CBH Talk | Queer Modernism and “The Little Review” - How Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap Reshaped Literature and Each Other

This Pride Month, the Center for Brooklyn History turns to the story of Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the visionary editors behind "The Little Review," whose partnership, both personal and professional, helped shape the course of modern literature. 

At a time when both queerness and artistic experimentation were met with resistance, Anderson and Heap created a magazine that embraced risk, provoked controversy, and championed groundbreaking work, most famously publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses, facing obscenity charges as a result.

Drawing on new scholarship, historian Holly Baggett, 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, explore these two pioneering figures, how queerness informed Anderson and Heap’s editorial approach, their role in introducing groundbreaking writers to American audiences, and why their contributions have so often been overlooked.

Taking place on Bloomsday, June 16, the day when Leopold Bloom makes his iconic journey through Ulysses, this program offers a fitting tribute to the modernist moment and the writers and editors like Anderson and Heap who helped expand the possibilities of literary expression. Recovering their story is both an act of literary history and a reminder of how queer lives have long driven cultural transformation, often from the margins.

Participants

Holly Baggett, professor emerita of History, is the author of Making No Compromise: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap and the Little Review, and editor of Dear Tiny Heart: The Letters of Jane Heap and Florence Reynolds. 

Adam Morgan is a culture journalist and critic who lives near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His writing has appeared in Esquire, Wired, Scientific American, Inverse, The Paris Review, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He is the author of A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature.