The Criterion: A Quarterly Review

Overview

According to Herbert Howarth, “T. S. Eliot launched The Criterion as a quarterly in 1922, almost lost it for want of funds in the fall of 1925, resumed it as a quarterly over the Faber [Eliot’s employer] imprint in 1926, made it a monthly periodical in 1927, cut it back to a quarterly appearance in June 1928, and then issued it steadily until New Year 1939” (Howarth 97). Before it was acquired by Faber, The Criterion was financed by Mary Lilian Share, wife of London newspaper magnate Harold Harmsworth, Viscount Rothermere. After the first issue of The Criterion was published in October 1922, however, Lady Rothermere wrote at least three letters to Eliot expressing her astonishment with the magazine and recommending a more accessible aesthetic for future issues, much to Eliot’s chagrin. In a letter to Ezra Pound dated 3 November 1922, Eliot wrote, “I wish you could see her [Lady Rothermere] before she leaves Paris and tell her bluntly that the Criterion is a SUCCESS [sic]. I have had nothing but good notices. Nearly all the copies are sold (600 printed). But this woman will shipwreck it” (“‘Anything’”). As indicated above, Faber took over the financing of the magazine from 1926 to its discontinuance in 1939.

T.S. Eliot wanted to expose the world to the highbrow, avant-garde writing style typical of modernism with the Criterion. Banerjee notes this desire when he states, “He also believed that it was through the journalistic channel that he could promote the kind of revolutionary poetry that he and friends like Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Wyndham Lewis were writing” (234). Woolf’s “In the Orchard” is a perfect example of the patterns and experimentation of Modernism, in which Woolf retells what seems to be the same scene (Miranda in the orchard) three times in the short story with an abrupt, including a seemingly incomplete ending when Miranda realizes, “(Oh, I shall be late for tea!)[...]and the apples hung straight across the wall again” (245), typical of other Modernist short stories like Joyce’s Dubliners collection or pieces like Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss” or “An Indiscreet Journey.” Thus, this story captures the spirit of these early issues of the Criterion, in which Eliot was attempting to introduce the world to high-brow literature from both old and new writers, as Banerjee emphasizes when he notes “[Eliot] sought well-established authors like Saintsbury [the author of “Dulness”] with “promising writers” of his own generation, and he “particularly sought contributions” from Virginia Woolf (235). Thus, “In the Orchard” represents a great deal of the material found in early issues of the Criterion, and it shows Eliot’s success in promoting the Modernist style in literature through the publication of the Criterion.