Who's Who
These are the main personalities involved in the 1921 Ulysses obscenity trial.
Margaret C. Anderson was born in 1886 in Indianapolis. After graduating high school, she briefly attended a preparatory college, before leaving Indiana for Chicago in 1908 to pursue a career as a pianist. After working as a writer and critic for several outlets including the Chicago Evening Post, in 1914 she founded her own publication, The Little Review. Running for fifteen years (1914-1929), the magazine was a leading voice in experimental writing and avant-garde visual art, with a particular focus on bringing international work to an American audience. Vivacious and uncompromising, Anderson used the publication to advance both an incindiary artistic vision, and radical political commentary, in line with her anarchist, feminist, lesbian, and anti-war politics.
In 1916 Anderson met Jane Heap, a Chicago artist, who became Anderson’s romantic partner and co-editor of The Little Review. Despite its rising popularity, the magazine struggled financially. After being evicted and briefly camping on the shore of Lake Michigan, Anderson and Heap partnered with writer Ezra Pound and relocated the magazines’ office to New York City.
The partnership with Pound brought continued critical success to the publication, and greatly improved its financial standing. Pound secured financial backing from New York lawyer and art collector John Quinn. In 1918, The Little Review began publishing Ulysses by James Joyce with Pound as an intermediary and editor. This serialization led to the obscenity trial in 1921 in which publication of the book was banned and Anderson and Heap were fined.
After the trial, Anderson became increasingly frustrated by the cultural climate in the United States, and in 1923 she left control of the magazine to Heap and moved to Paris, effectively ending their romantic relationship as well.
Jane Heap was born in 1883 in Topeka, Kanas. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago, before working as an art teacher at the Lewis Institute prior to meeting Anderson in 1916. More reserved than Anderson, Heap was nevertheless a vital force behind the success of The Little Review. She contributed significantly through incisive, sardonic writing and a sharp editorial eye, and (along with Anderson) ensured that the content for publication was not dominated by Ezra Pound’s input after he joined as foreign editor.
Heap is also central to the notoriety of The Little Review in another way; according to some historians, Heap’s gender presentation and open life as an uncloseted Lesbian exacerbated the conservative ire directed at the magazine and may have caused their lawyer in the trial to intentionally weaken their case.
After Anderson’s departure to France in 1923, Heap continued publishing The Little Review, albeit increasingly sporadically, until 1926. Heap also moved to Paris, publishing one final issue of the magazine in 1929, before officially retiring the title.
Born in 1885 in Hailey, Idaho, Ezra Pound was a pivotal figure in the development of literary modernism. In addition to his own poetic writing, Pound famously advanced and advocated for other writers during his lifetime, including T.S. Elliot, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and James Joyce. Pound graduated from Hamilton College in 1905 and taught at Wabash College before moving to Europe and eventually settling in London. In 1917 he approached Anderson and Heap and became the foreign editor of The Little Review. Pound likely believed that he would be able to dominate Anderson and Heap’s contributions and seize complete control over the editing of the publication, and some historians have suggested that this was largely the case. However, more recent scholarship has pointed towards significant autonomy on Anderson and Heap’s part, arguing that Pound was an important but not overwhelming voice in the editorial process.
Pound was instrumental in The Little Review’s serialization of Ulysses, however he also was a consistently conservative voice throughout the publication, advocating for significant censorship of Joyce’s writing on both practical and critical grounds.
During the trial, Pound parted ways with the magazine. He continued to promote the work of other modernists, but became increasingly known for his right-wing political views and anti-semitism, culminating in his support for Mussolini’s facist regime in Italy. In his later years he increasingly suffered from mental health problems and was institutionalized for over 12 years in the United States, before being released to Italy where he died in 1972.
James Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1882. In 1902, upon graduating from University College Dublin, Joyce left Ireland, returning only briefly in 1903. Joyce struggled for money constantly and was employed in a number of different jobs including as a teacher, bank clerk, and tweed-importer. He relied significantly on support from Harriet Shaw Weaver and Ezra Pound, the latter of whom was key to the publication of Joyce’s first major works, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners in 1914.
Pound provided the initial connection between Joyce, and Anderson and Heap, and Ulysses, began to be serialized in 1918. Joyce was not at all perturbed by the legal challenge his work faced, and his attitude in correspondence with Pound suggests that he hoped to provoke a public battle over the work. While publication of Ulysses in The Little Review was halted in 1920, the work was published in book form in England in 1922. Joyce would eventually get his win in court as well: in 1933 a US district court judge sided with him in the landmark case, “United States v. One Book Called Ulysses”.
John Quinn (1870-1924) was a wealthy New York lawyer, art collector, and literary patron. Best known for his expansive collecting and patronage of emerging visual artists including Brancusi, Cezanne, Matisse, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Picasso, he was also an ardent supporter of literary modernists including Pound and Joyce.
His financial support of both writers, and of The Little Review, came despite his deep social conservatism, and he often clashed with Anderson and Heap over their editorial choices. He was particularly frustrated by their decision to publish Ulysses which he viewed as both vulgar and artistically lacking, however he begrudgingly agreed to represent them in the 1921 obscenity trial. Despite his somewhat conflicting views on modernist artistic expression, his moral conservatism seems to have won out as he mustered a flimsy legal defense that seemed to presume his clients’ guilt.
Born in 1876, John Sumner was a life-long campaigner against the publishing of obscene or explicit cultural material. Educated as a lawyer at New York University, Sumner served as the executive secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice from 1915-1947. In this capacity he became widely known as a crusader for social conservatism, dedicating his life to fighting legal battles against the publishers of books including Edmund Wilson’s Memoirs of Hecate County, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chaterlee’s Lover, and of course, James Joyce’s Ulysses. He remained successful in suppressing books and theatrical productions well into the 1940’s, before retiring in 1947.