Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Little magazine
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.
The traditional characteristics of a little magazine include a 5-by-8-inch (13 cm × 20 cm) format, a two-color cover, and a semi-annual or quarterly publishing schedule. Literary magazines that do not qualify as little magazines for these reasons include Oxford American and the Lindhurst Foundation's Doubletake, measuring 9 by 12 inches (23 cm × 30 cm), having complex four-color covers, and having bi-monthly publishing schedules.
"Integral to the definition of the little magazine", according to scholars Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz, is penury. A later 1978 study by the (then) editors of TriQuarterly magazine described little magazines as putting "experiment before ease, and art before comment" and noting that "[t]hey can afford to do so because they can barely afford to do anything; as a rule they do not, and cannot, expect to make money". Hoffman considered them to be avant-garde, and editor of the Kenyon Review Robie Macauley opined that such magazines "ought to be ten years ahead of general acceptance". Ezra Pound observed that the more a magazine values profits, the less it is willing to experiment with things that are not (yet) acceptable to a mainstream readership.
It has been argued that little magazines that are associated with universities are not truly encompassed by the term, but the majority view amongst scholars is that they have similar enough purposes, formats, and contents to unaffiliated magazines in the genre that they can be considered little magazines also. Historically, they were both devoted to social issues, literature, or critical inquiry, and edited by amateurs.
Little magazine editors can be characterized as in the main idiosyncratic and dissatisfied with the status quo. The magazines themselves are in general, but with several notable exceptions, short-lived and do not out-last their founding editors. Editors have adopted ingenious, on occasion devious, means to finance their magazines, often financing them out of their own pockets.
The earliest significant examples are the transcendentalist publication The Dial (1840–44), edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, in Boston, and The Savoy (1896), edited by Arthur Symons, in London, which had as its agenda a revolt against Victorian materialism. Little magazines were significant for the poets who shaped the avant-garde movements like Modernism and Post-modernism across the world in the twentieth century.
Originally printed with traditional methods such as offset printing, the publication of little magazines saw a "mimeo revolution" in the 1960s with the advent of the mimeograph, which significantly reduced magazine printing costs. An example of this that also illustrates the devious approach to financing is Keith Abbot. He published Blue Suede Shoes when he was a graduate student at Washington State University, stealing a box of mimeograph paper from the university and borrowing a mimeograph machine from a friend.
In the 1980s a similar revolution occurred as the photocopier superseded the mimeograph, further reducing costs as the availability of commercial photocopying services by companies such as Kinko's obviated the need for editors (or their friends) to own a mimeograph machine. At the same time, university-sponsored magazines became more prevalent, whereas unaffiliated magazines had dominated the genre before the World Wars.
Hub AI
Little magazine AI simulator
(@Little magazine_simulator)
Little magazine
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.
The traditional characteristics of a little magazine include a 5-by-8-inch (13 cm × 20 cm) format, a two-color cover, and a semi-annual or quarterly publishing schedule. Literary magazines that do not qualify as little magazines for these reasons include Oxford American and the Lindhurst Foundation's Doubletake, measuring 9 by 12 inches (23 cm × 30 cm), having complex four-color covers, and having bi-monthly publishing schedules.
"Integral to the definition of the little magazine", according to scholars Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz, is penury. A later 1978 study by the (then) editors of TriQuarterly magazine described little magazines as putting "experiment before ease, and art before comment" and noting that "[t]hey can afford to do so because they can barely afford to do anything; as a rule they do not, and cannot, expect to make money". Hoffman considered them to be avant-garde, and editor of the Kenyon Review Robie Macauley opined that such magazines "ought to be ten years ahead of general acceptance". Ezra Pound observed that the more a magazine values profits, the less it is willing to experiment with things that are not (yet) acceptable to a mainstream readership.
It has been argued that little magazines that are associated with universities are not truly encompassed by the term, but the majority view amongst scholars is that they have similar enough purposes, formats, and contents to unaffiliated magazines in the genre that they can be considered little magazines also. Historically, they were both devoted to social issues, literature, or critical inquiry, and edited by amateurs.
Little magazine editors can be characterized as in the main idiosyncratic and dissatisfied with the status quo. The magazines themselves are in general, but with several notable exceptions, short-lived and do not out-last their founding editors. Editors have adopted ingenious, on occasion devious, means to finance their magazines, often financing them out of their own pockets.
The earliest significant examples are the transcendentalist publication The Dial (1840–44), edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, in Boston, and The Savoy (1896), edited by Arthur Symons, in London, which had as its agenda a revolt against Victorian materialism. Little magazines were significant for the poets who shaped the avant-garde movements like Modernism and Post-modernism across the world in the twentieth century.
Originally printed with traditional methods such as offset printing, the publication of little magazines saw a "mimeo revolution" in the 1960s with the advent of the mimeograph, which significantly reduced magazine printing costs. An example of this that also illustrates the devious approach to financing is Keith Abbot. He published Blue Suede Shoes when he was a graduate student at Washington State University, stealing a box of mimeograph paper from the university and borrowing a mimeograph machine from a friend.
In the 1980s a similar revolution occurred as the photocopier superseded the mimeograph, further reducing costs as the availability of commercial photocopying services by companies such as Kinko's obviated the need for editors (or their friends) to own a mimeograph machine. At the same time, university-sponsored magazines became more prevalent, whereas unaffiliated magazines had dominated the genre before the World Wars.