The Egoist

The Egoist

Another highly entertaining literary magazine this year is Harriet Weaver Shaw’s The Egoist. It was founded by Dora Marsden in response to the discontinuing of her last feminist magazine, The New Freewoman. This magazine is definitely the biggest publisher of new, so-called “Imagist” poetry and has published poets such as Pound, HD, Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, Williams Carlos Williams, and other avant-garde poets. Also, I applaud vehemently the magazines publication of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which made me rush to get the magazine the morning it was released for a couple months. In addition to publishing avant-garde works of art, the magazine also gave its own views and comments on the current state of art and how they think they should go about publishing. Here’s there manifesto, published in the second edition of the magazine, describing some of these views.

“Given time, and the catholicity of these pages, we shall in the opinion of one or other of our readers rehearse the entire procession of isms and schisms, whether ancient, mediæval or modern. The compliment paid to the wealth of our erudition would no doubt be pleasant–and wholly undeserved–did it not clash with our egoistic temper, which compels us to protest to our status. Our modesty notwithstanding, we protest that we brew our own malt: we are not bottlers and retailers: we are in the wholesale and producing line of business. If our beer bears a resemblance in flavour to other brands, it is due to the similarity of taste in the makers….” - The Egoist Manifesto