W HEN Josiah Royce came out to the State University of Iowa from Harvard to deliver the annual Phi Beta Kappa address in 1902, he said some things about the “Higher Provincialism” that attracted wide attention; 2 but, as he clearly intended, he was planting some seeds of thought right there in Iowa City that he hoped might sprout and grow to some kind of practical fruition. What Royce wanted was a provincial spirit and culture to oppose the overweening power of our national industrialism. It is hard to pin down such an intangible activity as direct influence on social
1 Title: The Midland.
First issue: Jan. 1915. Last issue: March-April, May-June 1933. Merged with the Frontier as Frontier and Midland.
Periodicity: Monthly, 1915-17; bimonthly, 1918-19; monthly 1920-24 (combinations Jan.-Feb-March 1920, Sept.-Oct. 1921, Aug.-Sept. 1922, June-July- Aug. 1923, June-July-Aug. 1924) ; semimonthly, 1925 (combinations July, Aug.); monthly, 1926-27; bimonthly, 1928—March-April 1931; monthly, May- Oct, 1931; bimonthly, Nov.-Dee. 1931—Jan.-Feb. 1933; final combination number March-April, May-June 1933. Annual vols. 1-20, no. 2-3.
Publishers: John Towner Frederick (with Ival McPeak, 1916; Frank Luther Mott, 1926-30). Iowa City, Iowa, 1915-17 (Corning, Iowa, May-Aug. 1916), 1921-22, 1923-31; Moorhead, Minn., 1917-19; Glennie, Mich., 1919-21; Pittsburgh, Penna., 1922-23; Chicago, Ill., 1931-33.
Editors: J.T. Frederick, 1915-33, except Ival McPeak, May-Aug. 1916. Coeditors: F. L. Mott, 1925-30; Esther Paulus Frederick, 1930-33. Associate editors: Clarke Fisher Ansley, 1915-29; Raymond H. Durboraw, 1915-18; Roger L. Sergei, 1915-28; Ival McPeak, 1915-23; Edwin Ford Piper, 1915-30; Esther Paulus Frederick, 1915-30; Nelson Antrim Crawford, 1917-29; Hartley Burr Alexander, 1918-28; Mary Grove Chawner, 1918-28; Percival Hunt, 1918-20; Weare Holbrook, 1918-22; Roy A. Tower, 1921-28; Ruth Suckow, 1921-22; F. L. Mott, 1921-25, 1930-33; George Carver, 1923-28; Raymond Knister, 1923-24.
2 Royce’s Provincialism (Iowa City, 1910) was issued in pamphlet form by the university, and included in a collection of Royce’s papers entitled Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems (New York, 1908). Charles A. Allen calls attention to the Royce address and its influence in his unpublished dissertation, “The Advance Guard: A Chapter in the History of the American Little Magazine,” University of Iowa, 1942. Allen’s work contains the best study yet made of the Midland (chap, vi) ; it is repeated in a shorter version in Frederick J. Lioffman, Charles Allen, and Carolyn F. Ulrich, The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography (Princeton, N.J., 1946), pp. 140-47.
ideas; and probably all that Royce’s address really did was to help precipitate some elements in community thought into specific ideas for action over the years.
One of these was the idea of a midwestern magazine. Clarke Fisher Ansley, head of the English department at the university, doubtless heard Royce’s address; but it was not until a decade later that a group of young men gathered about him and determined to found a non-commercial monthly journal of belles-lettres. There was some echo of Royce in the words of the magazine’s first editorial,
Possibly the region between the mountains would gain in variety at least if it retained more of its makers of literature, music, pictures, and other expressions of civilization. And possibly civilization itself might be with us a somewhat swifter process if expression of its spirit were more frequent. 3
John Towner Frederick was the leader of the group of young men who met in Professor Ansley’s classroom, office, and home to discuss the need for a midwestern magazine; and when the first number of the Midland appeared, he was listed as its editor. Though he had associates from time to time who shared the burdens of editing and publishing, during the eighteen years of its existence, John Frederick was the Midland . His fellow founders of the magazine were Raymond H. Dur- boraw, who died in 1918; Roger L. Sergei, novelist, later a Chicago publisher; and Ival McPeak, teacher and writer, who was associate editor of the Midland for its first year, and for part of its second took over from Frederick the chief direction of the magazine.
Virtually members of the founding group also were Edwin Ford Piper, poet, and assistant professor of English at the university; and Esther Paulus, fellow student, who later made the bond between herself and the Midland permanent by marrying the editor. A few years later the staff of associate editors was strengthened by the addition of Nelson Antrim Crawford, poet, who was to serve for many years as editor of the Household Magazine, of Topeka, Kansas; and Hartley Burr Alexander, poet and essayist, and at that time professor of philosophy at the University of Nebraska.
Frederick himself was born on a farm in southwestern Iowa,
3 Midland, v. 1, Jan. 1915, p. 1.