Little Magazine, name applied to an advance‐guard literary journal, primarily concerned with the publication of writers or writing not likely to be acceptable to established journals of larger circulation. The Yellow Book (1894–97), founded by Henry Harland, and The Savoy (1896), both English magazines that revolted against Victorian rationalism, morality, and emphasis upon science, set the standards that others followed. Their art‐for‐art's sake credo was imitated by such American magazines as The Bibelot (1895–1915), a monthly reprint of prose and poetry from obscure works, edited by T.B. Mosher, and The Chap Book (1894–98), issued from Chicago. The Lark (1895–97), published at San Francisco, was a distant reflection of this school, but had gaiety as its only policy. The little magazine came into particular importance in the U.S. just before and after World War I, as a protest by those who believed artists were being enslaved and repressed by Mammon and Puritanism. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse (1912– ) is an eclectic publication, championing new poets of all nations and schools. The Little Review (1914–29), frequently considered the most significant American magazine of the type, had tremendous vitality and never settled into any one pattern. During the postwar period, some magazines, like The Seven Arts (1916–17), were concerned with an objective scrutiny of American culture. Others, like The Frontier (1920–39), The Fugitive (1922–25), and The Reviewer (1921–25), were regional in tendency; and still others, like Secession (1922–24), Broom (1921–24), transition (1927–50), and This Quarter (1925–32), were eclectic in character and were edited from abroad by expatriates. The Dial (1917–29) was in a sense the heir of the previous experimentation, but maintained a more detached, urbane, and cosmopolitan tone. Hound and Horn (1927–34), the outstanding little magazine edited by university students, held policies similar to those of other publications in the movement.

During the Depression after 1929, advance‐guard writers turned their attention to social and economic reform, and for a time the significance of little magazines began to disappear. Some of their purposes were taken over by literary quarterlies issued from universities, but many new little magazines continued to appear, some with an international view, like Paris Review or Botteghe Oscure (1949–60); some were issued as journals, like Evergreen Review, and some published as paperbacks, like discovery and New World Writing.

The publication of little magazines increased greatly beginning in the 1950s. In 1978 the editors of a book on the subject guessed that at least 1500 such journals were being published in the U.S. They are and have been of the most diverse sorts, championing a great range of aesthetic, critical, social, and cultural views. Some, like The Floating Bear (1961–69), were essentially newsletters for rapid communication among authors of experimental literature; others, like Big Table (1959–60), were founded to print what was unacceptable to more conventional publications; some, like The Black Mountain Review⧫ (1954–59), were organs of a special school of literature; some, like Reed Whittemore's Furioso (1939–53), Cid Corman's Origin (1951–71), and Gilbert Sorrentino's Neon (1956–60), reflected the views of a major young writer; some, like Salmagundi (1965– ) and Tri‐Quarterly (1958– ), are closely related to a university or college; and some, like Yardbird Reader (1972– ), are dedicated to the writings of ethnic minorities.

Over the hundred years or more that they have flourished, little magazines have printed a good deal of insignificant or bizarre work, but they have justified themselves by providing a medium for all kinds of aesthetic experimentation and innovative and unpopular beliefs. By initial circulation in these magazines the novelties, heresies, and unknown authors of one era have often become accepted and valued in a succeeding period.

LITTLE MAGAZINES

Art vs. Money

Because printing costs were still relatively low in America—and very cheap in Europe—many so-called "little magazines" sprang up during the 1920s. The term "little" did not refer to format but to circulation. The standard work, The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography, states that "A little magazine is a magazine designed to print artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money-minded periodicals or presses." Virtually all little magazines existed for the purpose of publishing avantgarde or experimental writing, often by their editors. A writer is not a writer unless he or she is published some-where, somehow. The little magazines provided a place for writers—typically younger writers—to break in. Ezra Pound was the most important figure involved with the little magazines as editor or adviser during the 1920s. Nearly all of these magazines had a short life span as the editors ran out of money or lost interest.

University Sponsorship

The regional literary magazines resembled the little magazines in publishing material that could not find a commercial market, but the regionals were less experimental. Some of these were Frontier (University of Montana, 1920), The Southwest Review (Southern Methodist University, 1924; previously The Texas Review), and The Prairie Schooner (University of Nebraska, 1927). Since the regional literary magazines nearly always had university sponsorship, their life expectancies were better than those of the privately funded little magazines. However, the university-sponsored magazines were not necessarily parochial; some, such as The Virginia Quarterly Review (The University of Virginia, 1925), were national in scope. The universities also supported scholarly or critical journals that were not actually little magazines; Duke's American Literature became the most important journal in its field.

SOME LITTLE AND LITERARY MAGAZINES LAUNCHED 1920-1929

1920

Contact (terminated 1923), ed. William Carlos Williams and Robert McAlmon. New York.

1921

The Double Dealer (1926). New Orleans.

The Reviewer (1925). Richmond, Va.

Broom (1924). Rome; Berlin; New York

Gargoyle (1922). Paris.

1922

The Fugitive (1925). Nashville, Tenn.

Secession (1924), ed. Gorham Munson with Matthew Josephson and Kenneth Burke. Vienna; Berlin; Reutte; Florence; New York.

The Wave (1924), ed. Vincent Starrett. Chicago; Copenhagen.

1923

The Chicago Literary Times (1924), ed. Ben Hecht.

The Modern Quarterly (1940), ed. V. F. Calverton. Baltimore.

1924

The Transatlantic Review (1925), ed. Ford Madox Ford. Paris.

1925

This Quarter (1932), ed. Ernest Walsh and Ethel Moorhead. Paris; Milan; Monte Carlo.

Two Worlds (1927), ed. Samuel Roth. New York.

1926

Fire!!, ed. Wallace Thurman. New York.

1927

Hound and Horn (1934). Portland, Maine.

transition (1938), ed. Eugene Jolas and Elliot Paul. Paris; The Hague.

Exile (1928), ed. Ezra Pound. Dijon.

1929

Blues (1930), ed. Charles Henri Ford. Columbus, Miss.

Tambour (1930). Paris.

Sources:

Hugh Ford, Published in Paris: American and British Writers, Printers, and Publishers in Paris, 1920-1939 (New York: Macmillan, 1975);

Frederick J. Hoffman, Charles Allen, and Carolyn F. Ulrich, The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946).

little magazines, a term used to describe minority literary and artistic periodicals, possibly derived from one of the better known of such publications, the Little Review. English ‘little magazines’ include the Savoy, Rhythm, Blast, New Verse, the Review and its successor the New Review, Stand, Ambit, and Agenda.