A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories , poetry , and essays , along with literary criticism , book reviews , biographical profiles of authors , interviews and letters. Literary magazines are often called literary journals , or little magazines , terms intended to contrast them with larger, commercial magazines .
33-467: Modern Philology is a literary journal that was established in 1903. It publishes scholarly articles on literature, literary scholarship, history, and criticism in all modern world languages and book reviews of recent books as well as review articles and research on archival documents. It is published by the University of Chicago Press . Literary journal Nouvelles de la république des lettres
66-470: A mixture of ostensibly proletarian literature and essays of cultural commentary — the latter of which became a hallmark of PR for the whole of its nearly seven decades of existence. Rahv and Phillips were strongly committed to the idea that radical new artistic forms and radical politics could be successfully combined and were critical of much of the form and hackneyed content of much of what passed as "proletarian literature". This critical perspective brought
99-526: A sympathy for Trotskyism began to make itself felt in the magazine's editorial political line. The CPUSA press was hostile, claiming that a party asset had been stolen. A new group of left-wing writers deeply critical of the Soviet Union began to write for the publication, including James Burnham and Sidney Hook . The new period of independence had begun. Effective with the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 ,
132-566: Is regarded as the first literary magazine; it was established by Pierre Bayle in France in 1684. Literary magazines became common in the early part of the 19th century, mirroring an overall rise in the number of books, magazines, and scholarly journals being published at that time. In Great Britain , critics Francis Jeffrey , Henry Brougham and Sydney Smith founded the Edinburgh Review in 1802. Other British reviews of this period included
165-1140: The Westminster Review (1824), The Spectator (1828), and Athenaeum (1828). In the United States, early journals included the Philadelphia Literary Magazine (1803–1808), the Monthly Anthology (1803–11), which became the North American Review , the Yale Review (founded in 1819), The Yankee (1828–1829) The Knickerbocker (1833–1865), Dial (1840–44) and the New Orleans–based De Bow's Review (1846–80). Several prominent literary magazines were published in Charleston, South Carolina , including The Southern Review (1828–32) and Russell's Magazine (1857–60). The most prominent Canadian literary magazine of
198-649: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the 1950s and 1960s as part of the agency's efforts to shape intellectual opinion during the Cold War . The journal moved its offices to the campus of Rutgers University in 1963, then to the campus of Boston University in 1978. The final issue of the publication appeared in April 2003. The literary journal Partisan Review (PR) was launched in New York City in 1934 by
231-640: The John Reed Club of New York — a mass organization of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). The publication was published and edited by two members of the New York club, Philip Rahv and William Phillips . The launch of the magazine was assisted by the editors of New Masses , the Communist Party's national artistic and literary magazine, including Joseph Freeman . Early issues of the magazine included
264-728: The National Endowment for the Arts , which created a committee to distribute support money for this burgeoning group of publishers called the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines (CCLM). This organisation evolved into the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). Many prestigious awards exist for works published in literary magazines including the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Awards . Literary magazines also provide many of
297-465: The pacifist magazine politics . Anti-Communism began to loom in the raison d'être of Partisan Review in the post-war years and bolstered by the contributions of such writers as Hook, James Farrell , George Orwell , and Arthur Koestler , the political trajectory of PR moved rightwards. Increasingly conservative and nationalist , by the early 1950s the magazine had become devoutly supportive of American virtues and values, although critical of
330-557: The 1950s. When the ACCF terminated its operations, half of the money remaining in the organization's coffers was transferred to Partisan Review. Additional funds came to the magazine to alleviate its financial problems in the 1950s in the form of a $ 10,000 donation from Time magazine publisher Henry Luce . Luce seems to have been instrumental in expediting contacts between PR publisher Phillips and Director of Central Intelligence Walter Bedell Smith . A successor organization established by
363-557: The 19th century was the Montreal-based Literary Garland . The North American Review , founded in 1815, is the oldest American literary magazine. However, it had its publication suspended during World War II, and the Yale Review (founded in 1819) did not; thus the Yale journal is the oldest literary magazine in continuous publication. Begun in 1889, Poet Lore is considered the oldest journal dedicated to poetry. By
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#1732855465658396-1060: The Arts, and New Ideas , which began publication in 1951 in England, the Paris Review , which was founded in 1953, The Massachusetts Review and Poetry Northwest , which were founded in 1959, X Magazine , which ran from 1959 to 1962, and the Denver Quarterly , which began in 1965. The 1970s saw another surge in the number of literary magazines, with a number of distinguished journals getting their start during this decade, including Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art , Ploughshares , The Iowa Review , Granta , Agni , The Missouri Review , and New England Review . Other highly regarded print magazines of recent years include The Threepenny Review , The Georgia Review , Ascent , Shenandoah , The Greensboro Review , ZYZZYVA , Glimmer Train , Tin House , Half Mystic Journal ,
429-662: The CIA to funnel money to sympathetic groups and individuals, the Congress for Cultural Freedom , stepped up to assist the magazine in the early 1960s, granting PR $ 3,000 a year for a three-year period in the guise of foreign magazine subscriptions. In 1963, William Phillips negotiated a move of the editorial offices of Partisan Review to the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick , New Jersey . The university agreed to provide not only free office space and utilities, but also to cover
462-507: The Canadian magazine Brick , the Australian magazine HEAT , and Zoetrope: All-Story . Some short fiction writers, such as Steve Almond , Jacob M. Appel and Stephen Dixon have built national reputations in the United States primarily through publication in literary magazines. The Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers (COSMEP) was founded by Richard Morris in 1968. It
495-503: The John Reed Clubs as part of the change. PR editors Phillips and Rahv were disaffected by the change, seeing the new organization as a watering down and mainstreaming of the party's commitment to a new, radical, proletarian literature. Intellectual interest turned to events abroad and interest in PR faltered to the point that effective with its October 1936 issue, publication of the magazine
528-447: The University's then-mandatory faculty retirement age of 70. Learning that no exception would be made for him, Phillips began shopping for a new home for Partisan Review . The decision was ultimately made to relocate the magazine's editorial offices to Boston University , where publication would be continued under the editorship of Phillips and Steven Marcus, with Edith Kurzweil remaining as the magazine's Executive Editor. Under terms of
561-473: The country's biases and excesses. Orwell had been the Partisan Review ' s London correspondent. Although vehemently denied by founding editor William Phillips, following the fall of the Soviet Union it was revealed that Partisan Review was the recipient of money from the Central Intelligence Agency as part of its effort to shape intellectual opinion in the so-called "cultural cold war". In 1953,
594-507: The end of the century, literary magazines had become an important feature of intellectual life in many parts of the world. One of the most notable 19th century literary magazines of the Arabic-speaking world was Al-Urwah al-Wuthqa . Among the literary magazines that began in the early part of the 20th century is Poetry magazine. Founded in 1912, it published T. S. Eliot 's first poem, " The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ". Another
627-587: The evolution of independent literary journals. There are thousands of other online literary publications and it is difficult to judge the quality and overall impact of this relatively new publishing medium. Little magazines, or "small magazines", are literary magazines that often publish experimental literature and the non-conformist writings of relatively unknown writers. Typically they had small readership, were financially uncertain or non-commercial, were irregularly published and showcased artistic innovation. Partisan Review Partisan Review ( PR )
660-462: The magazine abruptly suspended publication in the fall of 1936. When the magazine reemerged late in 1937, it came with additional editors and new writers who advanced a political line deeply critical of Joseph Stalin 's Soviet Union. By the 1950s, the magazine had evolved towards a moderate social democratic and staunchly anti-Stalinist perspective and was generally supportive of American foreign policy. Partisan Review received covert funding from
693-467: The magazine began to divorce itself from the Communist movement altogether, including its dissident Trotskyist wing. Rahv and Phillips gave qualified support to the campaign for American rearmament and the country's preparation for war, opposed by Macdonald and another editor at the time, Clement Greenberg . A tentative truce between the editors averted a split, with Macdonald finally departing in 1943 to form
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#1732855465658726-496: The magazine found itself in financial difficulties, when one of its primary backstage financial backers, Allan D. Dowling, became embroiled in a costly divorce proceeding. The financial shortfall was made up by a $ 2,500 grant from the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF), a CIA front organization on the executive board of which editor Phillips sat throughout the decade of the 1950s. Additional CIA money came later in
759-555: The most influential—though radically different—journals of the last half of the 20th century were The Kenyon Review ( KR ) and the Partisan Review . The Kenyon Review , edited by John Crowe Ransom , espoused the so-called New Criticism . Its platform was avowedly unpolitical. Although Ransom came from the South and published authors from that region, KR also published many New York–based and international authors. The Partisan Review
792-435: The new hosting agreement, ownership rights of Partisan Review's extensive archive were to be transferred to the new institution. Having invested more than $ 1 million in Partisan Review over the years and stored the publication's archive since 1963, Rutgers physically blocked the transfer of PR's files to the new institution. A standoff resulted and attorneys for both parties hastily came to an agreement by which Phillips
825-628: The pair into conflict with party stalwarts at the New Masses such as Mike Gold and Granville Hicks but was not sufficient to break Partisan Review from the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) orbit. In 1936 as part of its Popular Front strategy of uniting Communist and non-Communist intellectuals against fascism , the CPUSA launched a new mass organization called the League of American Writers , abandoning
858-999: The pieces in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Essays annual volumes. SwiftCurrent , created in 1984, was the first online literary magazine. It functioned as more of a database of literary works than a literary publication. In 1995, the Mississippi Review was the first large literary magazine to launch a fully online issue. By 1998, Fence and Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern were published and quickly gained an audience. Around 1996, literary magazines began to appear more regularly online. At first, some writers and readers dismissed online literary magazines as not equal in quality or prestige to their print counterparts, while others said that these were not properly magazines and were instead ezines . Since then, though, many writers and readers have accepted online literary magazines as another step in
891-435: The salary of an editor, an assistant editor, a secretary, and various graduate assistants to help with office tasks. In return, the university would gain prestige from association with the well-regarded literary journal and make uses of the services of the editor and assistant editor as lecturers in the school's English Department. This arrangement proved satisfactory for both parties until June 1978, when Phillips approached
924-673: Was The Bellman , which began publishing in 1906 and ended in 1919, was edited by William Crowell Edgar and was based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Other important early-20th century literary magazines include The Times Literary Supplement (1902), Southwest Review (1915), Virginia Quarterly Review (1925), World Literature Today (founded in 1927 as Books Abroad before assuming its present name in 1977), Southern Review (1935), and New Letters (1935). The Sewanee Review , although founded in 1892, achieved prominence largely thanks to Allen Tate , who became editor in 1944. Two of
957-466: Was a left-wing small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City . The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party USA –affiliated John Reed Club of New York City and was initially part of the Communist political orbit. Growing disaffection on the part of PR ' s primary editors began to make itself felt, and
990-446: Was allowed to remove back issues, financial files, and current documents necessary for the magazine's publication to Boston University with Rutgers holding the archival originals until the matter could be legally settled. An inventory of the magazine's papers was conducted and photocopies of critical documents made and the matter headed for court. In the lawsuit which followed, Phillips ultimately prevailing based on his contention that
1023-414: Was an attempt to organize the energy of the small presses. Len Fulton, editor and founder of Dustbook Publishing, assembled and published the first real list of these small magazines and their editors in the mid-1970s. This made it possible for poets to pick and choose the publications most amenable to their work and the vitality of these independent publishers was recognized by the larger community, including
Modern Philology - Misplaced Pages Continue
1056-540: Was first associated with the American Communist Party and the John Reed Club ; however, it soon broke ranks with the party. Nevertheless, politics remained central to its character, while it also published significant literature and criticism. The middle-20th century saw a boom in the number of literary magazines, which corresponded with the rise of the small press . Among the important journals which began in this period were Nimbus: A Magazine of Literature,
1089-577: Was suspended. While Partisan Review was relaunched by Rahv and Phillips in December 1937, it was changed at a fundamental level. News of the Great Purge in the Soviet Union and of Soviet duplicity in the Spanish Civil War pushed the pair of editors to a new outspokenly critical perspective. A new cast of editors were brought on board, including Dwight Macdonald and literary critic F. W. Dupee , and
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