Avil/ New Anvil

ANVIL/NEW ANVIL. The two Anvils were the most successful and vigorous among a group devoted to proletarian writing in the 1930s. Other such periodicals included Left Front (Chicago), Left Review (Philadelphia), Leftward (Boston), New Force (Detroit), Blast (New York), and Rebel Poet (northern Minnesota). One of the features of the Anvils was that they only published creative work—fiction and poetry—and no criticism. Editor Jack Conroy has written that his magazines were “rough-hewn and awkward, but bitter and alive from the furnace of experience—and from participants, not observers, in most instances.”

The first issue of Anvil (1932–1935) consisted of a thousand copies. While widely read by Left writers, the magazine increased circulation only modestly until an ill-fated merger with Partisan Review. That fusion proved so unsatisfactory to many Anvil contributors that they regrouped to issue twenty-five hundred copies of New Anvil (1939–1940), the first of what would be six issues. Poet-publisher Ben Haggland, who had produced Rebel Poet prior to the founding of Anvil, hand-printed both magazines as well as played an editorial role.

The Anvils published many of the Left writers of the 1930s. New Anvil published Richard Wright for the first time and published stories of Erskine Caldwell considered “too hot” for the big-circulation magazines Caldwell had access to. J. D. Salinger had the dubious honor of having a story rejected but commented on the helpful rejection letter sent by Conroy. Among poets published by the magazines were John Malcolm Brinnin, Langston Hughes, Tom McGrath, Kenneth Patchen, and Karl Shapiro. Short story contributors included Nelson Algren, Caldwell, Conroy, August Derleth, Stuart Engstrand, James T. Farrell, Michael Gold, Meridel Le Sueur, William Carlos Williams, and Frank Yerby.

Conroy, Jack, and Curt Johnson, eds. Writers in Revolt: The Anvil Anthology. Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1973.

Conroy, Jack. The Jack Conroy Reader. New York: B. Franklin 1979.