AnnKatrin Jonsson , Exiles in Print : Little Magazines in Europe , 1921 – 1938 ( 2016 )

Celia Aijmer Rydsjo and AnnKatrin Jonsson, Exiles in Print: Little Magazines in Europe, 1921–1938 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2016). 130 pp. ISBN 978-3-631-65376-0

dynamics and discourses as their editors set up international networks and support structures for alternative production and distribution modes'.This promises to provide the reader with new insights regarding modernist (print) culture (p. 12).Indeed, the book 'examines practical work, networking', and the national and literary border-crossings that were inherent to magazine-making 'on foreign ground' (p.13), and particularly focuses on the themes of exile and internationalism or transnationalism (p. 14).
The book considers these topics in four chapters, in which the different periodicals feature in alternating fashion.The first chapter is a more general overview regarding little magazines as a genre and their central role in (making) modernism, and the book is reassuringly aware of all the complexities related to this latter term.It discusses internationalism as a typical feature of modernity in general (and not just of avant-garde artists operating in internationally oriented cities), but also considers national and regional interests in little magazines.The chapter stresses the importance of studying the magazine as a medium in relation to its (literary) contents, but also the 'relevance of publishing practices to the formation of modernism' (p.23) and the place where the periodical was made -these three points constituting the 'praxis ' of modernism (p. 25).It further considers the magazines' interrelations with journalism and journalistic writing (something often neglected, according to the authors), and how this helps to revise understandings of modernism.In addition, it elaborates on the qualifier 'little', what the term means or implies, and where it comes from.Finally, it turns to issues of location, the condition of exile, cosmopolitanism, and community in relationship to the little magazines.

Reviews
The second chapter investigates the practicalities and financial aspects of magazine-making, as well as promotional efforts on behalf of the editors, all of which the authors consider central to the practice of creating periodicals.The importance of journalism for little magazines is stressed once more, as many editors and contributors happened to work for newspapers to earn a living.The chapter also looks at the various ways the editors financed their publications.It then turns to the editors' networking practices in search of famous contributors and the promotional efforts they undertook to spread the magazine's name.This part also studies the reception of these publications in other little reviews as well as in the popular press -and here the authors question the so-called 'great divide' between modernism and mass culture.Finally, it turns to advertisements in the magazines as a way of financing publication, but also as a means of constituting and communicating an image of the periodical and its envisaged readership.
The third chapter considers the tensions between the international and the national in the expatriate periodicals.The first part explains how they presented themselves as cosmopolitan publications and how they strove towards a universal literature and culture, but also shows that this project was difficult to reconcile with the (exclusive) use of English.The chapter traces two ways in which the little magazines responded to this issue: they either incorporated the foreign so as to expand Anglo-American culture, or admitted the foreign as foreign and thematized language itself (69).The second part of the chapter investigates how 'the renegotiations of spatial relations, culture and identity' in modernist publications not only 'sparked the cosmopolitan subject', but were also 'brought to bear on new nationalisms', giving rise to new visions of American culture, 'modernist Americanisms' (p.78).While often acting as bridges between American and European culture, some little magazines also considered America the source for a new culture, or at least shifted their focus to the United States.
The fourth and final chapter discusses how the expatriate modernist was portrayed as both an 'idealistic traveller' (p.91) and a tourist (going on holidays as a leisure-time activity) in these little magazines.It shows that it is difficult to distinguish between the two seemingly conflicting figures in the modernist periodicals under consideration.Finally, the book investigates how the little magazines helped to create a sense of community for Americans living in Europe, and how they involved the reader as a participant, doing away with the divisions between creators and consumers of culture.'In this way,' the authors conclude, 'the collaborative and collective practices of the expatriate little magazine contributed to the development of modernist innovation, and their struggling with practical matters and transnational themes points to new ways of understanding the dynamic interplay between social relations and cultural forms in the interwar years ' (pp. 107-08).
Exiles in Print does indeed offer new insights into the dynamics of modernism and of little-magazine culture through a case study of these expatriate reviews.These journals often have difficulty fitting into the national or linguistic categories still frequently used in literary historiography, and as such, the book already constitutes a worthwhile addition to the ever-growing literature on modernist periodicals.The book, however, also has other virtues.The magazines are not studied in a vacuum, but considered in the context of their place of publication (the cosmopolitan city, with attention to what this location implied for the exiles creating them) and their transnationalism, as well as in their relations to other contemporary publications, both other little reviews and the mass press.In this respect, the authors point to (new) bridges across the 'great divide', for instance by considering the importance of journalism for the little magazines or by tracing their reception in popular periodicals, or by demonstrating that internationalism was a feature of modernity at large, and that the modernist writer was as much a tourist as an idealistic traveler.Further, the authors convincingly argue that the practical side of magazinemaking (financing the publication, various promotional and networking efforts, the inclusion of advertisements, but also the material dimensions of the review, etc.) are part and parcel of the journals we study and have to be taken into consideration.As such, this study is a valuable complement to other publications on the subject, and -in its 'functionalist' approach -it could serve as an example of best practice in research on periodical cultures.
Additionally, the book is a useful research tool through its rich and up-todate (though mainly Anglophone) bibliography on magazine studies.It has an exhaustive index with names, titles and terminology, and offers the necessary historical and encyclopaedic information on the magazines it discusses in the appendix.This section remedies the fact that the main part of the book does not always directly convey a clear image of what every individual periodical was and what it wanted, but that is also not the central focus of Exiles in Print.Nonetheless, the book offers interesting readings of the different reviews at stake, illustrated with carefully-chosen quotations (indeed, instead of padding the book with quotes, the authors have opted to include only selected, very telling voices to convey their point).All of this attests to the elaborate archival research conducted by the authors, something that the length of the book, at a little more than one hundred pages, might not suggest at first glance.This conciseness does cause some paragraphs to feel a little short, even hurried, and some conclusions appear to come rather quickly (with the risk of overgeneralization looming).However, even in its brevitas, the book remains convincing, and the fact that the reader is left wanting more also speaks in favour of the authors' compelling analyses.In short, Exiles in Print should prove interesting reading, not just for those into expatriate little magazines, but for everyone working on periodical cultures and modernism in general.