Post on 12-Jan-2016
The Dial• 1840—1844 Quarterly associated with New England
Transcendentalists– Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau
• 1880—1919 Fortnightly social journal and literary review based in Chicago
• 1919—Scofield Thayer and James Sibley Watson purchase 73% of the shares
• 1920—1929 Monthly literary review based in New York– During this time, Thayer will finance and oversee
production– Features art, poetry, short stories, serialized novels,
book reviews, theater reviews, music reviews– Marriage of old and new
November, 1922
Art Featured in The Dial
Pablo Picasso Three Nude Women by the Sea June 1924
Pablo Picasso Two Nude Women by the Sea February 1924
Wyndham Lewis Ezra Pound September 1920
Scofield Thayer (1890—1982)
• His father made a fortune in the wool industry in Massachusetts
• Uncle Ernest Thayer wrote “Casey at the Bat” • At Harvard was on the board of The Harvard
Monthly• Graduated Harvard in 1913• Married Elaine Orr in 1916• Funded The Dial from 1920—1929• Editor of The Dial from 1920—1926• Assigned Marianne Moore editor in 1926• Diagnosed as paranoid in 1927
1921 Passport Photo
The Dial Award
• Award given to one young American writer• $2,000.00• “In no sense a prize” (Thayer)• Intended to offer funds to authors who couldn’t continue
their work without financial support• Complete list of winners:
• 1921: Sherwood Anderson 1925: E.E. Cummings• 1922: T.S. Eliot 1926: William Carlos
Williams• 1923: Van Wyck Brooks 1927: Ezra Pound• 1924: Marianne Moore 1928: Kenneth Burke
William Carlos Williams’ Portrait for The Dial Award. 1926
Business and Popularity
• Profitability– 1920—1929 = Never a profit– 1920: $84,000 deficit– 1922: $64,000 deficit– 1924: $40,000 deficit
• Printing runs– 1922—14,500 copies per month
• 1922 December issue saw the pinnacle: 18,000 copies
– 1923—approximately 14,000 copies per month– 1925—down to 10,000 per month– 1925—1929—4,000 per month
T. S. Eliot• November, 1922, issue of
The Dial is its most famous• First piece = Eliot’s “The
Waste Land”– Published without its notes– Received regular rate of
$10.00 per page– Promised the 1922 Dial
Award in return for the poem– The poem appeared
simultaneously in Eliot’s own The Criterion
– Gave some publicity to The Dial, but impact was short-lived
Featured Poets• E.E. Cummings
– The Dial is credited for “discovering” him– 1920: “Buffalo Bill’s defunct,” “when god lets my body be”
• T. S. Eliot– The Dial published “The Hollow Men” and “The Waste Land”
• Amy Lowell– Translation of “Songs of the Pueblo Indians” 1920– Considered a traditionalist
• Marianne Moore– “New York,” “Silence”– Editor, wrote commentary and reviews
• Ezra Pound– Portions of “The Cantos” – Dial Correspondent from Paris
• Wallace Stevens – “Sea Surface Full of Clouds”
• Elinor Wylie– Rejected
• William Carlos Williams– “Paterson” in 1927– Regular contributor
• Edna St. Vincent Millay– In early period (1918)– Would not become regular contributor
Pablo Picasso Mother and Child March 1923
Ernest Hemingway• Submitted poetry and short stories on at least three occasions• Rejected and not invited to submit again• Briefly mentions The Dial in a 1925 letter to F.Scott
Fitzgerald, in which Hemingway discusses his vision of heaven:
Hemingway—1929
“To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two Barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on 9 different floors and one house would be fitted up with special copies of The Dial printed on soft tissue and kept in the toilets on every floor….” (Rpt. In Osgood 124—25)
Two Questions
Q. What literary movement was showcased in the twentieth century version of The Dial?
A. Modernism
***********Q. In what year did Margaret Fuller
and other transcendentalists first publish the journal?
A. 1840Gaston Lachaise Scofield Thayer 1926
Works Consulted
“Dial, the.” Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature. Springfield: Merriam-Webster, 1995.
“E. E. Cummings.” www.hrc.utexas.edu. 4 Feb 2007 <http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/cummings.html>
Joost, Nicholas. Scofield Thayer and The Dial: An Illustrated History. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1964.
Osgood, Charles, ed. Funny Letters from Famous People. New York: Broadway Books, 2003.
“Scofield Thayer.” www.Powys-lannion.net. 4 Feb 2007 http://www.powys-lannion.net/Powys/America/Thayer.htm
“The Dial Magazine.” www.virtualclemson.edu. 4 Feb 2007 <http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/dial/dialhist.htm>