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>