The Little Review Analysis

Nurit Rubinstein

Dr. M. Shulak

American Literature II

2.4.14 The Little Review

Making no Compromise For the Publics Taste (until we’re prosecuted!)

The little Review was a Chicago founded magazine established during the Chicago Literary Renaissance. The Literary Renaissance was a crucial point in literary history and was the outcome of a Chicago literary festival, which occurred in 1893 in which many prominent Middle Western writers were encouraged to come to Chicago to write. The height of this literary Renaissance would reach its peak in the early 1900’s with the publishing of Sherwood Anderson, and Theodore Dreiser novels. The Little Review would be founded, and published as a result of this movement. Margaret C. Anderson was the Joan of Arc in our literary crusade. Anderson began publishing, The Little Review in Chicago in 1914. Anderson herself was an Indianapolis native from the upper middle class society, but after college she renounced her conservative lifestyle, moved to Chicago, and began publishing The Little Review.

Anderson’s intentions were clear; she was creating this magazine in order for criticism to be apart of current literary culture, because Anderson felt that, “Criticism as an art has not flourished in this country. We live too swiftly to have time to be appreciative; and criticism, after all, has only one synonym: appreciation.” (Little Review vol.1 issue 1). By the time 1916 came around Anderson already had garnered some favorable attention. That same year Anderson would meet Jane Heap. These two women would become: lovers, coworkers, and essential in the development of an American canonization. Jane Heap joined “The Little Review” in 1916, and although her submissions were few and varied; si...

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..., which we learn from romance novels, are not realistic.

While Joyce’s and Eliot’s story’s are very different, one was deemed illegal for obscenity, whereas the other was the first and last of a dying breed. They both come to reflect the magazine for what it was, an avant-garde magazine. A magazine that published completely out of the box ideas, while still remaining relevant to the public; Joyce and Eliot were pioneers in the modernist movement, but what was unique about them was their type of modernism; one which blended old ideas with new concepts. These were the men who represented The Little Review with their words, while their valiant leaders: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap and Ezra Pound were the ones who represented The Little Review through their admonishing of their past lifestyles to take on a new adventure—or maybe an old adventure in a new light.