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. [1]
Nouvelles de la république des lettres is regarded as the first literary magazine; it was established by Pierre Bayle in France in 1684. [2] 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 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). [3] The most prominent Canadian literary magazine of the 19th century was the Montreal-based Literary Garland . [4]
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. [5] By 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 . [6]
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 was The Bellman , which began publishing in 1906 and ended in 1919, was edited by William Crowell Edgar and was based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. [7] 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. [8]
Two of 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 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, 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, 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.[ citation needed ]
The Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers (COSMEP) was founded by Richard Morris in 1968. It 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 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 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. [9] In 1995, the Mississippi Review was the first large literary magazine to launch a fully online issue. [10] By 1998, Fence and Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern were published and quickly gained an audience. [11] 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 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. [12]
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. [13]
New Zealand literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by the people of New Zealand. It often deals with New Zealand themes, people or places, is written predominantly in New Zealand English, and features Māori culture and the use of the Māori language. Before the arrival and settlement of Europeans in New Zealand in the 19th century, Māori culture had a strong oral tradition. Early European settlers wrote about their experiences travelling and exploring New Zealand. The concept of a "New Zealand literature", as distinct from English literature, did not originate until the 20th century, when authors began exploring themes of landscape, isolation, and the emerging New Zealand national identity. Māori writers became more prominent in the latter half of the 20th century, and Māori language and culture have become an increasingly important part of New Zealand literature.
Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning. The resulting poem can be defined as treated: changed in a profound and systematic manner; or untreated: virtually unchanged from the order, syntax and meaning of the poem.
The Southern Review is a quarterly literary magazine that was established by Robert Penn Warren in 1935 at the behest of Charles W. Pipkin and funded by Huey Long as a part of his investment in Louisiana State University. It publishes fiction, poetry, critical essays, and excerpts from novels in progress by established and emerging writers and includes reproductions of visual art. The Southern Review continues to follow Warren's articulation of the mission when he said that it gives "writers decent company between the covers, and [concentrates] editorial authority sufficiently for the journal to have its own distinctive character and quality".
Persian literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language and is one of the world's oldest literatures. It spans over two-and-a-half millennia. Its sources have been within Greater Iran including present-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Turkey, regions of Central Asia, South Asia and the Balkans where the Persian language has historically been either the native or official language.
In the United States, a little magazine is a magazine genre consisting of "artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money-minded periodicals or presses", according to a 1942 study by Frederick J. Hoffman, a professor of English. While George Plimpton disagreed with the diminutive connotations of "little", the name "little magazine" is widely accepted for such magazines. A little magazine is not necessarily a literary magazine, because while the majority of such magazines are literary in nature, containing poetry and fiction, a significant proportion of such magazines are not. Some have encompassed the full range of the arts, and others have grown from zine roots.
Southern United States literature consists of American literature written about the Southern United States or by writers from the region. Literature written about the American South first began during the colonial era, and developed significantly during and after the period of slavery in the United States. Traditional historiography of Southern United States literature emphasized a unifying history of the region; the significance of family in the South's culture, a sense of community and the role of the individual, justice, the dominance of Christianity and the positive and negative impacts of religion, racial tensions, social class and the usage of local dialects. However, in recent decades, the scholarship of the New Southern Studies has decentralized these conventional tropes in favor of a more geographically, politically, and ideologically expansive "South" or "Souths".
Arkansas literature has an emerging consciousness, though it still lags behind other Southern states such as Mississippi and Georgia in the promotion of its literary culture. University of Arkansas Press is probably the state's largest publisher of books, though there do exist some notable small presses in the state: August House, Rose Publishing Group, and Chenault and Gray. The University of Arkansas's M.F.A. program has graduated a number of notable writers, including Lewis Nordan, John Dufresne, Steve Yarbrough, and more. In 2004, the state held the first annual Arkansas Literary Festival in Little Rock, attracting famous writers from around the nation. The Porter Prize is the state's most prestigious literary award.
New Formalism is a late 20th- and early 21st-century movement in American poetry that has promoted a return to metrical, rhymed verse and narrative poetry on the grounds that all three are necessary if American poetry is to compete with novels and regain its former popularity among the American people.
The London Magazine is the title of six different publications that have appeared in succession since 1732. All six have focused on the arts, literature and poetry. A number of Nobel Laureates, including Annie Ernaux, Albert Camus, Doris Lessing, and Nadine Gordimer have been published in its pages. It is England's oldest literary journal.
The Nahda, also referred to as the Arab Awakening or Enlightenment, was a cultural movement that flourished in Arab-populated regions of the Ottoman Empire, notably in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Tunisia, during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
World Literature Today (WLT) is an American magazine of international literature and culture, published at the University of Oklahoma. The magazine's stated goal is to publish international essays, poetry, fiction, interviews, and book reviews for a non-academic audience. It was founded under the name Books Abroad in 1927 by Roy Temple House, a professor at the University of Oklahoma. In January 1977, the journal assumed its present name, World Literature Today.
Landfall is New Zealand's oldest extant literary magazine. The magazine is published biannually by Otago University Press. As of 2020, it consists of a paperback publication of about 200 pages. The website Landfall Review Online also publishes new literary reviews monthly. The magazine features new fiction and poetry, biographical and critical essays, cultural commentary, and reviews of books, art, film, drama, and dance.
The little magazine movement originated in the 1950s and 1960s in many Indian languages like Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Hindi, Malayalam and Gujarati, in the early part of the 20th century.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Sulfur: A Literary Tri-Annual of the Whole Art was an influential, small literary magazine founded by American poet and award-winning translator Clayton Eshleman in 1981 while he was Dreyfuss Poet in Residence at the California Institute of Technology.
Fenton Johnson was an American poet, essayist, author of short stories, editor, and educator. Johnson came from a middle-class African-American family in Chicago, where he spent most of his career. His work is often included in anthologies of 20th-century poetry, and he is noted for early prose poetry. Author James Weldon Johnson called Fenton, "one of the first Negro revolutionary poets”. He is also considered a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance.
Chicago literature is writing, primarily by writers born or living in Chicago, that reflects the culture of the city.
The Montreal Group, sometimes referred to as the McGill Group or McGill Movement, was a circle of Canadian modernist writers formed in the mid-1920s at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. The Group included Leon Edel, John Glassco, A. M. Klein, Leo Kennedy, F. R. Scott, and A. J. M. Smith, most of whom attended McGill as undergraduates. The group championed the theory and practice of modernist poetry over the Victorian-style versification, exemplified by the Confederation Poets, that predominated in Canadian poetry at the time.
