Women Editing Modernism

For many years young writers experimenting with forms and aesthetics in the early decades of this century, small journals known collectively as "little" magazines were the key to recognition. Joyce, Stein, Eliot, Pound, Hemingway, and scores of other iconoclastic writers now considered central to modernism received little encouragement from the established publishers. It was the avant-garde magazines, many of them headed by women, that fostered new talent and found a readership for it. Jayne Marek examines the work of seven women editors—Harriet Monroe, Alice Corbin Henderson, Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, H.D., Bryher (Winifred Ellerman), and Marianne Moore—whose varied activities, often behind the scenes and in collaboration with other women, contributed substantially to the development of modernist literature. Through such publications as Poetry, The Little Review, The Dial, and Close Up, these women had a profound influence that has been largely overlooked by literary historians. Marek devotes a chapter as well to the interactions of these editors with Ezra Pound, who depended upon but also derided their literary tastes and accomplishments. Pound's opinions have had lasting influence in shaping critical responses to women editors of the early twentieth century. In the current reevaluation of modernism, this important book, long overdue, offers an indispensable introduction to the formative influence of women editors, both individually and in their collaborative efforts.

Jayne Marek examines the work of seven women editorsHarriet Monroe, Alice Corbin Henderson, Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Bryher (Winifred Ellermann), and Marianne Moore - whose varied activities, often behind the scenes and in collaboration with other women, contributed substantially to the development of modernist literature. Through such publications as Poetry, The Little Review, The Dial, and Close Up, these women had a profound influence that has been largely overlooked by literary historians. Marek devotes a chapter as well to the interactions of these editors with Ezra Pound, who depended upon but also derided their literary tastes and accomplishments. Pound's opinions have had lasting influence in shaping critical responses to women editors of the early twentieth century. In the current reevaluation of modernism, this important book, long overdue, offers an indispensable introduction to the formative influence of women editors, both individually and in their collaborative efforts.

Bornstein looks at modernism in its original sites of production.

Based on extensive new archival and literary historical research, Editing Modernity examines these Canadian women writers and editors and their role in the production and dissemination of modernist and leftist little magazines.

As authors and publishers, individuals and collectives, women significantly shaped the modernist movement. While figures such as Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein have received acclaim, authors from marginalized communities and those who wrote for mass, middlebrow audiences also created experimental and groundbreaking work. The essays in this volume explore formal aspects and thematic concerns of modernism while also challenging rigid notions of what constitutes literary value as well as the idea of a canon with fixed boundaries. The essays contextualize modernist women's writing in the material and political concerns of the early twentieth century and in life on the home front during wartime. They consider the original print contexts of the works and propose fresh digital approaches for courses ranging from high school through graduate school. Suggested assignments provide opportunities for students to write creatively and critically, recover forgotten literary works, and engage with their communities.

The period between 1916 and 1956 was a unique interval in the history of Canadian publishing. During this period not only were a significant number of non-commercial literary, arts, and cultural magazines established, but it also happened that an unprecedented number of those involved in the creation and subsequent editing of this new type of magazine - the little magazine - were women. Based on extensive new archival and literary historical research, Editing Modernity examines these Canadian women writers and editors and their role in the production and dissemination of modernist and leftist little magazines. At once a history of literary women and of the emergent formations and conditions of cultural modernity in Canada, Irvine's study relates women's editorial work and poetry to a series of crises and transitions in modernist and leftist magazine communities, to the public hearings and published findings of the Massey Commission of 1949-51, and to the later development of feminist literary magazines and editorial collectives during the 1970s and 1980s. Writers and editors examined in this study include Dorothy Livesay, Anne Marriott, Floris McLaren, P.K. Page, Miriam Waddington, Flora Macdonald Denison, Florence Custance, Catherine Harmon, Aileen Collins, and Margaret Fairley.

A collection of essays that explore the influence, work, and legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Amy Lowell.

Women played a central role in literary modernism, theorizing, debating, writing, and publishing the critical and imaginative work that resulted in a new literary culture during the early twentieth century. This volume provides a thorough overview of the main genres, the important issues, and the key figures in women's writing during the years 1890–1945. The essays treat the work of Woolf, Stein, Cather, H. D. Barnes, Hurston, and many others in detail; they also explore women's salons, little magazines, activism, photography, film criticism, and dance. Written especially for this Companion, these lively essays introduce students and scholars to the vibrant field of women's modernism.