Ezra Pound to Margaret Anderson, 1918

Ezra Pound.
Ezra Pound to Margaret Anderson, Typed Letter Signed, January 17, 1918, 2 pp.
Little review (Chicago, Ill.).
Records, 1914-1964.
Call Number: UWM Manuscript Collection 1: Box 3, Folder 2
Archives, Golda Meir Library

As he received from Joyce the first installments of Ulysses, Pound heard from Paris of challenges to The Little Review's fitness for distribution through the U.S. Mail on grounds of obscenity. The October 1917 issue had been suppressed by Judge Augustus B. Hand because of objections to the content of Wyndham Lewis's "Cantleman's Spring-Mate." Judge Hand expounded in his opinion the belief that certain expression is allowable only in classics which "have the sanction of age and fame and usually appeal to a comparatively limited number of readers."

Anticipating legal challenges to Ulysses, and dependent on Quinn's approval because of his stipend, Pound suggested omissions from the text from the outset, without Joyce's knowledge:

Another chunk of Joyce has come in... it might be well to leave gaps, at the questionable points, well marked. Saying "until literature is permitted in America" we cannot print Mr J.'s next sentence.

Anderson printed the first three installments without omissions. However, Pound deleted about 20 lines from the fourth installment, Calypso, the first in a long series of textual changes which would obscure Joyce's intent.