Evergreen Review

Evergreen Review
Title	Evergreen Review
Editor	Donald Allen (founding editor)
Category	Literary magazine
Firstdate	1957
Finaldate	1984 (print), 1998 (revival), 2017 (online relaunch)
Country	United States
Language	English

Evergreen Review was an influential American literary magazine founded in 1957 by Barney Rosset and published by Grove Press, notable for promoting avant-garde literature, political dissent, and translated works. It operated during the Cold War, intersecting with movements such as the Beat Generation, New Journalism, and the international Paris Review-era literary scene while publishing authors connected to Civil Rights Movement, Second-wave feminism, and anti-colonial struggles. The magazine bridged transatlantic networks that included figures from France, Mexico, Cuba, Spain, and Japan, and engaged debates related to obscenity law such as cases involving Roth v. United States and precedents influenced by People v. One Book Called Ulysses.

History

Evergreen Review was launched by Barney Rosset at Grove Press in 1957 with editorial leadership from Donald Allen and staff linked to earlier small presses like New Directions Publishing and periodicals including The Paris Review and The Nation (U.S. magazine). The magazine emerged amid landmark legal and cultural events including the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial aftermath and the entrenchment of Supreme Court of the United States jurisprudence on obscenity. Throughout the 1960s it responded to international crises such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War by publishing dissident reportage and polemics by figures associated with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and European avant-garde circles like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. After a print decline in the 1970s, the title experienced intermittent revivals in the 1980s and 1990s connected to publishing ventures in New York City and later digital relaunches in the 2000s coinciding with shifts in the Internet and small-press cultures.

Editorial Profile and Contributors

The editorial profile combined literary modernism and political radicalism, bringing together contributors from the Beat Generation, Black Arts Movement, Women’s Liberation Movement, and international modernists from Latin America and Europe. Regular and occasional contributors included William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, Dylan Thomas, Rafael Barrett, Geoffrey Hill, Doris Lessing, Arundhati Roy, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, Simone de Beauvoir, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Noam Chomsky, Herbert Marcuse, Czesław Miłosz, Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Nabokov, Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, W. H. Auden, Ezra Pound, Jean Cocteau, Ryszard Kapuściński, John Berger, S. I. Hayakawa, Saul Bellow, Ira Cohen, Diane di Prima, Amiri Baraka, LeRoi Jones, Adrienne Rich, Allen Tate, Robert Creeley, Clarence Major, Michael McClure, Leroi Jones, and editors linked to City Lights Booksellers & Publishers and Black Sparrow Press. The magazine also carried translations by translators associated with Seán Ó Faoláin, Richard Howard, andEdith Grossman.

Content and Notable Publications

Evergreen Review serialized and premiered short fiction, essays, poetry, plays, translations, and reportage, publishing early English appearances or controversial pieces such as excerpts related to Naked Lunch controversies, translated works connected to One Hundred Years of Solitude, and political essays about Cuba and Algerian War of Independence. It featured poetry movements tied to Beat poetry and manifestos resonant with Situationist International critiques and essays on civil liberties referencing Roe v. Wade debates and antiwar protests linked to events like the Kent State shootings. Evergreen printed plays and dramatists associated with Off-Broadway and Royal Court Theatre, serialized experimental prose by writers from Mexico City salons and Parisian cafés, and published reportage by journalists linked to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper's Magazine.

Cultural Impact and Controversies

The magazine was central to cultural controversies involving censorship, obscenity litigation, and debates over literary standards, intersecting with litigants and advocates from American Civil Liberties Union challenges, legal scholars influenced by Justice Potter Stewart, and cultural critics from Village Voice and The New York Times Book Review. Controversial publications sparked responses from conservative politicians and moral reformers in Congress of the United States, and from intellectuals participating in debates at institutions such as Harvard University, Columbia University, and University of California, Berkeley. Evergreen's mix of erotic literature, radical politics, and translation provoked book bans in jurisdictions influenced by Comstock laws-era statutes and fueled public debates covered by Time (magazine), Life (magazine), and broadcast on CBS and NBC news programs.

Publication Format and Circulation

Published originally as a bimonthly digest-format magazine, Evergreen Review evolved through tabloid-size issues, special anthologies, and paperback compilations released by Grove Press and, later, other independent publishers like Random House imprints and small presses in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Circulation fluctuated with cultural cycles: peak readership coincided with the late 1950s–1960s countercultural surge tied to venues such as City Lights Booksellers & Publishers and events like Beat Generation readings; later runs targeted academic and leftist networks in Europe and Latin America. Special issues were distributed at festivals, bookstores, and universities and were indexed in library collections including those at Library of Congress and major research libraries.

Legacy and Influence on Literature and Politics

Evergreen Review left a legacy shaping postwar American literature, helping legitimize experimental prose and politically engaged writing and influencing later publications such as Rolling Stone (magazine), The New York Review of Books, Granta, The Paris Review, Bomb (magazine), The Believer, Fence (magazine), and various small presses in the United States and Europe. Its role in accelerating conversations about obscenity law, translation, and transnational modernism linked it to academic curricula at Columbia University, New York University, University of Oxford, and creative-writing programs informed by writers associated with Iowa Writers' Workshop. Evergreen's archives and anthologies continue to be cited in scholarship on the Beat Generation, Black Arts Movement, Latin American Boom, and 20th-century censorship battles.

Category:Literary magazines published in the United States