A volume of pioneering Marxist(sh) literary criticism from the editor of Modern Quarterly, V.F. Calverton. Modern Quarterly began in 1923 by V. F. Calverton. Calverton, born George Goetz (1900–1940), was a radical writer, literary critic and publisher.

The Newer Spirit: A Sociological Criticism of Literature by By V. F. Calverton. Boni and Liveright, New York. 1925.

Contents: Author’s Preface, introduction by Ernest Boyd, Sociological Criticism of Literature, Sherwood Anderson A Study in Sociological Criticism, The Impermanency of Esthetic Values, Proletarian Art, Fragments from a Critique of American Criticism, The Wisdom of Three Critics: Woodberry Spingarn Sherman, The Vaudeville Critic H.L. Mencken, Morals and Determinism, The Great Man Illusion, The Rise of Objective Psychology, Art Science and the Quantitative Conception, Reflections on the Trend of Modern Psychology as Exemplified by Four Psychologists. 284 pages.

Based in Baltimore, Modern Quarterly was an unaligned socialist discussion magazine, and dominated by its editor. Calverton’s interest in and support for Black liberation opened the pages of MQ to a host of the most important Black writers and debates of the 1920s and 30s, enough to make it an important historic US left journal. In addition, MQ covered sexual topics rarely openly discussed as well as the arts and literature, and had considerable attention from left intellectuals in the 1920s and early 1930s. From 1933 until Calverton’s early death from alcoholism in 1940 Modern Quarterly continued as The Modern Monthly. Increasingly involved in bitter polemics with the Communist Party-aligned writers, Modern Monthly became more overtly ‘Anti-Stalinist’ in the mid-1930s Calverton, very much an iconoclast and often accused of dilettantism, also opposed entry into World War Two which put him and his journal at odds with much of left and progressive thinking of the later 1930s, further leading to the journal’s isolation.

PDF of book: https://archive.org/download/newerspirit0000vfca/newerspirit0000vfca.pdf