Commerce, Little Magazines and Modernity: New York, 1915-1922

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Commerce, Little Magazines and Modernity: New York, 1915-1922 Commerce, Little Magazines and Modernity: New York, 1915-1922 Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, to be awarded by the University of De Montfort, Leicester Victoria Kingham University of De Montfort December 2009 Acknowledgements This PhD would have been impossible without the help of all the following people and organisations, and I would like to express heartfelt thanks to everyone here for their support for this work and for their continued belief in my work, and to all the institutions which have generously supported me financially. Birkbeck College, University of London Dr. Rebecca Beasley, Dr. Robert Inglesfield, Dr. Carol White. University of Cambridge Dr. Sarah Cain, Dr. Jean Chothia, Prof. Sarah Annes Brown, Dr. Eric White. De Montfort University, Leicester Prof. Andrew Thacker, Prof. Heidi MacPherson, Prof. Peter Brooker, Dr. Deborah Cartmell, Federico Meschini. Funding Institutions Birkbeck College, University of London; The Arts and Humanities Research Council; The British Association for American Studies; The Centre for Textual Studies, Modernist Magazines Project, and Research fund, De Montfort University. Friends and Family Richard Bell, John Allum, Peter Winnick, John Lynch, Rachel Holland, Philippa Holland, Adam Holland, Lucille and Lionel Holdsworth. 2 Abstract This thesis examines the theme of commerce in four magazines of literature and the arts, all published in New York between 1915 and 1922. The magazines are The Seven Arts (1916-1917), 291 (1915-1916), The Soil (1916-1917), and The Pagan (1916-1922). The division between art and commerce is addressed in the text of all four, in a variety of different ways, and the results of that supposed division are explored for each magazine. In addition ‗commerce‘ is also used in this thesis in the sense of conversation or communication, and is used as a way to describe them in the body of their immediate cultural environment. In the case of The Seven Arts, as discussed in Chapter 1, the theme of commerce with the past, present, and future is examined: the way that the magazine incorporates the European classical past and rejects the more recent intellectual past; the way it examines the industrial present, and the projected future of American arts and letters. In the case of The Soil and 291 (the subjects of Chapters 2 and 3) there is extensive commerce between them in the sense of intercommunication, a rival dialogic demonstrating both ideological and economic rivalry. These two chapters comprise an extensive examination of the relationship between the magazines, and shows how much of this involves commerce in the financial sense. The fourth magazine, The Pagan, is concerned with a different sense of commerce, in the form of its rejection of the American capitalist system, and is critically examined here for the first time. The introduction is a survey of examples from the whole field of American periodicals of the time, particularly those immediately relevant to the magazines described here, and acts to delineate the field of scholarship and also to justify the particular approach used. The conclusion provides a summary of the foregoing chapters, and also suggests ways in which each magazine approaches the dissemination, or ‗sale‘ of the idea of the new. 3 Commerce, Little Magazines, and Modernity: New York, 1915-1922 Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................. 6 The Idea of „Commerce‟ ...................................................................................................................... 6 Little and Large: The Field of Magazines and Periodicals in pre-World War I America ................. 12 Classifications, Collections and Bibliographies ................................................................................ 16 Critical Studies of Magazines ............................................................................................................ 23 Definitions and Classifications: Methodology ................................................................................... 25 The Seven Arts .............................................................................................................................. 32 291 ................................................................................................................................................ 33 The Soil ......................................................................................................................................... 34 The Pagan ..................................................................................................................................... 35 Geographical and Chronological Correspondences ......................................................................... 36 Note on Modernism and Modernity ................................................................................................... 39 Chapter 1 The Seven Arts: Ancient Joy in Modern America ............................. 42 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 42 Background and Editorial Staff ......................................................................................................... 43 The Seven Arts‟ commerce with America‟s future ............................................................................. 47 The Seven Arts and commerce with the recent past ........................................................................... 49 Creative trends – The Seven Arts addressing the immediate present ................................................ 61 The Machinery of Commerce ............................................................................................................. 70 The Market in Intellectual Commodities ............................................................................................ 73 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 79 Chapter 2 291: ‘A Commerce of Ideas with America’ ....................................... 83 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 83 291: Background and Contributors ................................................................................................... 85 Form and Function: Simultaneous Representations .......................................................................... 90 Transatlantic influences, Commerce, and Consumer Technology ..................................................... 99 Modernist Aesthetics and Commercial Ethics ................................................................................. 102 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 107 Chapter 3 The Soil: ‘Market Value Permanently Guaranteed’ ...................... 118 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 118 The Soil‟s Editor .............................................................................................................................. 120 Form and Format in The Soil .......................................................................................................... 122 The Soil, Art and American Commerce ........................................................................................... 125 The Soil and Commercial Rivalry .................................................................................................... 128 „Real‟ Taste and Market Position .................................................................................................... 141 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 151 Chapter 4 The Pagan: ‘Just Like Socialists’ ..................................................... 156 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 156 The Editor of The Pagan .................................................................................................................. 159 The Pagan, censorship, prurience and the market .......................................................................... 164 The Pagan, pacifism and capitalism ................................................................................................ 168 The Pagan and The Masses ............................................................................................................. 171 Paganism, Eudaemonism, and Capitalism ...................................................................................... 173 The Pagan and other minority magazines ....................................................................................... 178 The Pagan: Style, Aesthetics, and The Market ............................................................................... 181 The Pagan, Judaism, Commerce, and Art ....................................................................................... 184 Conclusion: The Paradox of The Socialist „Product‟ .....................................................................
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