Adam Morgan presents the extraordinary life of ‘Little Review’ editor Margaret C. Anderson.
On this episode of Fully Booked, Adam Morgan joins us to discuss A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight To Modernize Literature (One Signal/Atria, Dec. 9, 2025), which Kirkus calls “a lively biography of a bold woman.” Anderson was the daring founder and publisher of the Little Review, an influential Chicago-based journal that claimed fame—and infamy—as the first U.S. publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Culture journalist and critic Morgan is the founding editor of the Chicago Review of Books, the Southern Review of Books, and the Chicago Literary Archive. His writing has appeared in Esquire, WIRED, Scientific American, Inverse, The Paris Review, andthe Los Angeles Times, among others. He writes a newsletter about forthcoming books called The Frontlist and lives outside Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Here’s a bit more from our review of A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: “Born into a wealthy family in Indianapolis, Anderson escaped to Chicago as soon as she could, eager for a wider cultural world. She was befriended by Clara Laughlin, who gave her a job reviewing books for her magazine, the Interior. Soon, a chance meeting opened up another opportunity: as an assistant to the editor of the well-regarded literary journal, the Dial. In 1913, by then part of a flourishing arts community in Chicago, she decided to launch her own journal.…The journal got a significant boost when Ezra Pound offered to become its foreign editor. He was looking, he wrote to Anderson, for an ‘official organ’ where he, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and other avant-garde writers could appear.…Anderson was enthusiastic, but publishing the first chapters of Joyce’s Ulysses proved both brave and reckless, at the cost of losing subscribers and leading to her trial for obscenity.”
Morgan and I discuss Anderson’s life and work, her quotable nature, her queer sensibility, and her impact on the literary world. We talk about censorship, book bans, and his personal connection to literary Chicago.
Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, John McMurtrie, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.
EDITORS’ PICKS:
This Trauma Is Sponsored by Anna Lindwasser (West 44 Books)
How To Hatch: A Gosling’s Guide to Breaking Free by Sara Holly Ackerman, illus. by Galia Bernstein (Knopf)
The Snakes That Ate Florida: Reporting, Essays, and Criticism by Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:
One Ordinary Man: A Novel Based on the True Story of Harry Hopkins by Steve Vesce
The Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us To Have by Regina V. Cates
Sammy Goes to the Doctor by Brittany Feria, illus. by Wandson Rocha
The Angry Skies by Blake Kerr
On Earth As It Is in Heaven by Joseph Hawke
Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.
