From music to a little magazine
Born in Indianapolis in 1886, Anderson initially intended to become a pianist. In Chicago she reviewed books and launched her own periodical. In 1916 she met Heap, an artist who became her partner and co-editor. The magazine moved to New York, and Ezra Pound’s work as foreign editor put the editors in contact with writers publishing in Europe.
In 1918 they began serialising James Joyce’s Ulysses. The prosecution over the Nausicaa episode ended in their conviction for obscenity in 1921 and interrupted the American serial. Anderson moved to France in 1923. There she formed a lasting relationship with the singer Georgette Leblanc and later wrote about her magazine years in My Thirty Years’ War.
What an issue contains
The December 1917 number puts May Sinclair’s defence of T. S. Eliot beside translations by Arthur Waley and Anderson’s own writing about music criticism. By the combined September–December 1920 number the editors were contending with the consequences of publishing Joyce. Anderson’s credit across these issues names the editor who decided what should share a set of covers; her own signed contributions identify a second, more particular role.
