Masses & Mainstream
Masses & Mainstream, published from 1948 to 1963, was an American Marxist monthly publication. It resulted from a merger between New Masses, which ceased publication in January 1948, and Mainstream, a Communist cultural quarterly established the previous year.[1] It was headquartered in New York City.
Masses & Mainstream was edited by Samuel Sillen. On the board of editors were critics, writers and scholars such as Sidney Finkelstein, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mike Gold, Herbert Aptheker, Phillip Bonosky, Lloyd L. Brown, Annette Rubinstein, and John Howard Lawson. Paul Robeson was always on the masthead.[2] Although many of the magazine's best-known contributors had written for New Masses before the war, Masses & Mainstream gave a platform to some younger writers including Howard Fast, Thomas McGrath, Eve Merriam, Jesús Colón, and Lorraine Hansberry.[1][3]
The magazine had a circulation of 17,000 in 1948, but steadily lost subscribers through the McCarthy era.[1] Masses & Mainstream ceased publication in 1956. It then became an offshoot publication entitled Mainstream which lasted until 1963.[4]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Benoît Tadié (2012). "The Masses Speak". In Brooker, Peter; Thacker, Andrew (eds.). The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Vol. II: North America 1894-1960. Oxford University Press. pp. 851–854. ISBN 978-0-19-954581-0.
- ^ Rosenberg, Daniel (12 January 2018). "Sidney Finkelstein: an appreciation of the great Marxist cultural critic". Culture Matters.
- ^ "(Lorraine Hansberry) Masses & Mainstream Volume 3, Number 9 (1950) Magazine". WalterFilm. 16 June 2024.
- ^ Goodman, Marty (February 2020). "Introduction to the New Masses digital archive" (PDF). Marxists Internet Archive.
- Communist periodicals published in the United States
- Monthly magazines published in the United States
- Defunct political magazines published in the United States
- Defunct literary magazines published in the United States
- Magazines established in 1948
- Magazines disestablished in 1963
- Defunct Marxist magazines
- Defunct magazines published in New York City
- Literary magazines published in the United States stubs