"This Eager, Panting Art": The Little Review and a Queer Arts Advocacy At Work

In an early issue of The Little Review, editor Margaret Anderson wrote that “criticism is never a merely interpretive function; it is creation: it gives birth!” From 1914 to 1929, Anderson and her eventual partner and co-editor Jane Heap gathered an eclectic collection of literary criticism, poetry, serialized novels, short stories, exhibition reviews, and political commentary. Like other small magazines of the era like The Dial or The Egoist, The Little Review contributed significantly to the development of modernist literature, drama, and visual art. Unlike their contemporaries, Heap and Anderson maintained a distinct conversational editorial style through regular “Reader Critic” columns, publication of opposing viewpoints on the same subject, and Heap and Anderson’s inflammatory entries.

In this paper, I read Heap and Anderson’s editorial mode as a kind of queer environment, designed specifically to cultivate new art, to invite new ideas, and to reflect on emerging political issues. In 1917, Anderson published an issue with thirteen blank pages to protest the lack of sufficiently revolutionary submissions. While scholars have read their inflammatory editorial style (including this blank issue) as an indicator of their bold commitments to the avant-garde, my approach shows how this constructed environment created literal space for a generative and expansive criticism capable of “birthing” the art of life. Informed by scholarship from Elke Krasny, Lara Perry and Claire Bishop, this re-evaluation of Heap and Anderson’s labor as arts advocates expands our understanding of the emergence of modern art in the United States.