Secession (magazine)

Secession was an American expatriate little magazine edited by Gorham Munson, Matthew Josephson, and Kenneth Burke. During its two year, eight issue run, Secession managed to further the careers of writers like Waldo Frank, Slater Brown, Robert Coates, E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and William Carlos Williams, among others. Printed in cities like Vienna, Berlin, Reutte, and Brooklyn, New York, Secession is considered an exile magazine, and has been called the “liveliest” of the little magazines published abroad. In his article “The Interstice between Scylla and Charybdis,” Munson distinguished Secession from little magazines like The Little Review and Broom, and stated that the goal for his magazine is to be “neither a personal nor an anthological magazine, but to be a group organ. [Secession] will make group-exclusions, found itself on a group basis, point itself in a group-direction, and derive its stability and correctiveness from a group.” The pieces published in this magazine certainly demonstrated creative energy, but the strained relationship between Secession’s editors also contributed to the magazine’s spirited image.

In 1922, Munson, who was greatly influenced by Malcolm Cowley’s essay “This Youngest Generation,” desired to launch a little magazine. It was around this time that Munson met Matthew Josephson and Malcolm Cowley, and together, they formed Secession, a little magazine that would help the Younger Generation of writers “secede” from the Middle Generation; Munson supplied the funds, Josephson the literary connection, and Cowley the intellectual stimulus. Taking advantage of the favorable, post- World War I exchange rate between the American dollar and European currency, Munson printed the first issue of Secession (Spring 1922) in Vienna for under $20. In this issue, Munson stated that “beyond a two-year span, observation shows, the vitality of most reviews is lowered and their contribution, accomplished, becomes repetitious and unnecessary. Secession will take care to avoid morbidity.”

...
Wikipedia