Review: A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls by Adam Morgan

Synopsis: The definitive biography of overlooked queer icon Margaret C. Anderson, whose fight to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses led to her arrest and trial for obscenity. Perfect for fans of The Editor and The Book-Makers.

Already under fire for publishing the literary avant-garde into a world not ready for it, Margaret C. Anderson’s cutting-edge magazine The Little Review was a bastion of progressive politics and boundary-pushing writing from then-unknowns like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, and Djuna Barnes. And as its publisher, Anderson was a target. From Chicago to New York and Paris, this fearless agitator helmed a woman-led publication that pushed American culture forward and challenged the sensibilities of early 20th century Americans dismayed by its salacious writing and advocacy for supposed extremism like women’s suffrage, access to birth control, and LBGTQ rights.

But then it went too far. In 1921, Anderson found herself on trial and labeled “a danger to the minds of young girls” by a government seeking to shut her down. Guilty of having serialized James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses in her magazine, Anderson was now not just a publisher but also a scapegoat for regressives seeking to impose their will on a world on the brink of modernization.

Author, journalist, and literary critic Adam Morgan brings Anderson and her journal to life anew in A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls, capturing a moment of cultural acceleration and backlash all too familiar today while shining light on an unsung heroine of American arts and letters. Bringing a fresh eye to a woman and a movement misunderstood in their time, this biography highlights a feminist counterculture that audaciously pushed for more during a time of extreme social conservatism and changed the face of American literature and culture forever.

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It is a decent rather than definitive biography of a woman, who happened to be a lesbian, who ran her own publishing company, who employ other women, and who took on the "established" publishing world by serialising Joyce's "Ulyssses" much to the chagrin of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. It would be for this alone, that Margaret would be demonised and arrested for obscenity - resulting in her standing trial in 1921 with co-publisher, Jane Heap.

Morgan's book takes us through Margaret's earlier life - childhood, her self-emancipation from her parents, her work in non-traditional roles, including reviewing books, before establishing her own publishing company - and all the trials and errors associated with each decision and action. 

Then the obscenity trial is covered - rather too briefly for my liking - before we travel with Margaret out of the USA and onto Continental Europe where her life is a little sketchy at best. Powering through the 1930s in rather jumbled narrative - quite possibly due to the number of people introduced and the required explanations as to their associations / connections  - we jump to the final years of Margaret's life.

For a woman at the forefront of a major publishing controversy, I felt this fell a little flat. Whether this was due to a lack of sources or access to sources, I cannot tell but I was looking for slightly more than a wikipedia entry, especially with regards to the trial component.  

Look, overall, it is a great introduction to a woman whose lasting legacy was the promotion of "serious literature" in an era and to a society marked by conservative moral and literary tastes.