Margaret Anderson
Margaret Anderson – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes
Discover the life and legacy of Margaret C. Anderson (1886–1973), the pioneering American editor who founded The Little Review. Explore her role in modernist literature, her spiritual journey, and her enduring influence on 20th-century arts and letters.
Introduction
Margaret Caroline Anderson (November 24, 1886 – October 1973) was a visionary American magazine editor, publisher, and writer best known for founding The Little Review, an avant-garde literary magazine (1914–1929) that played a seminal role in introducing modernist writers such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce to the U.S. reading public. Through her fearless literary choices, defiance of censorship, and later spiritual explorations, Anderson’s life bridged the worlds of art, revolt, and mysticism—making her a uniquely compelling figure in American literary and intellectual history.
Early Life and Family
Margaret Caroline Anderson was born November 24, 1886, in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Arthur Aubrey Anderson and Jessie (Shortridge) Anderson. She was the eldest of three daughters. Her father worked in electric railway management; the family was comfortable but steeped in middle-class conventions.
Raised in the Midwest, Margaret attended high school in Indianapolis (graduating about 1903). She then began preparatory studies at the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, for about two years. But her restless spirit soon drove her away from conventional domestic expectations toward a life of letters and cultural rebellion.
Youth and Early Career
Margaret’s initial interest was in music: she took piano studies at Western College, though she did not complete a formal degree. In 1908, she left the Midwest and moved to Chicago, determined to carve out an intellectual life.
Once in Chicago, Anderson found work as a book reviewer for The Continent, a religious weekly, and then joined The Dial literary review. By 1913, she was writing literary criticism for the Chicago Evening Post.
Her early years in Chicago exposed her to radical ideas, artists, writers, and bohemian circles. She quickly tired of prudish tastes and sought to champion writing that broke with conventional norms.
Founding The Little Review
In March 1914, Anderson launched The Little Review in Chicago—a quarterly (later monthly) periodical devoted to “art, not compromise.” Its mission was audacious: to publish challenging, experimental literature and art, even when mainstream tastes rejected it.
Financial backing was minimal. In its first six months, Anderson lost her home and the magazine’s offices; she and her staff camped on Lake Michigan’s shore while producing issues. She once printed a full issue of The Little Review containing 64 blank pages in protest of a lack of stimulating submissions.
Collaboration with Jane Heap
In 1916, Anderson met Jane Heap, an astute, provocative writer and thinker. Heap became her close collaborator and co-editor, and their partnership became central to The Little Review’s character. Heap often signed contributions simply “JH.”
In 1917, they relocated to New York in pursuit of a broader literary base.
Literary Significance and Censorship Battles
The Little Review became a key vehicle for modernism in the English-speaking world. While operating on a shoestring budget and offering little or no payment to contributors, Anderson and Heap published works by Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, and many others.
In 1918, The Little Review began serializing Ulysses by James Joyce. This provoked a backlash: issues were seized and burned by the U.S. Post Office, and in 1921, Anderson and Heap were convicted of obscenity and fined. Despite legal penalties and financial strain, the magazine continued until 1929.
In 1923–24, Anderson moved operations to Paris and France, aligning with expatriate artists and avant-garde circles.
The final issue of The Little Review was published in 1929, edited from Paris.
Later Life, Spirituality & Relationships
After the closure of the magazine, Anderson focused on her writing, autobiography, and spiritual interests.
Autobiographical & Spiritual Writings
Her principal autobiographical works include:
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My Thirty Years’ War (1930)
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The Fiery Fountains (1951)
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The Strange Necessity (1962)
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The Unknowable Gurdjieff (1962), exploring her devotion to the teachings of mystic G. I. Gurdjieff
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The Little Review Anthology (1953)
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Forbidden Fires, a partly fictional memoir published posthumously in 1996
Spiritual & Philosophical Pursuits
Around 1924, Anderson became involved with the Fourth Way teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff, joining a network of women known as “The Rope” who studied with him. She shared this path with Jane Heap and others dedicated to spiritual discipline and inner transformation.
Her writings on Gurdjieff are among her more esoteric and less widely read works, but they reflect a lifelong quest beyond the purely literary.
Personal Relationships
Anderson never married. She formed close and lasting relationships with women:
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Jane Heap, her co-editor and lover, as noted above.
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Georgette Leblanc, a French singer, with whom she lived from the 1920s until Leblanc’s death in 1941.
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Dorothy Caruso, widow of tenor Enrico Caruso. After Leblanc’s death, Anderson and Caruso were companions until Caruso died in 1955.
In her later years, Anderson lived largely in Le Cannet, on the French Riviera, where she died (of emphysema) in October 1973. Her death date is given in many sources as October 18 or October 19, 1973, at age 86.
Her papers—especially concerning her Gurdjieff work—are preserved at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
Historical Milestones & Context
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The Little Review is regarded as one of the most influential literary “little magazines” in modernism, giving early exposure to some of the 20th century’s canonical writers.
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The obscenity trial over Ulysses marked a key moment in American censorship and freedom of the press debates.
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Anderson’s commitment to art over commerce, and her refusal to dilute the magazine to please wide audiences, made her a heroine of literary integrity.
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Her spiritual turn to Gurdjieff places her in a milieu of early 20th-century artists and thinkers looking beyond rationalism to deeper inner life.
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Though not as widely known today as her writer-contemporaries, Anderson’s legacy persists in the way avant-garde and experimental writing is valorized in academic and literary history.
Personality, Talents & Style
Margaret Anderson was known for her fierce independence, uncompromising aesthetic demands, and willingness to endure hardship for her convictions. Her style was intellectually rigorous, daring, and often defiant.
She had a reputation for being exacting in editorial taste—the magazine would reject works that didn’t measure up. Yet she also had a generosity of vision: believing in voices before they were established.
Her literary sensibility was matched by her spiritual curiosity—her embrace of Gurdjieff’s teachings suggests she viewed art and inner transformation as intertwined.
Socially, she moved in Bohemian, expatriate, lesbian, and feminist circles, often at the margins of mainstream respectability. Her life was itself a public act of dissent.
Famous Quotes of Margaret Anderson
While Anderson did not accumulate a vast trove of popularly cited aphorisms, some lines attributed to her reflect her convictions and voice. According to the Legacy Project Chicago:
“I have always fought for ideas — until I learned that it isn’t ideas but grief, struggle, and flashes of vision which enlighten.”
This line reveals her belief that intellectual work is inseparable from personal experience and spiritual insight.
She also characterized her vision for The Little Review as one that would make “no compromise with the public taste” — a motto capturing her editorial uncompromisingness.
Other statements emerge in her memoirs and letters, but her public persona often spoke louder through her choices in publishing, silence, and absence of retreat.
Lessons from Margaret Anderson
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Artistic integrity over commercial success
Anderson’s unwavering insistence on quality—even when it meant financial peril—offers a model for editors and cultural curators who must balance vision and sustainability. -
Champion rare or emerging voices
Her role in bringing modernist writers into print demonstrates the importance of risk-taking in discovering and promoting new talent. -
Intersection of art and inner life
Her turn toward spiritual inquiry suggests that creative work can be deeply informed by inner transformation and quest, not just external aesthetics. -
Boldness in face of censorship
Her willingness to publish Ulysses despite legal risk underlines courage in defending freedom of expression. -
Lifelong defiance of social norms
By living authentically—especially in an era less accepting of diverse sexualities and gender roles—Anderson’s personal life mirrored her artistic values.
Conclusion
Margaret C. Anderson remains a towering, though sometimes underrecognized, figure of 20th-century letters. Through The Little Review, she rewrote the map of modernism in the English-speaking world. But her significance is not only literary: her life also speaks to the intertwining of art, rebellion, spirituality, and identity.
Today, her legacy invites readers, writers, and thinkers to ask: What risks are we willing to take for truth and beauty? How do inner journeys and outer creations reflect one another? To explore her thinking further, one might read her autobiographies, letters, and her writings on Gurdjieff—discovering in them the rich textures of a life lived on her own uncompromising terms.