Articles

From Marginalia to Bookends: Industrialization, Capitalism, and Advertising in Hungary’s Modern Literary Journal, Nyugat (1908–41)

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Abstract

This paper examines Nyugat [West], the premier journal of modern Hungarian literature published from 1908 to 1941 and edited by Ernő Osvát (1876–1929), Ignotus (1869–1949), and Miksa Fenyő (1877–1972) until 1917. Although Hungarian scholarship has detailed the role played by Osvát and Ignotus, Fenyő’s contribution to this triumvirate has received less attention, a lack that may have hindered literary historians’ understanding of the more widespread, sociological reasons underlying Nyugat’s long-lasting presence in a highly competitive book market. I argue that examining Fenyő’s editorial position demands the inclusion of marginalia, the term this study utilizes to denote the factory advertisements, banking-related notifications, military supply announcements, railway schedules, and eulogies that display Fenyő’s ties to the industrial lobby organization GyOSz — the National Association of Hungarian Industrialists, also referred to as ‘the Association’ — within the pages of a journal dedicated to promoting fin-de-siècle aestheticism. Exploring what Bernard Lahire would describe as Fenyő’s ‘double life’ thereby paves the way to theorizing what beliefs and ‘rules of the game’ (illusio) may have determined the connection between Hungary’s wealthiest industrialists and Nyugat during a period when the journal’s editors and authors sought to attain both authorial and financial autonomy.

Keywords: Nyugat, marginalia, illusio, periodical formation, editorial disposition

How to Cite:

Lo Bello, M., (2024) “From Marginalia to Bookends: Industrialization, Capitalism, and Advertising in Hungary’s Modern Literary Journal, Nyugat (1908–41)”, Journal of European Periodical Studies 8(2), 49–67. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/jeps.85736