British Literary Periodicals of World War II and Aftermath: A Critical History

Citation

Baker, W. (2008), "British Literary Periodicals of World War II and Aftermath: A Critical History", Library Review, Vol. 57 No. 8, pp. 647-649. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530810899685

A.T. Tolley's analysis of British Literary Periodicals during the second world war and the period immediately afterwards is most welcome. It serves as an analytical companion to David Miller and Richard Price's largely enumerative and useful British Poetry Magazine 1914‐2000: A History and Bibliography of “Little Magazines” published by the British Library and Oak Knoll Press in 2006. In addition, Tolley's work supplements entries found in the final volume devoted to the 1914‐1984 period of the very helpful four volume British Literary Magazines edited by Alvin Sullivan, published by the Greenwood Press in 1986.

Tolley's “critical history of British literary periodicals published during” the 1939‐1945 War “and its aftermath” aims also to discuss the periodicals themselves on an individual basis and to place them in their cultural context (p. ix). Tolley's introductory first chapter (pp. 1‐9), attempts to tackle the issue of why he has chosen to write the history of periodicals during this period. The reasons given range from the availability of the primary materials, the intrinsic merit of the journals and their proliferation during the 1940s, “the cataclysmic events that filled those years and the consequences that attended them”. Tolley notes “the wide circulation of so many literary periodicals during the war years had been very much due to people's need to come to terms with the war and the threatening situations that came with its disruption of their lives”. Moreover, “with the coming of peace, there was the opportunity to start up again” (pp. 8‐9).

The second chapter is devoted to “Cyril Connolly and Horizon” (pp. 11‐25). Chapter 3 focuses upon “John Lehmann and New Writing”, (pp. 27‐47). Chapter 4 is concerned with “Robert Herring and Life and Letters” (pp. 49‐52). The following chapter covers more than a single periodical. “Reginald Moore and Associates” describes Reginald Moore's activities with the seven publications connected with him: Modern Reading, Selected Writing, Bugle Blast, The Windmill, Triad, New Saxon Pamphlets (Albion) and English Story (pp. 53‐71). A single editor and his influence, in this instance Denys Val Baker, is the focus of Chapter 6 (pp. 73‐81). This examines Baker's Opus, Voices, Writing Today and The Cornish Review.

A very short seventh chapter is devoted to “International Periodicals” – Adam and The Gate (pp. 79‐81). The three paragraphs on Adam are disappointing and perfunctory. More may be gleaned from the entry on the journal in the fourth volume of Alvin Sullivan's British Literary Magazines (pp. 4‐8). Tolley fails to explain why its editor, the irrepressible Miron Grindea, managed to attract contributors of the calibre of, for instance, André Gide, Wells, Shaw and Pablo Neruda, to mention but four. For an assessment of the importance of Adam, and its relationship to its milieu, the reader will have to turn to Rachel Lesserson's informative “Introduction” to the first volume of the two volume Adam. An Anthology of Miron Grindea's Adam Editorials published by Vallentine Mitchell in 2006.

More too could be written about the content of the eighth chapter “Regional Periodicals” (pp. 83‐100) which glides through “Regionalism – Wales, The Welsh Review, The Voice of Scotland, Poetry Scotland, Scots Writing, Scottish Arts and Letters, Chapbook – The Bill and other Irish periodicals – The West Country Magazine – The Townsman” (p. 83). Similarly, the remaining chapters represent a missed opportunity. They survey rather than analyze. Chapter 9 glosses “Radical Periodicals” ranging from New, Our Time, Arena, Seven (2nd series), and Million (pp. 101‐14).

Chapter 10 is more focused but too brief. “Tanbimuttu and Poetry London” (pp. 117‐24) fails to capture the spirit of Tambimuttu or his eclectic editorial methodology, and the neo‐Romanticism and identification with the Apocalypse movement of Poetry London. Tolley's discussion of some of this is somewhat curiously left to the next chapter “Wrey Gardiner and the New Romanticism” (pp. 125‐38). This focuses upon Seven, Poetry Quarterly, New Road, Kingdom Come and Transformation.

Chapter 12's “Smaller Poetry Periodicals” (pp. 141‐9) includes some account of Poetry Folios, Poets Now in the Services, Outposts, Forum, Poetry, Poetry Commonwealth, Verse, Poetry and Poverty, Prospect. Dannie Abse's important Verse, a magazine that published poets of the stature of Emanuel Litvinoff, John Heath Stubbs, Denise Levertoff and Kenneth Patchen, amongst others, is allotted two brief paragraphs (p. 146).

“Middle‐East Periodicals” (pp. 151‐9) are the subject of Chapter 13 although only four of them, Personal Landscape, Salamander, Citadel and Orientation, are considered. The concluding paragraph is weak and states the obvious (p. 159). Another missed opportunity occurs in the rather perfunctory single paragraphs devoted to each of the “Periodicals from the Services and After” in the following chapter (pp. 161‐8). These encompass X‐6, Oasis, Resistance, Khaki and Blue, New Generation, London Forum, Writers of To‐morrow and Convoy. Similarly, the account of “University Periodicals” (pp. 169‐75) in Chapter 15 offer a mere glimpse of the content and orientation of Kingdom Come (first series), Mandrake, Focus, The Critic, Politics and Letters, Imprint and Gambit.

Chapter 16 consists of a quick gallop through “Younger and Newer Ventures” (pp. 177‐84). These include The Wind and the Rain. The interesting elements omitted in Tolley's account include a review of George Orwell's critical essays in the autumn 1946 issue. Only five paragraphs are accorded to this important product of the distinguished public school Ampleforth (pp. 177‐9). The remaining periodicals such as Translation, Here and Now, Manuscript, Phoenix, The Glass and Nine received a paragraph each. This is unfortunate, especially as The Glass published poetry by Harold Pinta (Pinter). Indeed these constitute some of the Nobel prize laureate's very earliest publications. Moreover, Chapter 17, “Post‐War Expectations” (pp. 187‐92) concentrates again in a perfunctory manner on three post‐1945 publications: Orion, The Mint and Gangrel.

In his “Conclusion” (pp. 193‐9), Tolley observes that his book focuses on the “variety of perspectives to be considered: the quality of writing published; the opportunity for publication given to writers; the encouragement of new writing of significance” (p. 198). To a certain extent, he does this, but in a very limited fashion. Top of his quality tree are Horizon and The Penguin New Writing, with The Windmill, Orion and Mint not far behind. Paper shortages, the effects of the blitz and the 1945 Labour Government are amongst subjects touched upon. Tolley concludes that the periodicals of the period “give us a better sense than anything else of the cultural milieu in which the writing of the decade emerges” (p. 199).

In fairness, Tolley draws upon some primary materials apart from the periodicals themselves: for instance, the Connolly Archive at the University of Tulsa and the Lehmann Archive in the Ransom Humanities Research Centre at the University of Texas at Austin. There is a briefly annotated “Bibliography” (pp. 204‐12) containing a listing “of literary periodicals of the 1940s with editors and dates and place of publication” (p. 205). Regrettably, one comes away from Tolley's book with the sense that it is a survey. More information is to be gleaned from the various entries in Sullivan's volume and often in Wolfgang Görtshacher's Little Magazine Profiles: The Little Magazines in Great Britain 1939‐1993 (1993).

Tolley's “Index” (pp. 213‐27) is useful. All in all, he is to be commended for giving some account of selected literary periodicals during a fascinating period in British cultural history. The book is well printed. It is illustrated with the covers or title pages of selected periodicals. Priced at £10, the work is a bargain and probably should be purchased by all libraries collecting materials on twentieth century British literary history and culture.