Distinguishing Features and Pioneering Publications

Little magazines differ from the large commercial periodicals and major scholarly reviews by their emphasis on experimentation in writing, their perilous nonprofit operation, and their comparatively small audience of intellectuals. Prototypes of the 20th-century little magazine were The Dial (Boston, 1840-44), a transcendentalist review edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, and the English Savoy (1896), a manifesto in revolt against Victorian materialism.

The Twentieth Century

The little-magazine movement in this century began in 1912 with Poetry: A Magazine of Verse (Chicago, 1912-), edited by Harriet Monroe with Ezra Pound as the foreign editor. Poetry enjoyed a long period of success. During World War I a large number of other magazines appeared, the most notable of which were Others (1915-19), edited by Alfred Kreymborg; The Little Review (Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Paris, 1914-29), edited by Margaret Anderson; and The Egoist (London, 1914-19), edited by Dora Mardson (1914) and Harriet Shaw Weaver (1914-19), which voiced the theories and practices of the imagists. The revived Dial, edited in New York in the 1920s by Marianne Moore, had more than 30,000 readers by the middle of that decade.

Among the many poets whose early reputations owed much to little magazines were T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Edgar Lee Masters, Hart Crane, and Wallace Stevens. James Joyce's Ulysses had its first U.S. printing, in serial installments, in The Little Review. As a result the magazine was banned by court order and subsequently broken financially. Also appearing before 1920 and prefiguring much of the little-magazine movement of the 1930s were the proletarian or left-wing magazines. The first and most significant of these was The Masses (New York, 1911-17), guided principally by Max Eastman and Floyd Dell.

After World War I the "new" literary magazine appeared. Noted examples of this type were the Modern Review (1922-24), edited by Firwoode Tarleton; The Fugitive (Nashville, Tenn., 1922-25), whose editors included John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Robert Penn Warren; Voices (Boston, 1921-65), edited by Harold Vinal; Secession (1922-24), published in Vienna, Berlin, Brooklyn, and elsewhere and edited by Gorham Munson; and Broom (1921-24), a rival of Secession, edited by Harold Loeb and Alfred Kreymborg.

Also important were This Quarter (Paris, Milan, 1925-32), edited by Ernest J. Walsh and The Enemy (London, 1927-29), edited by Wyndham Lewis. The first of the regional magazines also appeared at this time—The Midland (Iowa City, 1915-33), edited by John T. Frederick. Others were The Frontier (1920-39), which celebrated the Pacific Northwest; the Southwest Review (1924-), edited by J. B. Hubbell; Double-Dealer (New Orleans, 1921-26), edited by John McClure; and the Prairie Schooner (1927-).

In the 1930s important little magazines connected with the left-wing movement included New Masses (1926-48); the Modern Quarterly (1923-40); The Anvil (1933-35); Blast (1933-34); and The Partisan Review (1933-), which soon abandoned politics and turned to literary affairs. Notable among the literary magazines were transition (Paris, 1927-38), established by Eugene Jolas; New Verse (London, 1933-39); and Criterion (London, 1922-39), edited by T. S. Eliot.

In the 1940s little magazines came to be associated with groups of writers and poets in academic circles, for example, The Kenyon Review (1939-). In the late 1960s the underground press in combination with an avant-garde striving to articulate its rejection of established attitudes fostered a rebirth of little-magazine publishing. This produced hundreds of mostly short-lived reviews, including the New York Quarterly, Aphra, A Feminist Literary Magazine, The Little Magazine, and The American Review.

The settlement was a well-known river crossing when Arkansas Territory was established in 1819. It became territorial capital in 1821 and state capital when Arkansas entered the Union in 1836. In the Civil War the battle of Little Rock (1863) was fought there. The city became a center of world attention in 1957, when federal troops were sent there to enforce a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against segregation in the public schools.

Little Rock is the seat of Philander Smith College, Arkansas Baptist College, the Univ. of Arkansas at Little Rock, and several other branches of the university, including the law and medical schools. Of interest are the beautiful Old State House, which served as capitol from 1836 to 1910 and is now a museum; several other museums, including the Arkansas Arts Center; and the Clinton presidential library. The present capitol building was built in 1911. The city also contains several state institutions and has a noteworthy symphony orchestra. Little Rock Air Force Base is in nearby Jacksonville.

The overall aims of the Little Entente and the Balkan Entente, taken together, were the preservation of the territorial status quo, established by the treaties of Versailles, Saint-Germain, Trianon, and Neuilly, against the efforts of Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Bulgaria to have those treaties revised; the prevention of Anschluss, or union, between Germany and Austria; and the encouragement of closer economic ties among its members. The Little Entente was successful in its aims until the rise of Hitler in Germany, when French prestige was gradually displaced by German economic penetration and political pressure. It began to break apart in 1936 and was effectively ended when Czechoslovakia lost its membership by the formation of the Munich Pact (1938).

Species (Canis latrans) of canine found in North and Central America. Its range extends from Alaska and Canada south through the continental U.S. and Mexico to Central America. It weighs about 20–50 lbs (9–23 kg) and is about 3–4 ft (1–1.3 m) long, including its 12–16-in. (30–40-cm) tail. Its coarse fur is generally buff above and whitish below; its legs are reddish, and its tail is bushy and black-tipped. The coyote feeds mainly on small mammals such as rodents, rabbits, and hares but can also take down deer, sometimes doing so in packs. Vegetation and carrion are commonly eaten as well. Though persecuted by humans because of its potential (generally overstated) to prey on domestic or game animals, it has adapted well to human-dominated environments, including urban areas. A coyote-dog cross is called a coydog.

Learn more about coyote with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Movement in U.S. theatre to free dramatic forms and methods of production from the limitations of the large commercial theatres by establishing small experimental centres of drama. Young dramatists, stage designers, and actors influenced by the vital European theatre of the late 19th century, especially by the theories of Max Reinhardt, established community playhouses such as the Little Theatre, New York City (1912), the Little Theatre, Chicago (1912), and the Toy Theatre, Boston (1912). A few became important commercial producers; the Washington Square Players (1915), for example, later became the Theatre Guild (1918). Playwrights such as Eugene O'Neill, George S. Kaufman, and Maxwell Anderson found their early opportunities in the little theatres.

Learn more about little theatre with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Any of various small, usually avant-garde periodicals devoted to serious literary writings. The name signifies most of all a usually noncommercial manner of editing, managing, and financing. They were published from circa 1880 through much of the 20th century and flourished in the U.S. and England, though French and German writers also benefited from them. Foremost among them were two U.S. periodicals, Poetry and the more erratic and often more sensational Little Review (1914–29); the English Egoist (1914–19) and Blast (1914–15); and the French transition (1927–38).

Learn more about little magazine with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born circa 1752, near Fort Wayne, Ind.—died July 14, 1812, Fort Wayne, Ind., U.S.) American Indian leader. Chief of the Miami tribe, he led raids on settlements in the Northwest Territory in the early 1790s. Defeated by Gen. Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794), he was obliged to sign the Treaty of Greenville (1795), which ceded to the U.S. much of Ohio and parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. He then advocated peace and prevented the Miami from joining the Shawnee confederacy of Tecumseh.

Learn more about Little Turtle with a free trial on Britannica.com.

City (pop., 2000: 183,133), capital of Arkansas, U.S., located on the Arkansas River. In 1722 Bernard de la Harpe, a French explorer, named the site La Petite Roche for a rock formation on the riverbank. It became the capital of Arkansas in 1821. It was strongly anti-Union at the outbreak of the American Civil War; Federal troops occupied the city in 1863. It grew as the commercial centre of a farming region and as a hub of railway and river transportation. In 1957 federal troops were sent there to prevent state authorities from interfering with desegregation at Central High School. The state's largest city, it has many institutions of higher learning, including the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (1927).

Learn more about Little Rock with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Dec. 5, 1932, Macon, Ga., U.S.) U.S. rhythm and blues singer and pianist. Born into a strict religious family, he sang and played piano in church but was later ejected from his home by his father, reportedly for homosexual behaviour. He performed in nightclubs, traveled with a medicine show, and recorded as a blues artist from the early 1950s. His first big hit came with “Tutti Frutti” (1956), an energetic performance that, with his penchant for the outrageous, set a standard for the emerging rock idiom. Similar hits followed, including “Long Tall Sally,” “Lucille,” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” In 1957 he underwent a religious conversion and was later ordained a minister. He soon returned to music, becoming a regular attraction in Las Vegas, and he continued to tour and appear in films with much success. He was an original inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Learn more about Little Richard with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Mutual defense arrangement formed in 1920–21 between Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania, with French support. It was directed against German and Hungarian domination in the Danube River basin and toward protection of its members' territorial integrity. It was successful in the 1920s, but after Adolf Hitler's rise to power (1933) its members adopted increasingly independent foreign policies. The entente collapsed after Germany annexed the Czech Sudetenland (1938).

Learn more about Little Entente with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Ancient kingdom, southeastern coast of Anatolia. After initial struggles with the Byzantine Empire, it was established in Cilicia by the Armenian Rubenid dynasty in the 12th century and developed contacts with the West. It was influenced by cultural contacts with Crusaders and with Venetian and Genoese merchants. It was conquered by the Muslim Mamlūk dynasty in 1375.

Learn more about Little Armenia with a free trial on Britannica.com.