ABSTRACT
Sherwood Anderson’s theory of the writer as a crude craftsman, shunning commercial standards entirely, resonated with two magazines that were central to the New York Little Renaissance, The Masses and The Seven Arts, which cared little for avant-garde literature. The chapter makes the argument that, rather than celebrate Anderson’s innovative narrative style when writing Winesburg, Ohio (1938), the magazines sampled the stories he submitted and chose those with characters who best represented their socialist and cosmopolitan ideals. The stories rejected by The Masses and The Seven Arts illuminate aspects of the Winesburg characters’ spiritual isolation that Anderson believed important to gather together to fashion his overall representation of modern American life.
