Cover of debut issue, March 1918.
Cover art by Hugo Gellert. |
|
Editor |
Max Eastman (1918-22) Floyd Dell (1922) Robert Minor (1922-24) |
---|---|
Staff writers |
Cornelia Barns Howard Brubaker Dorothy Day Hugo Gellert Arturo Giovannitti Charles T. Hallinan Ellen La Motte Robert Minor John Reed Boardman Robinson Louis Untermeyer Charles W. Wood Art Young |
Categories | Politics |
Frequency | Monthly |
First issue | March 1918 |
Final issue | October 1924 |
Company | Liberator Publishing Co. (1918-1922), Workers Party of America (1922-1924) |
The Liberator was a monthly socialist magazine established by Max Eastman and his sister Crystal Eastman in 1918 to continue the work of The Masses, which was shut down by the wartime mailing regulations of the U.S. government. Intensely political, the magazine included copious quantities of art, poetry, and fiction along with political reporting and commentary. The publication was an organ of the Communist Party of America from late 1922 and was merged with two other publications to form The Workers Monthly in 1924.
The Liberator’s international news coverage was first-rate. Legendary war correspondent and Communist Labor Party founder John Reed reported the ongoing situation in Soviet Russia; major reports were filed from across tumultuous post-war Europe by Robert Minor, Hiram K. Moderwell, Frederick Kuh, and Crystal Eastman. Pivotal conventions of political parties and labor unions were covered in depth by intelligent participants. The great political trials of the day were reported in detail with perception. Speeches and articles by sundry revolutionary leaders of the world found space on its pages.
As with The Masses, The Liberator relied heavily upon political art, including contributions from some of the finest talents of the day. Among the artists and writers who contributed to the publication were Maurice Becker, E.E. Cummings, John Dos Passos, Fred Ellis, Lydia Gibson, William Gropper, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, J.J. Lankes, Boardman Robinson, Edmund Wilson, Wanda Gág, and Art Young. Each color cardstock cover of The Liberator was unique and distinctive, a miniature work of art, again echoing its illustrious predecessor. Poetry and fiction fleshed out its pages, including work by Carl Sandburg, Claude McKay, Arturo Giovannitti, and others. The magazine was a monthly intellectual banquet for the American radical intelligentsia, readily available on newsstands for twenty cents.