Of Aesthetic Experimentations and Modernism: British Periodicals and the First World War

Abstract

The years of the First World War witnessed an unprecedented surge of new British periodicals and magazines flocking the literary market. These periodicals testify to the sudden proliferation of avant-garde aesthetic ideas which ultimately sowed the seeds of diverse literary experimentations. These innovations gradually paved the way for the blossoming of the Modernist movement in British literature. Interestingly, the artistic trend had been initiated in the years leading to the Great War, culminating during the years of the conflict and the decades following it. Some notable instances in this regard include Alfred Orage’s The New Age, Ford Madox Ford’s English Review, John Middleton Murry’s Rhythm, Dora Marsden’s The Freewoman (subsequently The New Freewoman and The Egoist), Gordon Craig’s The Mask, the Arts and Crafts Magazine The Acorn, Douglas Goldring’s journal of open-air life The Tramp, the Times Literary Supplement, Book Monthly, Mainly About Books, T.P.’s Weekly among several others. Focusing on select periodicals, this analysis intends to explore the crucial role played by them in shaping the Modernist literary sensibility in the early decades of the twentieth century.