Modernism Edited - (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernist Culture) by Victoria Bazin (Paperback)

About the Book

Modernism Edited: Marianne Moore and the Dial Magazine makes visible Moore's contribution to the production of modernism even as it complicates the concept of editorial agency.

Book Synopsis

Examines Marianne Moore's editorship of the modernist magazine, the Dial between 1925 and 1929
As editor of the Dial, Moore wielded considerable cultural authority in the world of arts and letters, yet cultural histories of modernist magazines have largely overlooked her editorial influence. Modernism Edited: Marianne Moore and the Dial Magazine makes visible Moore's contribution to the production of modernism even as it complicates the concept of editorial agency. It explores the public face of the modernist editor, the image of highbrow distinction circulated by the Dial and embodied by the figure of 'Miss Moore'. It also examines Moore's editorial practice as a form of modernist 'contractility' drawing on her own poetics to understand more fully the motives underpinning her revisions. It returns to the well-known case of Moore's radical cuts to Hart Crane's poem 'The Wine Menagerie' as well as instances of collaborative struggle with Williams Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, Paul Rosenfeld and D. H. Lawrence. In doing so, the book conceptualises editorial labour as a form of creative and critical social practice.
Key Features:
Returns to controversial case of Moore's revisions to Hart Crane's 'The Wine Menagerie'Uncovers evidence that points to Moore's revisions to the work of other well-known modernistsConceptualizes editorial agencyDevelops methodologies for critically engaging with magazine contentUncovers and analyses Moore's advertisements for the DialProduces a sustained analysis of Moore's editorial comments for the DialDraws on Moore's poetics to understand her editorial revisions

From the Back Cover

Examines Marianne Moore's editorship of the modernist magazine, the Dial between 1925 and 1929 As editor of the Dial, Moore wielded considerable cultural authority in the world of arts and letters, yet cultural histories of modernist magazines have largely overlooked her editorial influence. Modernism Edited: Marianne Moore and the Dial Magazine makes visible Moore's contribution to the production of modernism even as it complicates the concept of editorial agency. It explores the public face of the modernist editor, the image of highbrow distinction circulated by the Dial and embodied by the figure of 'Miss Moore'. It also examines Moore's editorial practice as a form of modernist 'contractility' drawing on her own poetics to understand more fully the motives underpinning her revisions. It returns to the well-known case of Moore's radical cuts to Hart Crane's poem 'The Wine Menagerie' as well as instances of collaborative struggle with Williams Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, Paul Rosenfeld and D. H. Lawrence. In doing so, the book conceptualises editorial labour as a form of creative and critical social practice. Victoria Bazin is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Northumbria University.

Review Quotes

A brilliant reading of Moore as the "public face of modernism" during her years of editing the Dial, a periodical with a specific cultural role that Moore both inhabited and redefined. Attentive to gender and based on thorough archival research, this is a must-read for anyone interested in Moore or modernist editing.-- "Cristanne Miller, University at Buffalo SUNY"

Bazin, an accomplished Moore scholar, has with Modernism Edited helped to further pull back the curtain on one of modernism's most inscrutable figures [...] in a book that is deeply attentive to both poetic and periodical form as it demonstrates the complex negotiations between individual editorial agency and a more general periodical habitus.--Bartholomew Brinkman, Framingham State University "Journal of European Periodical Studies"

About the Author

Victoria Bazin is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Northumbria University, England. She is the author of Modernism Edited: Marianne Moore and the Dial Magazine (2019) and Marianne Moore and the Cultures of Modernity (2010).