Chicago magazine contributors and demographics, by the numbers!
The following data summarize the more salient information from the eight dataset files in Section 1: Eight Datasets, which are referred to below as F1, F2, etc.:
Over time I’ll make more information available here, such as contributors and contributions in different genres, like poetry and letters, in each journal.
A brief note on contributions. A contribution below is any discrete item published in an issue of Poetry or The Little Review, regardless of its size, importance, or genre. Thus, a play, a short story, an installment of a serialized novel, a short lyric, a book review, and a letter to the editor all count equally as contributions. Most contributions are titled in the magazines, though some are not. Most contributions were also sent to the magazines by their authors, though some are reprinted items whose authors may have died long before the magazines were published.
| Poetry Magazine | Little Review |
| Number of unique contributors between 1912 and 1922: 688 (F1) | Number of unique contributors between 1914 and 1922: 540 (F2) |
| Number of unique signed contributions to the magazine during the same period: 3815* (3908-93; see F7 and “Poetry items with multiple authors”) | Number of unique signed contributions to the magazine during the same period: 1973* (2085-112; see F8 and “LR titles with multiple authors”) |
| Average number of items per issue: 31 (3815/123 issues) | Average number of items per issue: 22.9 (1973/73 issues) |
| Average number of items per contributor: 5.5 | Average number of items per contributor: 3.7 |
Ten contributors with the largest number of contributions (F7):
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Ten contributors with the largest number of contributions (F8):
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* I arrived at these figures by subtracting from the overall number of items in F7 and F8 (3908 and 2085, respectively) those contributions that were counted two and three times due to multiple authorship (93 for Poetry, 112 for Little Review).
| Poetry Magazine | Little Review |
| Number (and percentage) of contributors I could not identify at all by location (F1): 13 (1.9%) | Number (and percentage) of contributors I could not identify at all by location (F2): 51, or 9.4% |
| Number of contributors identified as having multiple residences: 64 (F1) | Number of contributors identified as having multiple residences: 27 (F2) |
| Number of countries identified that contributors came from, including the U.S.: 23 (F4) | Number of countries identified that contributors came from, including the U.S.: 18 (F5) |
| Number (and percentge) of contributors who resided in the U.S as their primary residence (F1): 515 (74.9%) | Number (and percentge) of contributors who resided in the U.S as their primary residence (F2): 316 (58.5%) |
| Number (and percentge) of contributions by U.S residents (F4): 3,177 (81.6% of 3891)* | Number (and percentge) of contributions by U.S residents (F5): 1258 (62.3% of 2018)* |
| Number of U.S. states that contributors came from: 39 + District of Columbia (F4) | Number of U.S. states that contributors came from: 25 + District of Columbia (F5) |
| Five states with the most contributors: NY (140), IL (117), MA (39), CA (33), PA (18) | Five states with the most contributors: IL (121), NY (94), PA (15), CA (14), MA (11) |
| Five states with the most contributions: IL (1482), NY (635), MA (201), CA (133), NJ (96) | Five states with the most contributions: IL (739), NY (242), MA (53), IA (34), PA (29) |
| Average number of contributions per contributor from five states with the most contributions: IL: 12.7 items/contributor, NJ (with 12 contributors): 8, MA: 5.2, NY: 4.5, CA: 4 | Average number of contributions per contributor from five states with the most contributions: IA: 8.5 items/contributor (with 4 contributors), IL: 6.1, MA: 4.8, NY: 2.6, PA: 1.9 |
* The figures for Poetry represent the 3891 contributions from all contributors (not adjusted for multiple submissions) – 17 items from the 13 contributors without residence info, and the figures for The Little Review represent the 2085 contributions from all contributors (also not adjusted for multiple submissions) – 67 items by 52 contributors without residence info.
| Poetry Magazine | Little Review |
| Number of contributors who resided in Chicago proper as their primary residence (F4): 97 | Number of contributors who resided in Chicago proper as their primary residence (F5): 113 |
| Percentage of all contributors who resided in Chicago proper: at least 14.1% (97/388) | Percentage of all contributors who resided in Chicago proper: at least 20.9% (113/540) |
| Number of contributions from Chicago (F1): 1353* | Number of contributions from Chicago (F2): 716* |
| Percentage of all contributions that came from Chicago (F1): 34.6% (1353/3908)* | Percentage of all contributions that came from Chicago (F2): 34.3% (716/2085)* |
| Average number of contributions per contributor from Chicago: 13.9 (1353/97) | Average number of contributions per contributor from Chicago: 6.3 (716/113) |
* Numbers have not been adjusted for multiple-author submissions.
Whereas contributors above from Chicago proper include only those individuals whose primary residence was located in Chicago during the time of their contributions to the magazine, “Chicagoans” is a wider category that includes these individuals as well as: 1. contributors who lived in cities from the greater Chicago area (like Evanston or Palos Park), 2. those who lived in Chicago but not as their primary residence during their involvement at the magazine, 3. those who are documented as having lived in Chicago but not during the time of their involvement with Poetry (like Floyd Dell, from New York), and 4. a handful of contributors who lived elsewhere but frequently visited Chicago and were counted as members of the Chicago literary scene (like Vachel Lindsay from Springfield, IL, or Arthur Davison Ficke from Davenport, IA).
| Poetry Magazine | Little Review |
| Number of contributors who can be considered “Chicagoans” (F4): 115 | Number of contributors who can be considered “Chicagoans”(F5): 125 |
| Percentage of all contributors who are “Chicagoans”: at least 16.7% (115/688) | Percentage of all contributors who are “Chicagoans”: at least 23.1% (125/540) |
| Number of contributions from “Chicagoans” (F1): 1475* | Number of contributions from “Chicagoans” (F2): 780* |
| Percentage of all contributions from “Chicagoans” (F1): 37.7% (1475/3908) * | Percentage of all contributions from “Chicagoans” (F1): 37.4% (780/2085) * |
| Average number of contributions per “Chicagoan”: 12.8 (1475/115) | Average number of contributions per “Chicagoan”: 6.2 (780/125) |
* Numbers have not been adjusted for multiple-author submissions.
Whereas the data above treats the two journals separately (albeit side-by-side), the following statistics, which emerge from dataset 3, combine information from Poetry and the Little Review. I’ve distinguished between two sets of contributors and their contributions: the larger set of individuals who contributed to either journal, and the smaller set of overlapping individuals who contributed to both Poetry and The Little Review. I also look at the subsets of these two groups that consist of residents of Chicago and more broadly “Chicagoans.”
Overall numbers for Poetry and The Little Review together
Overlapping contributors to both journals
Contributions by these overlapping contributors
Chicago residents who contributed—
| —to both journals | —to either journal |
| Number of Chicago residents who contributed to both journals: 23 | Number of Chicago residents who contributed to either journal: 187 |
| Percentage of all overlapping contributors who resided in Chicago: 22.3% (23/103) | Percentage of all contributors to both journals who resided in Chicago: 16.6% (187/1125) |
Number of contributions to Poetry and Little Review by the 23 Chicago residents who contributed to both journals: 1262
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Number of contributions to Poetry and Little Review by all 187 Chicago residents: 2069
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| Percentage of all contributions to both journals by these overlapping Chicago residents: 21.1% (1262/5993) | Percentage of all contributions to both journals by Chicago residents: 34.5% (2069/5993) |
Average number of contributions to both journals by each of these overlapping Chicago residents: 54.9 (1262/23)
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Average number of contributions to both journals by every Chicago resident: 11.1 (2069/187)
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“Chicagoans” who contributed—
| —to both journals | —to either journal |
| Number of “Chicagoans” who contributed to both journals: 28 | Number of “Chicagoans” who contributed to either journal: 212 |
| Percentage of “Chicagoans” among all overlapping contributors to both journals: 27.2% (28/103) | Percentage of “Chicagoans” among all contributors to both journals: 18.8% (212/1125) |
Number of contributions to Poetry and Little Review by the 28 “Chicagoans” who contributed to both journals: 1372
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Number of contributions by all 212 “Chicagoans” to both journals: 2255
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| Percentage of all contributions to both journals by these overlapping “Chicagoans”: 22.9% (1372/5993) | Percentage of all contributions to both journals by “Chicagoans”: 37.6% (2255/5993) |
Average number of contributions to both journals by each of these overlapping “Chicagoans”: 49 (1372/28)
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Average number of contributions to both journals by every “Chicagoan”: 10.6 (2255/212)
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* All of the contribution numbers in this section have not been adjusted to consider multiple-authored items.