Making It News : Money and Marketing in the Expatriate Modernist Little Magazine in Europe 1

This article deals with practical and economic aspects of expatriate little magazine production and should be seen as furthering the understanding of the economic and promotional underpinnings of modernist cultural expression in the 1920s and 30s. In particular, the article indicates to what extent literary ambitions and idealistic actions associated with the editing of a little magazine on the European continent intermingled with material and promotional concerns. Moreover, by focusing on expatriate little magazines, the article emphasizes the significance of geographical location for both practical and marketing purposes. Marketing ambitions blended with tactics for gaining legitimacy, and promotional language provided a valuable tool for advancing sales as well as cultural credibility. One important way of catering to economic interests while upholding literary ambitions was to incorporate the magazines into the flow of news, suggesting an affinity with publication types dedicated to hot topics, large readerships, and the journalistic virtue of presence on the scene. Designating the little magazine and its literary content as news therefore complicates and troubles the boundary between elitist and popular culture.

In a letter to Allanah Harper, editor of Échanges, Ezra Pound suggested sending out complementary copies to potentially interested readers, 'not out of kindness but as publicity'.2However small, a little magazine had to establish a readership to motivate its existence and secure revenues.To attract audiences and improve finances, numerous promotional strategies were employed, ranging from the choice of Ford Madox Ford to name his review the Transatlantic Review, in order 'to promote a quite profitable advertising contract' with the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique,3 to the publishing of exclusive magazine copies that would presumably cater to the refined palates of new readers.Little magazine editors were literary canon makers and vanguard agents of modernism, but they were also public relations managers.In this article we show how literary ambitions and idealistic actions associated with the editing of a little magazine on the European continent were deeply imbued with material and promotional concerns, and how literary prestige gave rise to acts that were not always 'out of kindness'.As we argue, marketing ambitions often blended with tactics for gaining legitimacy on the literary scene, and promotional language provided a valuable tool for advancing sales as well as cultural credibility.One way of catering to economic interests while upholding literary ambitions was to incorporate the magazines in the flow of news, suggesting an affinity with publication types dedicated to the most topical subject matter, large readerships and the journalistic virtue of presence on the scene.Designating the little magazine and its literary content as news therefore complicates and troubles the boundary between elitist and popular culture, as well as between subcultural and mainstream cultural expressions.As Mark Morrison observes, many 'modernists found the energies of promotional culture too attractive to ignore, especially when it came to advertising and publication techniques.[…] the institutional adaptation of promotional culture by young modernists suggests an early optimism about the power of mass market technologies and institutions to transform and rejuvenate contemporary culture '.4This study of the practical and economic aspects of little magazine production and the marketing of modernism should be seen as furthering the understanding of the economic and promotional underpinnings of modernist cultural expression.Moreover, by focusing on the expatriate little magazines we particularly wish to highlight the significance of geographical location for both practical and marketing purposes.5 For promotional purposes, the European vantage point was in itself an asset.The expatriate little magazine viewed the literary scene from a particular angle, contributing to an international slant on modernism, while it also brought in new audiences attracted to an international market.The expatriate little magazines included in our study are: Gargoyle ; Broom ;6 Secession ;7 Transatlantic Review (1924); This Quarter ; Exile ;8 transition ;9 Tambour (1929-30); Échanges ; New Review ; Booster -later Delta ; Trilingual Morada (1931);10 Close-up ; Caravel ; and Epilogue .
We particularly draw attention to the extent to which the relation between the little magazines and the market was practical, involving a number of diverse editorial activities and practices.We also wish to emphasize the extent to which the venture of little-magazine publishing was described in terms of personal and financial risk, thereby blurring ambitions in the literary field and economy.Little magazine editors readily stressed the association between being a brave editor-publisher and the struggle for existence on a low budget, unhesitatingly offering the small reviews as investment pieces.
This article begins with a look at the financial underpinnings of the little magazines and the marketing of them as collectibles, noting particularly the self-conscious rhetoric that emphasized risk-taking, as the editors hoped to make a convincing case for investment opportunities and to attain more permanent literary prestige.It continues with aspects of promoting and selling the little magazine, including networking, securing established contributors, and finding reviewers.The reception of the little magazines in various types of publication is also discussed, and the article concludes by looking at advertising for different types of products in the little magazines, noting specifically how these become part of the character of the magazine.

Finances
The first choice of many 'literary' expatriates was Paris, or at least the possibility to travel there easily from Rome, Vienna, Berlin, and other European cities.In The World Republic of Letters, Pascale Casanova, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, indicates to what extent literature functions as an economy, in which each nation and writer battle to attain what Casanova terms 'literary capital'.11The editing of a little magazine on the European continent, especially Paris, was a way of attaining such capital.The city opened doors to prominent writers, artists, and literary salons, while also providing the possibility for self-promotion and publication.The international setting and atmosphere could be used to gain capital and give credibility both to the editors themselves and their publications.
However, while American and British modernists certainly had artistic or cosmopolitan aspirations, it is important to bear in mind that economic conditions played a crucial role in the pull toward continental Europe.To understand the material circumstances of which editing and marketing a little magazine were a part, it is vital to look at the various ways in which the little magazines were financed, including the possibilities offered by the economic situation of post-war Europe.The issue of finances is interesting as scarcity of resources is closely associated with the idea of being 'small'.It is remarkable how relatively rarely the financial underpinnings of these publications are considered from this perspective, beyond the fact that many of them struggled to survive.By the 1920s, cheap travel possibilities and low exchange rates made travel 8 The first number was edited by Ezra Pound from Palazzo and printed by Maurice Darantière in Dijon.
The subsequent numbers (2-4) were all printed in Chicago by Pascal Covici.9 There were three so-called American numbers of transition, nos 24, 25, 26, published in 1936 and 1937 (with the associate editor James Johnson Sweeney), while Jolas worked with the French News Service, Havas, in New York.The final issue, no.27 was again edited and printed in Paris.10 The Morada was edited in Albuquerque, New Mexico, nos 1-3, but moved to Lago di Garda, Italy, for the subsequent number, the to and an extended sojourn in Europe a possibility not only for a moneyed elite.12The very low printing costs attracted those with ambitions to start a magazine, and the favourable exchange rate made it possible for prospective publishers to set up.13However, even if the exchange rate and the low printing cost in Europe made the publication of a little magazine achievable, it was still a costly venture, and the editors themselves often provided the funds.For example, Secession and Gargoyle depended on the limited funds and incomes of their editors and sponsors.In his memoirs, The Awakening Twenties, Gorham Munson, editor of Secession, describes how he sailed for Europe with his wife in the spring of 1921, planning to live there for a year on 'savings from a year of school teaching and profiting by the advantageous exchange rates for the dollar'.Yet one way to ensure the continued life of the magazine was to make it into a collector's item, for example by making it especially appealing in design and printing it on quality paper.As Lawrence Rainey has pointed out, this focus on exclusiveness made the modernist reader 'a collector, an investor, or even a speculator'.24 It is remarkable to what extent the editors and buyers of the little magazines were conscious of the worth of these publications as potential collector's items.British journalist and writer Sisley Huddleston, for example, recounts securing the premier number of Ezra Pound's the Exile, with its eye-catching red cover, in his locked bookcase.25Appraising the years editing Broom in Europe, Harold Loeb writes that to attract readers the magazine had to invent other methods, since 'it lacked the means to attempt the usual publicity.
[…] Owing to valuta, it was possible to provide an exotic luxury in make-up', thus attracting 'readers who otherwise would have failed to single it out'.26 Loeb also offered the possibility for subscribers to order bound de luxe copies once they possessed a full volume.27Similarly, the Transatlantic Review offered bound copies of volume 1, six numbers either in cloth or in half leather for fifty and seventy-five francs respectively,28 and transition offered 'A Limited number of transition sets' (numbers 1 to 12) '150fr or $6,00 unbound plus postage'.29 As if to verify the increasing value of the magazine, the same transition sets were offered at a higher price already in the following number:

'MOST MAGAZINES ARE WORTHLESS A MONTH AFTER THEIR APPEARANCE. TRANSITION IS THE ONE REVIEW WHOSE BACK NUMBERS INCREASE CONTINUALLY IN VALUE.'
The sets then cost 168 francs or $6.75.30The editors of Close-Up also made sure to market bound volumes of their review as investment pieces: 'Close-Up makes rapid progress every month.The demand for earlier numbers is enormous.When they are sold their value will be trebled.To buy a volume is an investment which you will be wise to make.'31Similarly, Salemson acknowledged the collectability of Tambour, as he numbered 200-250 copies of each issue.32 The reason for publishing such deluxe copies among the Anglo-American little magazines seems to have been twofold.There was a wish to adhere to a French tradition, thereby attaining cultural credibility and prestige, 33 as well as a purely financial aspect.Following the example of Commerce, Échanges, for example, was printed on three different kinds of paper: 'papier alfa bouffant', and the quality papers 'pur fil Lafuma' and 'papier Hollande'.For the first four numbers, there were one hundred copies printed on 'papier vélin pur fil Lafuma des Papeteries Navarre' and fifty copies on 'papier de Hollande des Papeteries Van Gelder'.In issue 5 of the review the number was lowered to ten copies for both kinds of paper, and these were now numbered, 1-10 for the Hollande paper and 11-20 for the Lafuma paper, to make such copies even more of a collector's item.34 A marketing technique used by several of the editors stressed the scarcity of back numbers and the need to act swiftly and subscribe to secure copies, again suggesting significance beyond the ephemeral, an essential quality to set the little magazine apart from other periodicals.In This Quarter, for instance, Moorhead marketed signed back numbers of the magazine: 'BACK NUMBERS OF THIS QUARTER ARE OF INCREASING VALUE.'35 The editors of Broom advise its 'book stand readers […] to assure themselves of an unbroken series of 1923' by 'subscribing now',36 and in a later number this plea is repeated in an even more marketing-savvy manner: 'COPIES of BROOM are more eagerly sought after, snatched up, devoured, worn, dog-eared, borrowed, than any other magazine in the United States.Copies are even known to have been stolen by desperate individuals.'37 In issues 6 and 7 of Tambour, Salemson tells the reader that 'THERE ARE STILL… a few sets of the first series of TAMBOUR…going fast!' and in issue 8 this plea is heightened to 'YOUR LAST CHANCE: a few sets of the first two series of TAMBOUR… going fast!'38The editors of Delta also stress, in a flippant way, the magazine's exclusivity and the difficulty of obtaining copies: 'Delta appears irregularly and is not on sale anywhere.Delta is available only through subscription.Delta can be had for 250 francs a year.Delta must be prohibitive in price or prohibited.'39In Secession number two, below a heading suggestive of stockbroking -'Do you enjoy watching a magazine run risks' -the editor urges people to become patrons and become part of a special circle: 'Patrons will receive two subscriptions and special privileges besides within a few months.They will also demonstrate that they are not unworthy descendants of certain perspicacious Elizabethan nobles.'40The allusion to the stock market is repeated as Munson inserts a mock 'Market Report', including Secession, Vanity Fair, the Dial, Endicott-Johnson, Tidewater Oil, etc.This report follows upon the assertion that 'The "PUBLIC" and WHAT IT "WANTS" are abstractions as empty for letters as for politics'.Even if the Secession stocks drop dramatically, this matters little in the world of letters.41

Making a Name of It
Even though most magazine editors started out with extensive connections, a large part of the editorial work consisted of promotional networking.Spreading the news about the magazine through more informal networking, such as letter writing, attending literary salons, dinners, parties, and readings was also part of the work.At times this apparently was felt to take up an excessive amount of time, as expressed by Jolas regarding transition: 'Editing the review seemed to entail such an alarming amount of social activity that we decided to look for a place outside the capital, preferably well in the country.'  For promotional purposes it was particularly important to secure contributions from well-known names.Clearly, the editors attached significance to having celebrated literary names behind their reviews, helping them attain the kind of credibility that could market their reviews.In the case of Échanges, Harper began to contact writers to secure collaborators and writings for the review at an early stage.She wrote to poets, writers, critics, philosophers, French and English, asking them to be collaborators with or contributors to the review.43 In this way she secured contributions from T. S. Eliot, André Gide, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf.Both Ford and Pound contacted literary brand names among their colleagues and friends in order to secure contributions for and promote the Transatlantic Review; T. S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, Edward Jepson, Douglas Goldring, and Wyndham Lewis were among the chosen ones.44There were few replies in the affirmative, however, and Hardy even raised the question if Ford would not do better inviting 'young men more particularly, and keep out old men like me'.45 Another example of this desire to secure renowned writers is demonstrated by Henry Miller's letter for the Booster, titled 'Special Letter to Celebrities', in which Miller asks for subscriptions and contributions to the publication.46 The initial strategy to create awareness about a little magazine was to send out a prospectus, advertising the forthcoming review, and often including a manifesto-like description of purpose, location, persons, and politics behind the review, as well as a listing of collaborators.This was distributed to writers, newspapers, other reviews, and prospective subscribers, in the hope of attracting subscribers to the magazine as well as announcements and reviews of the magazine in newspapers and other reviews.47The editors of little magazines then continued promoting their publication by sending copies of the actual magazine to newspapers and magazines.In his recurring column 'Through Paris Bookland' for the Paris Tribune, Eugene Jolas comments on what appears a never-ending task for the literary editor at a newspaper or review: ' And still the magazines come in.[…] We have to read them all.'48This commodification of the little magazines was further emphasized by regarding books and literature as 'news'.The notion that literature was news and therefore a subject for newspapers was common in the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.As Joan Rubin has noted in The Making of Middle-Brow Culture, short, unsigned notices that reported rather than evaluated literature were prevalent, especially in American newspapers, but also in periodicals.The modern reader needed to be informed about new writing, as of any other modern commodity.49 Most little magazines promoted their publication through advertisements in other periodicals and in the daily press.A considerable amount of advertising took place in similar little magazines, to the extent that the writer of the New York Times' 'Notes on Current Magazines' observes in a caustic remark on the magazine Pagany that: 'A glance through the advertising pages of Pagany suggests a solution of the problem as to how magazines of this character manage to live.Apparently they live by taking in each other's advertisements.This issue contains advertisements of the Left, Blues, Morada, The Front, The New Review, Nativity, Experimental Cinema, New Masses, and The Modern Quarterly.'50Typically, these advertisements contrast the magazines to popular literature and press, identifying a group of readers who wanted to be challenged and presented with the unconventional, even shocking.Epilogue describes its readers as 'easy' as opposed to the 'difficult' ones who want casual reading: if, as in EPILOGUE, you are presented with writing that organizes the most important problems of a contemporary existence into a workable system of thought, and your reaction is 'Difficult!' -then we must conclude that you are a difficult reader.EPILOGUE is for the easy reader: the reader who does not fidget and feel hurt whenever a book asks to be read with the painstaking mind rather than with the causal eye.51 Similarly, Titus advertises This Quarter as an '"unpopular" magazine' and dedicates it to 'those who have grown tired of so-called light reading' and to the 'alert-minded, intelligent men and women' who feel they can 'be counted among those to whom this carefully thought-out magazine is dedicated'.52 transition insists that it 'does not wait for the approbation of the majority to introduce living forces in the arts',53 and that it 'is read by the most alert minds in both America and Europe'.54 Although these excerpts seem to single out an elite audience, the readers were still expected to rely on guidance to advance their taste.Acknowledgements, such as quotations from reviews or letters from celebrated writers that endorsed the publication, were commonly included.So were the selection and ranking of literary contributions in, for example, short story collections such as Edward J. O'Brien's respected yearly collection.55This Quarter makes the most of O'Brien's anthology and ranking system, informing its readers that 'IF MR.O'BRIEN CAN'T DO WITHOUT THIS QUARTER NEITHER CAN YOU!'56 Yet a promotional example making use of the evaluation of others is found in number 23 of transition, which lists over three pages of quotations under the heading 'transition and its Contemporaries'.The sources are French, British, American, German, Hawaiian, and Spanish, expressing the internationality and spread of the magazine.57

Reception
The reception of the little magazines is a significant aspect of how these publications attained the status as vehicles of the news of modernism.The fact that the little magazines were discussed in other literary and cultural reviews is perhaps not surprising, but the extent to which the little magazines were noted also in the popular press is more unexpected.English-language little magazines were not only noted in prominent literary reviews, such as Mercure de France, but also in daily newspapers, for example Le Figaro, as well as in the weekly guide La Semaine de Paris.American and British magazines published on the European continent also made it into the popular press in the USA and Britain.When studying the magazines, it becomes apparent that the divide between elite modernist cultural production and popular expression is crossed by many bridges, as the little magazine even made it into sensational news and society columns.58 The influence was not only one way, as indicated by the use and imitation of popular styles and techniques by modernist artists and writers and their play with advertising styles.As Karen Leick indicates, there was 'an increasingly intimate exchange between literary modernism and mainstream culture' during the 1920s and 30s, when 'mainstream readers regularly encountered' passages from and comments on little magazines such as transition and Broom.59Despite the cultivation among magazine editors of a more exclusive and avant-gardist image, a levelling and popularizing took place as the little magazines made it into popular media.
Taking the abundance of periodicals published in Europe between the wars into account, the fact that the expatriate and English-language little magazines were commented on in French media is noteworthy; there are enough instances to draw the conclusion that they were seen as a vital part of a flourishing print culture.Lengthy reviews of the expatriate magazines were not common in the French cultural revues.More often they were they were given brief notices and comments or appeared in discussions concerning literature, culture, and its future.60Several French and European magazines had a section in which they commented on and reviewed recent books and other magazines, in part or in whole, or they had recurrent contributions titled 'Lettres anglo-américaines' and 'Lettres anglaises', in which magazines were also mentioned and assessed.61 The French review that seems to have paid most attention to the expatriate little magazines is Mercure de France.Its 'Revue de la quinzaine' regularly contained a section dealing with reviews, titled Les revues, written by Charles-Henry Hirsch.Échanges appears here, as Hirsch comments on the first number, its looks and contents, and Salemson's Tambour was commented on no less than six times.62Broom, Secession, and the Transatlantic Review all appear in Jean Catel's 'Lettres anglo-américaines', also part of 'Revue de la quinzaine'.63Broom is given special attention as it appears in four of Catel's letters.Catel also refers briefly to 'Direction', the manifesto proclaimed by Samuel Putnam, Harold J. Salemson, and Richard Thoma.64 Salemson substituted for Catel for over a year, 1 December 1928 to 15 October 1930, roughly during the same time that he edited Tambour, and during this period he contributed five 'Lettres anglo-américaines'.The fact that Salemson was a recurrent contributor is in all probability one of the reasons why Tambour received much attention in Mercure.Salemson himself also announces the birth of Tambour in one of his letters,65 and he discusses other little magazines, both Parisian and American.transition and Titus's This Quarter are praised, and the Modern Quarterly's collaboration and discussion with transition on the 'Revolution of the Word' is broached.66There is also praise for Ford's Transatlantic Review in Henry D Davray's 'Lettres anglaises' in Mercure de France: 'The Transatlantic Review paraît à Paris sous la direction de F. M. Ford qui la maintient très vivant et pleine d'intérêt.[…] Il se dépense beaucoup de talent dans cette revue'.67Further, Regis Michaud's Mercure de France article, 'La littérature américaine d'aujourd'hui: De New York à Montparnasse', draws attention to the expatriate little magazines as it brings up both transition and This Quarter.68 The mainstream press in France also attended to the expatriate little magazines, which is well illustrated by Allanah Harper's Échanges.Although little known today, Échanges is one of the expatriate little magazines that figured relatively frequently in French magazines and newspapers; both right-wing and left-wing newspapers and journals, popular and highbrow, announced and/or reviewed Échanges.69Even if Harper was a committed socialist herself, she did not refrain from making her magazine known to newspapers and periodicals of a completely different view; for example the right-wing nationalist L'Action française and the extreme right, but cheap and popular L'ami du peuple.70 The fact that these and other popular newspapers and periodicals acknowledged a literary review like Échanges indeed indicates a slippage between high and low, elite and popular.
The Paris Tribune, the European edition of the Chicago Tribune, is the most well-known example of the newspapers that attended to literary and artistic Paris, and this is where many writers, both aspiring and established, found an income during their time in Paris.This includes Ford Madox Ford, who wrote a column called 'Literary Causeries' in the first numbers of the Tribune's Sunday magazine,71 and Eugene Jolas, who took over the column after Ford.Ford, Jolas, and other columnists frequently assessed little magazines in the Tribune, not only Anglo-American, but also French and German ones.Jolas thus extols the Transatlantic Review, which 'quickly became the crucible of the French and Anglo-Saxon spirits.[Ford] surrounded himself with what he regarded as the most representative minds of the younger school […].He has become the stormy petrel of modern literature'.72transition also appeared several times in the pages of the Tribune, including two reviews of its first number.It was commended in one review by Robert Sage, the future co-editor of transition: 'this new literary magazine is joyfully devoid of gags and shackles,';73 but belittled in another, entitled ' A Transitional Phenomenon' by Alex Small: 'Here is the most ambitious effort of the young, and, in the usual sense, most unsuccessful writers of the exiles.'74When the magazine ceased publication for two years in 1930, B. J. Kospoth wrote an article in the Tribune lamenting its passing.75 Examples of American and British press that commented on expatriate periodicals include the New York Times and its Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the Christian Science Monitor, the Saturday Evening Post, Vanity Fair, and the Daily Express.76 The reporting on magazines was often eclectic.The Times, for example, mentioned the contents of pulp magazines, such as Argosy and the Red Book, together with an array of modernist and avant-garde periodicals, such as Blast, the Dial, the Little Review, the Fugitive, the Measure, the Double-Dealer, Tempo, transition, Secession, Broom, Contact (although erroneously titled Contract), Pagany, Rhythmus, This Quarter, and the Left.The fact that the modernist little magazines were regarded as an integral part of modern culture, just like more popular expressions, is also underscored in the New York Times' articles about Gargoyle and Broom.Each of these publications received considerable attention in the New York Times following the publication of their first number.The lengthy article 'Paris Captured by Greenwich Village' is a tongue-in-cheek account of how Gargoyle was conceived.Its tone and style are reminiscent of Gargoyle itself, which is not surprising as the writer of the article, Benjamin de Casseres, belonged to the group editing the magazine.De Casseres clearly popularizes the group's endeavour and nonconformist attitude, but he also acknowledges that 'Gargoyle itself is one of the most substantial literary and artistic reviews that the younger generation of American revoltés has yet got out'.77 The New York Times article ' A New Literary Broom' asserts that '[t]here can be no doubt of the potentialities of Broom, the international magazine of the arts whose first issue, dated November has just reached this side of the Atlantic'.While the Gargoyle article popularizes through its playful tone and style, the reviewer of Broom popularizes by subduing the fear of continental 'extremist tendencies'.This is done by highlighting the qualities of the article ' America Invades Europe' by Emmy Veronica Sanders, which attacks the 'ultra-modern followers of France' and warns against too close adherence to France and the French.78 The same affirmation of the 'morals' of Broom is found in a later assessment: 'Those readers who desire nothing but what is uncompromisingly new and often experimental should be advised to turn to Broom occasionally, for it makes a fairly successful attempt to stand in the very vanguard of modern letters and yet afford its readers sound values.'79 The appreciation of the vanguard was easily turned into a social asset.This is, for example, the case with a brief comment on Échanges in British Vogue, 19 February 1930, in 'How One Lives from Day to Day: L'Entente Mondaine'.The notice recounts the Duchess de la Rochefoucauld's visit to London, where the Duchess 'had lunched with the Duchess of Atholl, to talk over "le mouvement feministe," had taken tea with George Moore and visited the Chelsea Book Club, where she picked out Maurois's Byron, Paul Morand's New York, and Miss Allanah Harper's new international review, Échanges, as three of the latest and most typical new arrivals from France'.80 Among the expatriate little magazines, transition received most attention in the US press.As Leick has shown, transition was quite frequently discussed and made fun of in the news, as the latest example of unintelligible modernist writing.81 Jolas and Paul, however, made sure to make the most of this.In issue 7, the editors printed extracts from the reviews of a number of newspapers and reviews under the heading ' Advertisements'.The quotation from the New York Times, 'Hopelessly muddled and unintelligible', is given the ironic heading 'Popular Appeal', and the one from the New York Sun, 'The pictures look to the vulgar eye like the other crazy modernist stuff ', is given the title 'Profusely Illustrated'.Gertrude Stein is the subject of the lengthiest selection, given the heading 'Cut-Outs for the Kiddies'.82transition also made the news as sensation, the first time in connection with Harry Crosby's suicide in December 1929, when the Chicago Tribune declared that Crosby through his suicide had created 'a tremendous sensation in the Latin Quarter and has turned a spotlight on the fantastic life on the left bank of the Seine'.In the article, Jolas gets the last word as he gives the epithet 'astonishing and frightening' to Crosby's work in transition.83 In 1935, transition created sensational news once again in the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Washington Post, this time after the publication of a 'Testimony against Gertrude Stein', in a supplement to transition number 23.
Clearly, the popular press did not separate modernism and popular culture; both were perceived and presented as belonging to the same sphere of 'public modernity'.84 Comments on literary works and authors in the mainstream press were prevalent, and the modernist and avant-garde little magazines entered these discussions, suggesting that more demanding literature was 'not an elitist pastime, but an essentially democratic one'.85However, although there are tendencies toward more democratic views of reading, the same phenomenon is also indicative of the avant-garde being made available for consumption, thus appealing to the (aspiring) connoisseur, who did not necessarily have the patience to read modernist texts, but was eager to follow the latest developments on the cultural scene.Reading habits thus signalled cultural capital; the reader who showed cultivation by knowing about or even reading modernists' writing indicated a desired social standing, regardless of whether they approved of the writing or not.

Adverts in the Magazine
The advertising boom of the 1920s found its way successfully into the little magazines.Most little magazines in our study took in adverts to improve revenues, but whereas the Booster and the Transatlantic Review advertise a mixture of products and services, from Steinway pianos and Joyce's Ulysses to Lady-Guides, chiropodists and powder puffs, other little magazines such as This Quarter and Caravel restrict the adverts to ones promoting journals, publishers, and bookshops.86Regardless of their messages, these adverts literally and metaphorically frame the 'text' of the magazine, and hence can be said to form a paratext of the magazine.Gerard Genette has argued that liminal aspects of the text, 'signs' that surround the text, constitute a threshold of the text: 'more than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold or […] a "vestibule" that offers the world at large the possibility of either stepping inside or stepping back.The paratext is an "undefined zone" between the inside and the outside, a zone without any hard and fast boundary'.87Most importantly, however, these signs, including names, pseudonyms, titles, subtitles, covers, blurbs, epigraphs, dedications, and prefaces, are 'not only a site of transition, but also of transaction'.88Thus, the paratextual features influence the reader, who has to negotiate this space.Although the hybrid genre of the little magazine could make the notion of the paratext problematic, the concept is useful in an analysis of how advertisements function in the magazines as these adverts mediate promotional features of the publication.They do so since they create an atmosphere or a situation for its readers, a space of beliefs and ideals that has to be traversed.In this way, the adverts also become part of the news about the magazine and about modernism.
Even if the reason behind the editorial choice to open the pages to consumer product advertisements no doubt was financial, it is a choice that clearly mediates a magazine image.89 The magazine that included commercial adverts for cruises, shoes, jewellery, automobile sellers, fashion houses, tailors, restaurants, bars, or cafés also made a declaration as regards its readers and reception, as did the magazine that chose only to include adverts for other periodicals or publishers.Several of the expatriate little magazines chose only to include adverts for other magazines, publishers, and bookshops, perhaps with the addition of an art gallery or private school.90 The little magazines that contained advertisements for other products and services were Gargoyle, Broom, the Transatlantic Review, Échanges, the New Review, and the Booster.Although the former magazines appear reticent as regards advertising and commercialism, their promotional efforts still become part of a market system, particularly as the magazines and presses advertise each other and each other's publications in a language and style that had much in common with advertising language.The six latter little magazines present a mixture of adverts, seemingly reflecting what appealed to or was supposed to appeal to a cosmopolitan subscriber.The adverts appeared at the beginning or end in most magazines, in special advert sections.91 The Booster, however, made a point of mixing adverts and contributions in a manner that contributed to the nonconformity and eccentricity of this magazine.At the time when Perles and Miller were planning to take over the Booster, Miller wrote to Durrell: Now it [Booster] looks like bloody hell -the worst imaginable shit -and it will look like that for a month or two to come.We have only twenty pages, of which nearly half is advertising.We think to put some of the crazy adverts (like Johnny Walker, Hanan Shoes, etc.) right in the middle of a page of serious writing.And we are going to boost the shit out of everybody and everything.92 The juxtapositions and their presumed effect of surprise match its editors and their stated policy, or rather anti-policy.
Ford's Transatlantic Review is special in its attempt to be more than a literary review to its readers; it not only advertises 'firms personally known to one or another member of the TRANSATLANTIC STAFF', but the staff also provided: advice as to all kinds of shopping to intending visitors to Paris on receipt of a stamped and addressed envelope.The Reader intends to visit Paris; he desires to know the name of a hotel palatial or merely modest, and clean.He will write before starting to Hotel Advisers, Transatlantic Review, Paris, and his question will be answered immediately.Arrived in Paris, he -or she -will on application ask for and receive information as to shopping.93Later, a 'Book Service' was offered the reader, because of '[t]he great cost and difficulty in obtaining foreign books in whichever country the reader may be'.94 The adverts thus assist in the shaping of a magazine image that, especially in the case of the Transatlantic Review and Gargoyle, represents the expatriate preferred way of life, an image that accentuates travel, news, leisure activities, art, literature, art and book collecting, and monetary concerns.A regular advert in the Transatlantic Review was for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique and its all-inclusive tourist motor car circuits in North Africa, published in French in the first two numbers -'Le Voyage à la Mode -Maroc, Algérie, Tunisie -Pays de l'Islam et des ruins antiques', but subsequently changed to English -'Bound for Sunny North Africa -Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia -A delightful trip to the garden of Allah'.95 Similarly, the adverts in Gargoyle give an image of what was offered the 1920s' expatriate or visitor in Paris, thus also creating expectations of such a person.
The many ways in which little magazine editors tried to make their magazines news indicate to what extent promotion was part of the editorial work, and every so often the character of marketing suggests that this was more than a troublesome and necessary task.It was rather an integral part of the creation of the magazine, one that let the editors tap their imagination and creativity to fashion the magazine and its image.Promotional language and financial issues were hardly restricted to a separate space devoted to advertising and economic matters; they surface in manifestos, editorials, information to contributors, letters, and comments.Features such as advertisements, blurbs and dedications, as well as extra-textual characteristics such as paper quality, bindings, and typography, thus contribute to the packaging of modernism in the form of a desirable product -both an editorial challenge and a necessity to establish a 92 Henry Miller, 'To Durrell' (29 July 1937), in Durrell -Miller Letters, 1935-1980

Fig. 2
Fig. 2 Advertisement page, Transatlantic Review, 1.2 (February 1924) 21Secession survived for eight issues.Gargoyle also had a short life.The magazine was published between July 1921 and December 1922, and its editors, Arthur Moss and Florence Gilliam, worked as freelance writers to support themselves and finance the magazine.15Manylittlemagazinesreliedoncapitalfrom other sources, either to initiate publication or to finance the whole project.Eugene Jolas could rely on his wife Maria Jolas's inheritance to make transition possible.Interestingly, neither Eugene Jolas, in his memoirs, nor Dougald McMillan, in his book-length study of the magazine, touch upon the financial background of transition.16MariaJolasherselfonlyrevealsher contribution to the little magazine in passing, in the 'Dateline' of her autobiography: '1924 Visiting in Louisville, where my father died of a stroke in June; left me financially independent (later made transition, then my school possible).'17Échangesreceivedfinancialsupportforpublication costs from Harper's wealthy friends Aga Khan, Pauline Duleep Singh Torry, and Princesse Edmond de Polignac.18HaroldLoebhadhisowncapital as well as Guggenheim relatives to finance Broom.19EthelMoorhead,editor of the first volume of This Quarter, financed the magazine with the legacy after the death of her friend and suffragette companion, Frances Mary Parker.20After the death of her co-editor Ernest Walsh, Moorhead handed the magazine over to collector and bookshop-keeper Edward Titus, husband of the immensely rich cosmetic industrialist Helena Rubinstein; Harold J. Salemson's Tambour was made possible through the legacy left to him by his father.21Thefinancialsituation of the Booster diverged from that of the other little magazines, as it relied on the American Golf and Country Club's goodwill and the editors' offering of space for country club news in each issue.22Thisgoodwill did not extend beyond the first four issues, however; the Booster then had to change its name to Delta, and was only able to carry on for three more issues.Another way of obtaining money was by selling interests in the magazine, something that Samuel Putnam, editor of the New Review, did in 1931.According to Putnam, Peter Neagoe 'bought a half-interest in the magazine',23 and thus became editor, appearing together with Putnam on the masthead in issues 4 to 5.Even so, the New Review did not last beyond its fifth number.The short lives of other little magazines such as Caravel and the New Morada indicate to what extent these publications also struggled to stay alive on the scarce money coming from subscribers, advertisers, and in some cases sponsors.