Jane Heap (1883 - 1964) was an American publisher and a significant figure in the development and promotion of literary modernism. Together with Margaret Anderson, her friend and business partner (who for some years was also her lover), she edited the celebrated literary magazine The Little Review, which published an extraordinary collection of modern American, English and Irish writers between 1914 and 1929. Heap herself has been called “one of the most neglected contributors to the transmission of modernism between America and Europe during the early twentieth century.” ^[1] 1883 (MDCCCLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... Modernism is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to make, improve, deconstruct and reshape their built and designed environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. ... Margaret Caroline Anderson (November 24, 1886 - October 18, 1973) was founder and editor of the celebrated literary magazine The Little Review, which published an extraordinary collection of modern American and English writers between 1914 and 1929. ... The Little Review was a American literary magazine founded by Margaret Caroline Anderson which published modernist American and English writers between 1914 and 1929, most famously James Joyces Ulysses. ...

Cover of the 1999 edition of Jane Heap's letters to Florence Reynolds

Life

Heap was born in Topeka, Kansas, where her father was the warden of the local mental asylum. After completing her high school education, she moved to Chicago, where she enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago, and continued to take night school classes there even after she became an art teacher at the Lewis Institute. Coordinates: Country United States State Kansas County Shawnee Founded December 5, 1854 Incorporated February 14, 1857  - Mayor Bill Bunten (R) Area    - City 147. ... Nickname: The Windy City, The Second City, Chi Town, City of the Big Shoulders, The 312, The City that Works Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location in Chicagoland and Illinois Coordinates: Country United States State Illinois County Cook & DuPage Incorporated March 4, 1837  - Mayor... The Art Institute of Chicago is one of the premier fine art institutions in the United States. ... State Street Village, S.R. Crown Hall, Armour Main Building Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private Ph. ...

It was while working at the Lewis Institute, in 1908, that she first met Florence Reynolds, a student and the daughter of a prosperous Chicago businessman. Reynolds and Heap became lovers, in 1910 travelling together to Germany, where Heap studied tapestry weaving. The two women remained friends throughout their lives, although they often lived apart, and despite the fact that Heap formed romantic attachments with many other women.

In 1912, Heap helped found Maurice Browne’s Chicago Little Theatre, an influential avant-garde theatre group presenting the works of Chekhov, Strindberg and Ibsen and other contemporary works. In 1916, she met Margaret Anderson, and soon joined her as co-editor of the ‘’Little Review’’. Although her work in the published magazine was relatively low profile (she signed her pieces simply “jh”), she was a bold and creative force behind the scenes. ^[2] 1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ...

In 1917 Anderson and Heap moved The Little Review to New York, and with the help of critic Ezra Pound, who acted as their foreign editor in London, The Little Review published some of the most influential new writers in the English language, including Hart Crane, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Pound himself, and William Butler Yeats. Other notable contributors included Sherwood Anderson, Andre Breton, Jean Cocteau, Malcolm Cowley, Marcel Duchamp, Ford Madox Ford, Emma Goldman, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Francis Picabia, Carl Sandburg, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Arthur Waley, and William Carlos Williams. Even so, however, they once issued 64 blank pages between covers to protest the temporary lack of exciting new works. Ezra Pound in 1913. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 in Garrettsville, Ohio, United States – April 27, 1932 at sea) was a U.S. poet. ... Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was a poet, dramatist and literary critic, whose works, such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, and Four Quartets, are considered major achievements of twentieth century Modernist poetry. ... Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. ... James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (Irish Séamus Seoighe; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish writer and poet, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. ... W.B. Yeats in Dublin on 24 January 1908. ... Sherwood Anderson in 1933. ... Andr Breton (February 18, 1896 - September 28, 1966) was a French writer, poet, and Surrealist theoretician. ... Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (July 5, 1889 – October 11, 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker. ... Malcolm Cowley, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1963 Malcolm Cowley (1898 – March 27, 1989) was an American novelist, poet, critic, and journalist. ... Marcel Duchamp. ... Ford Madox Ford (December 17, 1873 - June 26, 1939) was an English novelist and publisher. ... Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Emma Goldman Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) aka Red Emma, was a Kaunas, Lithuania-born anarchist known for her writings and speeches. ... Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (November 10, 1879 - December 5, 1931), an American poet born in Springfield, Illinois, became known as the Prairie Troubador. ... Amy Lowell Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. ... Francis-Marie Martinez Picabia (January 28, 1879 - November 30, 1953) was a well-known painter and poet born of a French mother and a Spanish father who was an attaché at the Cuban legation in Paris, France. ... Carl Sandburg in 1955 Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, historian, novelist, balladeer and folklorist. ... Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American writer and catalyst in the development of modern art and literature, who spent most of her life in France. ... Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955 in poetry) was a major American Modernist poet. ... Arthur David Waley (August 19, 1889 – June 27, 1966) was a noted English Orientalist and Sinologist. ... William Carlos Williams Dr. William Carlos Williams (sometimes known as WCW) (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. ...

In March 1918, Ezra Pound sent them the opening chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses, which ‘’the Little Review’’ serialized until 1920, when the U.S. Post Office seized and burned four issues of the magazine and convicted Anderson and Heap on obscenity charges. At their 1921 trial, they were fined $100 and forced to discontinue the serialization. Following the trial, Heap became the main editor of the magazine, taking over from Anderson, and introducing brightly coloured covers and experimental poetry from surrealists and Dadaists. ^[3] Year 1918 (MCMXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. ... Ulysses is a 1922 novel by James Joyce, first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from 1918 to 1920, and published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris. ... The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an independent establishment of the executive branch of the United States Government (see 39 U.S.C. Â§ 201) responsible for providing postal service in the United States. ...

Heap met G. I. Gurdjieff during his 1924 visit to New York, and was so impressed with his philosophy that she set up a Gurdjieff study group at her apartment in Greenwich Village. In 1925, she moved to Paris, to study at Gurdjieff’s Institute, where Margaret Anderson had moved the previous year alongside her new lover, soprano Georgette Leblanc. Although they now lived separately, Heap and Anderson continued to work together as co-editors of the ‘’Little Review’’ until deciding to close the magazine in 1929. Heap also at this time adopted Anderson’s two nephews, after Anderson’s sister had had a nervous breakdown, and Anderson herself had shown no interest in becoming a foster mother. Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Георгий Иванович Гюрджиев, Georgiy Ivanovich Gyurdzhiev (or Gurdjiev); January 13, 1872? – October 29, 1949), was a Greek-Armenian mystic and spiritual teacher who initially gained public recognition as a teacher of dancing. ... The Washington Square Arch Greenwich Village (pronounced Grennich Village; also called simply the Village) is a largely residential area on the west side of downtown (southern) Manhattan in New York City. ...

Heap established a Paris Gurdjieff study group in 1927, which continued to grow in popularity through the early 1930s, when Kathryn Hulme (author of The Nun's Story) and journalist Solita Solano (Sarah Wilkinson) joined the group. This developed into an all-women Gurdjieff study group known as “the Rope”, taught jointly by Heap and by Gurdjieff himself. Kathryn Hulme (January 6, 1900 - 1981). ... The Nuns Story is a 1959 film which tells the story of a nun whose faith is tested in the jungles of Africa and when ordered not to take sides during World War II. It stars Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Dame Edith Evans, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger, Mildred...

In 1935, Gurdjieff sent Heap to London in 1935 to set up a new study group. She would remain in London for the rest of her life, including throughout the Blitz. Her study group became very popular with certain sections of the London avant-garde, and after the war its students included the future theatre producer and director, Peter Brook. Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH CBE (born 21 March 1925) is a highly influential British theatrical producer and director. ...

Work

Apart from her ‘’Little Review’’ work, Heap never in her lifetime published an account of her ideas, although both Hulme and Anderson published collections of memoirs, and particularly their memories of working with Gurdjieff. After Heap's death from diabetes in 1964, former students put together a collection of her aphorisms (both her own and Gurdjieff's) and, in 1983, some notes reflecting her expression of some of the key Gurdjieff ideas. Some of her aphorisms are given below:

• Never oppose someone with the same center, always offer another one.
• Do not sit too long in the same place.
• You are responsible for what you have understood.
• Little steps for little feet.
• Suppress natural reaction and pay for it later.
• We never refuse in the Work.
• Animals are nature's experiments and embody all the emotions.
• A cat is all essence. Essence remembers.
• All that falls from the wagon is lost.

^[4]

References

1. ^ Baggett, Holly. Dear Tiny Heart : The Letters of Jane Heap & Florence Reynolds. New York, NY, USA: New York University Press, 1999. p 2.
2. ^ Jane Heap was "a spellbinding talker…expressing ideas effortlessly and creatively as she went along.” Hugh Ford, ‘’Four Lives in Paris’’ (North Point Press, San Francisco, 1987)
3. ^ Baggett, Holly, ibid. p. 4
4. ^ http://www.gurdjieff.org/baker1.htm

Bibliography

• 1999 Dear Tiny Heart: The Letters of Jane Heap and Florence Reynolds, edited by Holly A. Baggett, New York University Press

External links

• Potted biography of Jane Heap by Rob Baker for the Gurdjieff International Review
• Gurdjieff Institute's webpage on "the Rope".