus

Malcolm Cowley:
“Day Coach”
“Old Melodies: Love and Death”
“Play it for me again”
“Poem”
“Two Swans”

Hart Crane:
“For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen”
“Poster”

e. e. cummings: 
“And I Imagine”
“Life Hurl My”
“A Man Who Had Fallen Among Thieves”
“On the Madam’s Best April”
“Poets Yeggs and Thirsties”
“The Season’ Tis, My Lovely Lambs”
“This Evangelist”
“Workingman with Hands So Hairy-Sturdy”

Waldo Frank:
“For a Declaration of War”
Hope

Matthew Josephson (pen name Will Bray):
Apollinaire: or Let us be Troubadours
“Cities II”
“In a Cafe”
“The Oblate”
Peep-Peep Parrish
“Peripatetics”
“Poem”

Marianne Moore:
“Bowls”

Wallace Stevens:
“Last Looks at the Lilacs”

Tristian Tzara
“Instant Note Brother”
Mr. AA the Antiphilosopher

William Carlos Williams:
“The Attempt”
“The Hothouse Plant”

Brooker, Peter and Andrew Thacker, eds. The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume 1, Britain and Ireland 1880-1955. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

–––. and Andrew Thacker, eds. The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume 2, North America 1894-1960.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.

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

Images. “Secession.” Blue Mountain Project: Historic Avant-Garde Periodicals for Digital Research.  Princeton University.

Secession. 1922-1924. Princeton University Library: Blue Mountain Project: Historic Avant-Garde Periodicals for Digital Research. Web.

Secession, 1922-24 (dir. Gorham B. Munson).  Jacket2  Philadelphia, PA (August 31, 2011). Web.

“Secession” compiled by Ryan Emerick (Class of ’16, Davidson College)

Title:
Rogue

Date of Publication:
Mar. 15, 1915 (1.1) – Dec. 1916 (2.3)

Place(s) of Publication:
New York City, NY

Frequency of Publication:
Though it claimed to be a semimonthly magazine, it published erratically

Circulation:
Vol. 1, no. 1 claims a 15,000 copy print run (almost certainly ironic). If similar to comparable magazines, probably 500 per run.

Publisher:
New York : Rogue, Inc., 1915-1916. 

Physical Description:
26cm; Approximately 15-20 pages

Price:
5 cents per issue / $1 per year (1915)
10 cents per issue / $2 per year (1916)

Editor(s):
Allen Norton

Associate Editor(s):
Unknown

Libraries with Complete Original Issues:
Many more libraries have only the first volume

New York Public Library (NYPL); Beinecke, Yale University Library; Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Reprint Editions: 
None

Fashioning itself as a play on Vogue, Rogue was magazine of extraordinary wit, consisting of poetry, short drama, short fiction, and articles on fashion, art and current events—as Jay Bochner puts it, “a sort of downtown version of Vanity Fair, mock[ing] the whole body of Victorian culture from within…” (49). It was supported by Conrad Arensberg’s patronage and edited by Allen and Louise Norton. Allen Norton was chief editor of the magazine for its entire run, though Louise Norton arguably played an equal or greater role in the magazine’s publication. Though it only lasted a year and a half (Mar. 1915 – Dec. 1916) and published at inconsistent intervals, the magazine can claim poetry and artwork of Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, Clara Tice and others.

As Jessica Burnstein points out in Cold Modernism, “Rogue was all about fashion” (160). Its pages were strewn with trousers, corsets and tuxedos. For each issue Louise Norton wrote a section entitled “Philosophic Fashions” under the pseudonym Dame Rogue. It discussed shoes, buttons, skirts and the modern woman’s relation to each (celebrating, for example, a new corset design as a symbol for liberation). The magazine was also was playful, the second page of the first issue saying, “Advertise in ROGUE – It doesn’t pay” (the second issue exchanged “doesn’t” for “does”). The aphorism—the pithy, astute, witty, acerbic observation—may be the representative genre of Rogue.

Rogue subverted gender conventions and appealed to both men and women on its pages—as long as you (whether woman or man) felt comfortable stepping into modernity with this “Cigarette of Literature.” The fashion references highlighted tuxedos as well as corsets, though the advertisements were often more masculine in emphasis: “Rogue trusts everyone but himself,” and the perpetual “He wears the Dartmouth” suit advertisement.

Its short, haphazard life and brilliant contributors make it a seeming synecdoche of modernist little magazine’s elite playfulness.

Though Rogue never published an explicit manifesto, it published a great deal of sayings about itself. Here is a sampling:

“Advertise in ROGUE — It doesn’t pay” (Vol. 1., No. 1: 2)

“A magazine that believes in the people, and that the people express genius even more than genius itself.” (Vol. 1., No. 1: 3)

“Rogue Trusts Everyone But Himself… Rogue Sells the Truth And The Untruth for 5 cents $1.00 a Year” (Vol. 1, No. 1: 6)

“A magazine that does not believe in the people, or that the people express genius even more than genius itself.” (Vol. 1, No. 1: 3)

Allen Norton
Editor: Mar. 1915 – Dec. 1916

In addition to editing Rogue, Allen Norton wrote his own poetry, collected in a volume entitled Saloon sonnets: with Sunday flutings (which received a rather unfortunate review on page 41 of the Fifth volume of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse). He was married to Louise Norton, who contributed a great deal to Rogue. They divorced in 1916.

Louise Norton (remarried as Varèse) (1891 – 1989)
Co-founder and Editor: Mar. 1915 – Dec. 1916

After writing and editing for Rogue, Louise grew to critical acclaim as a translator of French poetry and fiction. She was married to French composer, Edgard Varèse, writing his biography, “Varese: A Looking-Glass Diary.” Her forward begins with the lines, “I feel that I am in honor bound to warn musicians and musicologists that they will find nothing musical about the music of Varèse in this book by his nonmusical wife.” (9). Her wit and intelligence characterized her writing all through her life.

Walter Conrad Arensberg:
Falling Asleep
Human
The Inner Significance of the Statues Seated Outside the Boston Public Library
To A Poet

Djuna Barnes:
The Awkward Age
The Flute Player

Homer Croy:
Yes, Trousers Are Handy

Charles Demuth:
Filling a Page (A Pantomime With Words)

Alfred Kreymborg:
Asleep
Bally-Boo
Overhead in an Asylum
To a Canary

Robert Locher:
The Corset Coach
One, One, One, There Are Many of Them
Watch Your Step!

Mina Loy:
Sketch of a Man on a Platform
Three Moments in Paris
Two Plays
Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots

Allen Norton:
Allen Plants Roses
Arrows
The Idiot in the Lion’s Garret
Spring Days in Fall
Verse
The Wind Was Singing Songs to Me
With Me Without You

Gertrude Stein:
Aux Galeries Lafayette

Wallace Stevens:
Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame STE. Ursule, Et Les Unze Mille Vierges
Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
Tea

Clara Tice:
Piety
Falling Asleep
ROGUE’S Booklovers’ Contest
Virgin Minus Verse

Carl Van Vechten:
An Interrupted Conversation
The Nightingale and the Peahen
How Donald Dedicated His Poem

Bochner, Jay. “The Marriage of Rogue and The Soil.” Little Magazines and Modernism: New Approaches. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. 49–66. Print.

Burstein, Jessica. Cold Modernism: Literature, Fashion, Art. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. WorldCat Discovery Service. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.

Churchill, Suzanne. The Little Magazine Others and the Renovation of Modern American Poetry. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006. Print.

Churchill, Suzanne W., and Adam McKible. Little Magazines & Modernism: New Approaches. Aldershot, England ; Ashgate Pub., 2007. WorldCat Discovery Service. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.

Longworth, Deborah. “The Avant-Garde in the Village: Rogue.” The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume II: North America 1894-1960. OUP Oxford, 2012. Print.

Varèse, Louise. Varèse: A Looking-Glass Diary. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1972. Print.

Watson, Steven. Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde. 1st ed. New York: Abbeville Press, 1991. Print.

White, Eric. Transatlantic Avant-Gardes: Little Magazines and Localist Modernism. Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Print.

“Rogue” Compiled by Andrew Rikard (Class of 2017, Davidson College)