Woolf’s unpublished assertion that ‘writing is not the scribbling of sheets on a desert islands [sic] for the gulls to carry away’38 is especially pertinent when considered in relation to magazines. While all texts were, at least implicitly, constructed with an audience in mind, the weekly or monthly nature of magazine publishing meant that both editors and writers needed a clear idea of the magazine’s target audience. It was, and is, a ruthless business, in which editorial missteps were swiftly and decisively punished by a decline in sales or a bulging bag of
complaints. Editors, and to some extent their publishers, were responsible not only for deciding upon the list of contributors, the balance of fiction and non-fiction and the editorial tone, but also the use of photographs and illustrations, the cover design, page layout, advertising, fonts, price, and stockists, all of which combined to determine a magazine’s readership. I do not want to create the impression of exceptionality, or to suggest that magazines were somehow
different to or more ‘outward-facing’ than other forms of literary or cultural production. I want, in fact, to suggest the opposite: magazines are the rule, not the exception to it. Yet magazines are the perfect texts with which to demonstrate that all texts were outward-facing, whether elite or mainstream, original or popular, high- or low-brow. Each magazine represents the collision of the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’: unlike with a novel, where there is a (perhaps erroneous) sense that the ‘work of art’ was created independently and then marketed to an
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audience, with a magazine it is impossible to view production and promotion as separate processes. ‘External’ and ‘internal’ characteristics are inscribed in the same document: one can see how much the magazine cost, how it was designed, which companies advertised in its pages. A magazine debunks the myth of the autonomous creative act: even insular and ideological ‘little’ magazines were created with an audience – albeit an elite one – in mind. The price, design, size and content of a magazine were not coincidental: they were all part of the editor and publisher’s efforts to create a coherent brand which appealed to their target audience.
Magazines, then, are the ideal artefacts through which to explore how artists and writers responded, both directly and indirectly, to the public. As Martin Conboy observes in The Press
and Popular Culture, the ‘dialogue between readers and popular newspapers can be literal, as in
the letters pages, or part of the textualization of the readership in the layout, language and advertising of the newspaper’.39 Although Conboy is referring to newspapers, both the notion of ‘dialogue’ and the ‘textualization of the readership’ are critical concepts for periodical studies: in both the Tyro and the Royal explored below, Lewis and Baily entered into a dialogue with their readers through editorials and more generally through the magazine’s modes of presentation and circulation. In this chapter, I use Yuri Lotman’s notion of the ‘ideal reader’, akin to Conboy’s ‘textualization of the readership’, as a way of tracing the type of reader inscribed in the textual, visual and design elements of a magazine. As we will see below,
Lotman’s theory exposes how a magazine’s language has the power not only to attract but also to exclude readers; the latter act of exclusion is crucial when it comes to the editorial policy of ‘little’ magazines like the Tyro.
Such analysis centres on what Ann Ardis has termed the ‘internal dialogics of a magazine: the relationships among and between specific components of any given issue of the magazine, and the creation of meaning through these juxtapositions.’40 In addition to this focus on each magazine’s internal dialogics, I also explore their ‘external dialogics: their discursive exchanges
39 Martin Conboy, The Press and Popular Culture (London: Sage, 2002), p. 96. I am grateful to Mark Hampton for his essay, ‘Representing the Public Sphere: The New Journalism and its Historians’, which introduced me to both this quotation and Conboy’s book. See Mark Hampton, ‘Representing the Public Sphere: The New Journalism and its Historians’, in Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880-1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms, ed. by Ann Ardis and Patrick Collier (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 15-29 (p. 19).
40 Ann Ardis, ‘Staging the Public Sphere: Magazine Dialogism and the Prosthetics of Authorship at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, in Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880-1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms, ed. by Ann Ardis and Patrick Collier (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 30-47 (p. 38).
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with other print media; the mappings of geographical (and temporal) space that they perform as they claim the territories that they report on, distribute copies to, take advertisements from.’41 While the focus throughout the chapter remains on production (as opposed to circulation or reception), I use Jan Mukařovský’s theory of the ‘aesthetic norm’ to assess how the form and content of each magazine was produced as part of a dialogue with its competitors. Broadly defined, the ‘aesthetic norm’ refers to the prevailing conception of what constituted a work of art in a given place at a given time.42 Such a definition appears self-evident, but the value of Mukařovský’s theory, at least in this context, is its emphasis on literary or artistic production as a dialogic, not a self-contained, process. I will explore the notion of the aesthetic norm in more detail below; for now, though, it is worth outlining three crucial features of Mukařovský’s theory:
1. All artistic or literary texts are produced in response to an aesthetic or literary norm. This response can be a straightforward replication of, or a more complex and critical engagement with, the norm. Somewhat counterintuitively, Mukařovský’s definition of a work of art is that which ‘destroys’ existing aesthetic norms: the entire ‘history of art’, he writes, is ‘the history of revolts against reigning norms’.43 While we might question the binary distinction Mukařovský draws between the genuine work of art which
‘revolts’ against prevailing norms, and the ‘standardized and repetitious’ ‘creation’ which ‘totally observe[s] an accepted norm’,44 his underlying point still stands: the work of art or literature is produced in reference to, or rather in dialogue with, an aesthetic or literary norm.
2. The aesthetic norm is socially constructed: it exists only ‘as a fact of the so-called collective awareness’. As Mark E. Suino puts it in his ‘Afterword’ to Mukařovský’s
Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts, when we speak of the ‘aesthetic norm’
we ‘are not speaking of an autonomous force, but rather of a social point of view’.45 The
41 Ardis, ‘Staging the Public Sphere’, p. 38.
42 Jan Mukařovský, Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts, trans. by Mark E. Suino (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970), pp. 24-6.
43 Mukařovský, Aesthetic Function, p. 33. 44 Mukařovský, Aesthetic Function, p. 37.
45 Mark E. Suino, ‘Afterword’, in Jan Mukařovský, Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts, trans. by Mark E. Suino (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970), pp. 97-102 (p. 99).
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‘perceiving public comes to anticipate certain structural or organizational qualities from art, and thus exerts a normative influence on art.’46 In other words, the process of normalisation is a social one, dictated by audiences.
3. The norm is open to change and ‘violation’: far from being a fixed set of aesthetic criteria, it is a ‘process which is constantly being renewed’.47 It ‘changes by virtue of the fact that it is constantly being re-applied, and it must adjust itself to new circumstances which arise as a result of these new applications.’48
Taken together, these three features combine to create a theory of cultural production as a dynamic, dialogic process of negotiation, adaptation and rejection between artists, norms, texts and audiences. It suggests that an ‘outward-facing’ mode of cultural production is the province of all texts, whether elite or popular, modernist or mainstream. If, like Suino, we view the aesthetic norm as a marker of a reader’s expectations, then the artist or writer hoping to produce a work of art or literature which appealed to a certain audience had – at least subconsciously – to identify and respond to the aesthetic norm. Depending on the audience being courted, such a response might take the form of destructing or replicating the norm; either way, it would require a knowledge of and an engagement with both one’s ‘ideal reader’
and one’s competitors. An awareness of the latter would, in effect, lead to the former: one
could quickly identify the prevailing aesthetic norm by studying the dominant styles of
illustration, typography and layout on display at the bookstall, then pitch one’s own publication to either fill a gap or provide more of the same.
Thus, although I wanted to focus on a couple of case study publications, I began by conducting a synchronic study of British magazines in the immediate post-WWI period, from 1919 to 1922. By considering a range of magazines, I could identify not only prevailing aesthetic norms but also how each publication responded to such norms and each other. I took a broad approach, focusing on contributors, types of fiction and non-fiction, cover design, internal layout, typography, use of illustrations and photographs, and the content, design and number of advertisements. My methodology was inspired by Andrew Thacker and Peter Brooker’s
46 Suino, ‘Afterword’, p. 99.
47 Mukařovský, Aesthetic Function, p. 95. 48 Mukařovský, Aesthetic Function, p. 31.
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introduction to the first volume of the Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines in two respects: firstly, my focus on ‘periodical codes’ (more of which below), and, secondly, my choice of dates. In their ‘General Introduction’, Brooker and Thacker observe that 1919 was a particularly prolific year for publishing, with the simultaneous appearance of
the [London] Mercury, Arts and Letters, Form, Chapbook, Coterie, The Owl, and Athenaeum. This alerts us to a set of synchronic relations or possibilities, a sense of the range of magazines an individual writer or illustrator could contribute to at any one time. It also indicates clusters of magazines running concurrently with an awareness of each other, in an overlapping or complementary relation, but frequently in a relation of rivalry and competition, even if this was sometimes cooked up to boost sales.49
Brooker and Thacker’s focus on ‘synchronic relations’ is vital if we are to understand how magazines engaged with one another. Their list of ‘little’ magazines, however, only tells part of the story. As Patrick Collier observes in Modernism on Fleet Street, there were ‘more than 50,000 periodicals being published in Great Britain in 1922’.50 To focus only on modernist publications presents rather a skewed perspective of British print culture; as Ann Ardis, after Michael North, argues, ‘we risk preserving modernism “in intellectual amber,” retrospectively accomplishing “by critical consensus” modernism’s “insulation from the cultural world into which it was introduced,” unless we acknowledge its original simultaneity with other aesthetic practices’.51 In this chapter, I argue that little magazines did not just appear alongside more popular periodicals: the former were consciously produced in opposition to the latter. By only viewing modernist magazines in isolation, we fail to identify the range of aesthetic norms circulating within the public sphere, or to analyse how modernist magazines sought to reject and challenge such norms. Little magazines did not exist in a vacuum: it is necessary, therefore, to situate such texts in relation to the mass-market magazines against which the little magazines were consciously situating themselves.
Yet this act of ‘situating’ little magazines is not the only reason for considering popular periodicals alongside modernist ones: this comparative approach allows us to consider the ways in which all publications attempted to attract their ‘ideal reader’. In that sense, such analysis allows us to close the gap between modernist and popular magazines, or, at least, to challenge the notion that little magazines were produced without an audience in mind. I am wary,
49 Brooker and Thacker, ‘General Introduction’, p. 22. 50 Collier, Modernism on Fleet Street, p. 202.
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however, of reifying the little magazine and using it as the high watermark of periodical
achievement: popular magazines should be read and evaluated in their own right, not as context for, or a piquant contrast to, modernist magazines. Although I focus on the years 1919 to 1922, seen as modernism’s annus mirabilis, I do not want just to contextualise this moment of
modernist creativity. The immediate post-war period is of interest for its two, apparently contradictory trends: firstly, the explosion in both popular and elite publishing; secondly, the existential crisis in publishing. As Arthur Gideon, the intellectual anti-hero of Rose Macaulay’s tragi-comic press satire Potterism, observes, 1919
was a queer, inconclusive, lazy, muddled, reckless, unsatisfactory, rather ludicrous time. It seemed as if the world was suffering from vertigo. I have seen men who have been badly hit spinning round and round madly, like dancing dervishes. That was, I think, what we were all doing for some time after the war—spinning round and round, silly and dazed, without purpose or power.52
The end of the war and the ensuing peace seemed to result in an air of gaiety bordering on delirium, a delight in new freedoms tinged with indecision. Editors and publishers had to respond quickly to the new post-war mood, but, as Francis Baily recalls, the ‘subject matter, style, and so on which had served them [male writers] very well before the war were comparatively useless after it.’53 Writers and editors were ‘all equally at sea as to what the public wanted in the way of writing and illustrations.’ (p. 157) War stories quickly gave way to what Baily called ‘the “leg” period’ – the first appearance of ‘girls’ legs’ in fiction, articles, photographs and illustrations – but he realised this ‘mania for legs and all that they implied could not go on for ever’ (pp. 155-7). Consequently, Baily ‘began building up [his] magazine from the purely frivolous state in which [he] found it into something with more than a merely superficial interest.’ (p. 158) Such a process was ‘very difficult at first’, however, ‘because every other magazine was doing the same, new magazines were being produced, and the competition for contributors worth buying became very keen.’ (p. 158)
Baily’s reminiscences and Macaulay’s fictional assertions paint a picture of a publishing world in flux. Perhaps for the first time in their career, writers and editors ‘had more or less to start all over again’ (p. 157). They had to reach out to and ‘psycho-analyse’ both new and old
52 Rose Macaulay, Potterism (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1920), p. 46.
53 Baily, Twenty-Nine Hard Years’ Labour, p. 157. All further references are to this edition and are included parenthetically in the text.
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readers, either men returning home from the war physically or emotionally scarred, or women whose lives had been fundamentally changed by the conflict. There was a huge increase in working women during the First World War: 1,345,000 more women were employed in July 1918 than in July 1914, with the biggest increases in industry (792,000) and commerce
(492,000) and the only decrease in domestic service (-400,000).54 After the War, many women were replaced by returning men, but there was still a rise in female employment from pre-war levels: women represented 30.75% of the total workforce in manufacturing in July 1914; in July 1920, the total was 32.24%.55 The rise was steeper in other areas: in banking and finance, the percentage rose from 5.12% in July 1914 to 26.42% in July 1920; in commerce, it rose from 28.82% in July 1914 to 41.68% in July 1920.56 As Sallie Heller Hogg points out, this rise may in part be explained by local shortages of men, but the war nevertheless led to innovations in the types of work women were permitted to do (doctors, surgeons, police officers, insurance agents) that were not revoked in peace time.57 Even for those who did not take up employment during the war, or who left employment after it, the lack of young men to marry and domestic servants to hire would have affected both women’s opportunities and domestic arrangements. The task of appealing to these readers’ new concerns and preoccupations ‘came down in the last event to the editor’ (p. 157); as such, editors required a greater knowledge of both their public and their competitors than ever before. Consequently, popular magazines like the Royal are the perfect volumes which with to consider how magazines responded to aesthetic norms in the interwar period. To Brooker and Thacker’s list, I thus added the Royal, alongside three other influential popular periodicals: the London Magazine, Lloyd’s, and the Strand (Figure 2.2).
54 Sallie Heller Hogg, ‘Employment of Women in Great Britain, 1891-1921’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1967), p. 170.
55 Heller Hogg, ‘Employment of Women’, pp. 215, 220. 56 Heller Hogg, ‘Employment of Women’, p. 220. 57 Heller Hogg, ‘Employment of Women’, p. 220-21.
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Alongside Brooker and Thacker, my choices were guided by Mike Ashley’s seminal reference guide to British popular fiction magazines, The Age of the Storytellers.58 I also considered the
Windsor Magazine, Hutchinson’s Story Magazine, the New Magazine, Cassell’s Magazine, Nash’s and Pall Mall Magazine and Grand Magazine, but I selected those mapped above both for their
interesting and varied responses to the aesthetic norm, and the diverse ways in which they textualized their readers. I will return to their engagements with the aesthetic norm below, but one brief example will illustrate how slight changes in tone and presentation can reveal each publication’s intended readership.
During my analysis of the above magazines, both little and popular, I became especially intrigued by each magazine’s slightly different representations of artists and writers. Informed by the mutually-exclusive art/commerce and art/entertainment divides mapped in Chapter 1, I expected little magazines to dedicate plenty of space to art and literature, but for popular magazines to focus solely on ‘entertainment’. Yet the engagement of these diverse titles with art and literature suggested otherwise: popular titles were full of stories about artists and writers, and peppered with general interest articles on art, literature, music and the theatre. Admittedly, the non-fiction pieces tended to focus on more popular manifestations of art than the modernist magazines – scene-painting or watercolours as opposed to experimental
58 Mike Ashley, The Age of the Storytellers: British Popular Fiction Magazines, 1880-1950 (London: British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2006).
1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930
Strand 1891-1950 Royal Magazine 1898-1930; New Royal/Royal Pictorial 1930-34 London Magazine 1901-1930; The New London Magazine , 1930-33
Form 1916-17; 1921-2 Lloyd's Magazine 1917-23
The Monthly Chapbook 1919-25 Coterie 1919-21; New Coterie 1925-7 The Owl 1919-23
Tyro 1921-22
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woodcuts or sculpture – but these articles do complicate the simple art/commerce divide.59 The fiction pieces which featured artists or writers as (anti)heroes are particularly of interest: the representation of such figures reveals each magazine’s target audience and their attitudes towards the art world. In other words, these stories formed a crucial part of each magazine’s implicit ‘textualization of their readership’. The London Magazine, for instance, adopted a reverential attitude towards artists and writers as romantic heroes; the Strand, on the other hand, saw artists as figures of fun, such as in the memorable ‘Brown of Boomoonoomana’ where an impoverished young writer steals a shoulder of mutton and is chased around London by the police.60
These fictional divergences reveal the different audiences each magazine attempted to attract. During the early 1920s the Strand was a resolutely ‘middlebrow’ affair in the