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Nomadic Editors. Every region of the U.S. produced its own magazines. In the Midwest, Midland (1915-33) published such indigenous authors as Paul Engle, Maxwell Anderson and Howard Mumford Jones. In California, a magazine sensibly titled Magazine (1933-35) printed Critics Yvor Winters and R. P. Blackmur. In Santa Fe, Laughing Horse (1921-39) celebrated the Southwest through the writing of such contributors as Upton Sinclair and Sherwood Anderson. Not all of the contributors by any means became well known; many of talent gave up, or turned to Hollywood or alcohol. "Some of the people now forgotten," says Robert Lowell in an introduction to the series, "are almost as interesting as those that survived. They are the underpinnings of the house."
For all the literary treasures buried in the little magazines, the Kraus editors found them singularly hard to locate. Few libraries had subscribed to them or stocked them. Often, the publishers found some issues in one place, the rest scattered in several others. One problem was that the magazines, entirely dependent on the energies and whims of their editors, tended to be nomadic. Secession, for example, moved in succeeding editions from Vienna to Berlin to the Tirol to Florence, finally folded in New York City in 1924. Story, which published the first works of Cheever, Capote, Salinger and Mailer, shifted from Vienna to Majorca to Paris to New York, where it, too, folded in 1964.
Forgotten Marianne. Even when Kraus located back copies, the editors had a hard time prying them out of the hands of owners who were reluctant to part with them even on a temporary basis. Many were fragile and falling apart, and the pages had to be separated in order to be photographed—a project requiring all the delicate art of the bookbinder. "It took almost a negative Wassermann test just to see the magazines," says Editorial Consultant David McDowell. But under persistent prodding, the owners eventually let them go—in exchange for a new volume of reprints. Even so, Whit Burnett, editor of Story, insured his copy of the first issue for $570 and kept calling up Kraus to inquire solicitously after its welfare.
Despite the steep cost of the project, Kraus expects to turn a tidy profit with the reprints. So far, about 50,000 copies have been sold, mostly to university libraries where for the first time they will be available for students' perusal. Though most of the magazines are in the public domain, Kraus scrupulously tracked down the editors and in most cases is paying them modest royalties on sales. As for the authors, they are happy to see their early efforts exhumed and once again in print. Much to her delight, Marianne Moore reported that she had come across some poems in a Kraus volume that she had forgotten she had written.