A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature

The definitive biography of overlooked queer icon Margaret C. Anderson, whose fight to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses

led to her arrest and trial for obscenity. Perfect for fans of The Editor and The Book-Makers.

Already under fire for publishing the literary avant-garde into a world not ready for it, Margaret C. Anderson’s cutting-edge magazine The Little Review was a bastion of progressive politics and boundary-pushing writing from then-unknowns like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, and Djuna Barnes. And as its publisher, Anderson was a target. From Chicago to New York and Paris, this fearless agitator helmed a woman-led publication that pushed American culture forward and challenged the sensibilities of early twentieth century Americans dismayed by its salacious writing and advocacy for supposed extremism like women’s suffrage, access to birth control, and LBGTQ rights.

But then it went too far. In 1921, Anderson found herself on trial and labeled “a danger to the minds of young girls” by a government seeking to shut her down. Guilty of having serialized James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses in her magazine, Anderson was now not just a publisher but also a scapegoat for regressives seeking to impose their will on a world on the brink of modernization.

Author, journalist, and literary critic Adam Morgan brings Anderson and her journal to life anew in A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls, capturing a moment of cultural acceleration and backlash all too familiar today while shining light on an unsung heroine of American arts and letters. Bringing a fresh eye to a woman and a movement misunderstood in their time, this biography highlights a feminist counterculture that audaciously pushed for more during a time of extreme social conservatism and changed the face of American literature and culture forever.