Transition (literary magazine)
experimental literary journal
transition was an experimental literary magazine that featured surrealist, expressionist, and Dada art and artists. It was founded in 1927 by Maria McDonald and her husband Eugene Jolas and published in Paris, France. They were later assisted by editors Elliot Paul (April 1927 – March 1928), Robert Sage (October 1927 – Fall 1928), and James Johnson Sweeney (June 1936 – May 1938). After the Second World War, the publishing license of transition was transferred from the Jolases and McDonald to Georges Duthuit who capitalized the title to Transition (1948–1950) and changed its focus.
Origins
The magazine was intended as an outlet for experimental writing and featured modernist, surrealist and other linguistically innovative writing and also contributions by visual artists, critics, and political activists. It ran until spring 1938. A total of 27 issues were produced. It was distributed primarily through Shakespeare and Company, the Paris bookstore run by Sylvia Beach.
While the magazine originally almost exclusively featured poetic experimentalists, it later accepted contributions from sculptors, civil rights activists, carvers, critics, and cartoonists. Editors who joined the magazine later on were Stuart Gilbert, Caresse Crosby and Harry Crosby.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Transition (literary magazine)” is experimental literary journal. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Transition, literary and magazine, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “experimental literary journal” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1946633. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 1928, 1936 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Transition (literary magazine)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.