The Little Review
[1][2] With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound, Anderson created a magazine that featured a wide variety of transatlantic modernists and cultivated many early examples of experimental writing and art.
The trial was discussed in Girls Lean Back Everywhere by First Amendment attorney Edward de Grazia, whose book was titled based on a quote from Jane Heap.
Girls lean back everywhere, showing lace and silk stockings; wear low-cut sleeveless blouses, breathless bathing suits; men think thoughts and have emotions about these things everywhere--seldom as delicately and imaginatively as Mr. Bloom (in the "Nausicaa" episode)--and no one is corrupted.
[10]Although the obscenity trial was ostensibly about Ulysses, Irene Gammel argues that The Little Review came under attack for its overall subversive tone and, in particular, its publication of the sexually explicit writings of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
Gammel writes, “If Heap was the field marshall for The Little Review's vanguard battle against puritan conventions and traditional sexual aesthetics, then the Baroness was to become its fighting machine”.
[15] Following the obscenity trial, Anderson and Heap were forced to restrict the magazine's content to less inflammatory material, and they no longer printed their motto, “Making No Compromise with the Public Taste”.
[19] Topics covered in the first issue (March 1914) included feminist book reviews, an essay about Nietzsche, and literary pieces written by Floyd Dell, Rupert Brooke, and Alice Meynell.
The May 1914 issue sparked conversation and controversy about the magazine since it was there that Anderson published her essay titled “The Challenge of Emma Goldman” in which she lauds the notable anarchist for her support of the elimination of private property and religion.
Anderson defended this move by claiming that contributors did not submit enough good work, so, as she notes on page one, “The September issue is offered as a Want Ad.” In the pages following the blank ones, Anderson published essays that were characteristic of the magazine's interest: two pieces about the San Francisco Bomb Case in which Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings were accused and convicted (though later pardoned) of detonating a bomb during the July 22 parade held in honor of the U.S.’s entry into World War I and a book review of Frank Harris’s Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions.
The Spring 1923 “Exiles” issue is noteworthy because it published works by American expatriates living in Paris as well as the Parisian avant-garde including Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, George Antheil, E. E. Cummings, Fernand Léger, and H.D.
Beyond Hemingway's work, the issue is noteworthy due to its inclusion of avant-garde French artists such as Fernand Léger and Jean Cocteau as well its experimental front cover that reflected the tastes of editor Jane Heap.
The 1929 issue of The Little Review ended the magazine's run with “Confessions and Letters” from over fifty individuals in the arts, including James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, and Ezra Pound.
Eliot Ford Madox Ford Emma Goldman James Joyce Amy Lowell Mina Loy Gertrude Stein Sara Teasdale (under the pseudonym "Frances Trevor") [23] Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven William Carlos Williams Hans Arp Lawrence Atkinson Jean de Bosschere Marcel Duchamp Max Ernst Fernand Léger Francis Picabia Pablo Picasso Joseph Stella In the Dec. 1919 issue, the individual identified as serving in the capacity of "Advisory Board" and who provided some content for the magazine was signed simply as "jh".
