Pound/The Little Review: The Letters of Ezra Pound to Margaret Anderson: The Little Review Correspondence

Frustrated in his working relationship with Harriet Monroe and her Poetry magazine, Pound turned to Margaret Anderson, the open-minded founder of the Little Review . This Chicago-based editor helped the expatriate poet (living in London, then Paris) publish poems by Yeats, Eliot and himself, as well as fiction by Ford Madox Ford and Wyndham Lewis and, at Pound's urging, James Joyce's Ulysses. The serialization of the latter work brought down the wrath of U.S. postal authorities. All this might suggest that Pound's letters to Anderson (hers to him have mostly perished) are a literary feast. On the contrary, his hasty correspondence is fragmentary, often obscure, narrowly matter-of-fact, sprinkled with tired anti-Americanisms and oh-so-clever literary references. Copious footnotes to each letter amplify the allusions; the notes are frequently more interesting than the letters themselves. This compendium is for scholars and Pound devotees. (September)