CBH Talk | Queer Modernism and The Little Review
Historians explore how Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap's queer partnership at The Little Review championed Joyce's Ulysses and transformed 20th-century literary modernism.
Why we picked this
The Little Review published Ulysses in serial form, got obscenity charges for it, and was run by two queer women who barely get credit for any of it. This Pride Month talk corrects the record.
The Little Review was one of the most consequential literary magazines of the twentieth century—it serialized James Joyce’s Ulysses before it existed as a book, championed the experimental, and got taken to court for obscenity in the process. What’s less widely known is that it was founded and edited by Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, whose queer partnership was as central to its character as any editorial decision they made.
Holly Baggett, professor emerita of History and author of Making No Compromise: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap and ‘The Little Review’, and Adam Morgan, author of A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature, bring the story into sharp relief during Pride Month—examining how two women operating outside every convention of their era built a platform that changed what American literature allowed itself to be.
This event takes place at the Center for Brooklyn History and is free and open to the public. Registration encouraged.