Le Petit Journal des Refusées

Le Petit Journal des Refusées was an independent literary magazine published in San Francisco on July 1, 1896. Conceived by the humorist Gelett Burgess under the pseudonym James Marrion 2nd, it presented itself as a venue for writings by women authors whose work had supposedly been rejected by at least three other publications. The premise was comic rather than documentary: the magazine used the language of editorial sympathy and literary rescue to parody the conventions of late nineteenth-century literary publishing. The publication was intended to appear quarterly, but only one issue was produced. Its brief life placed it among the many small, experimental American magazines that emerged during the 1890s. It drew connections with San Francisco’s lively print culture and with the broader little-magazine movement, while also sending up the ornate visual language of Decadent-era and high-art periodicals. Burgess had already been involved with other San Francisco publications, including The Lark, and the new magazine reached readers associated with The Lark, The Wave, and The Wasp. Its physical design was central to its identity. Copies were printed on irregular, trapezoidal pieces of recycled wallpaper, with variations in page color that could include black, white, gold, and green. The pages were apparently cut after printing and binding, and the completed object opened in a butterfly-like form. Each copy contained 16 pages. The publication combined letterpress typography, hand-drawn lettering, dense ornamental borders, and illustrations made by hand. Its typographic treatment drew on a Clarendon-related nineteenth-century style, while its crowded pages deliberately mixed visual references from popular print, literary art, advertising, catalogues, journals, and other forms of mass communication. The magazine’s humor operated through both text and design. Its editorial voice claimed to publish the suppressed work of disappointed female writers, while its images repeatedly undermined conventional ideas of editorial authority and literary seriousness. A page titled “Portrait du rédacteur en chef” concealed rather than identified the editor, showing a silhouetted youth surrounded by rejection letters and exaggerated tears. Other pages included playful animal figures, unconventional borders, and visual jokes that turned the magazine into an object as much as a container for writing. The issue also incorporated references to artists, publications, and popular imagery. It alluded to William Blake through “The Ghost of a Flea,” invoked the Parisian cabaret and journal Le Chat Noir, and reused the Goop figures associated with Burgess’s earlier work. Aubrey Beardsley was named among the magazine’s admired contemporaries, and elements of the cover recalled Beardsley’s graphic style, Japanese prints, Old West imagery, skeleton humor, and contemporary bicycle posters. Later critics have treated Le Petit Journal des Refusées as more significant than its circulation or publication history might suggest. Johanna Drucker described it as occupying a space between middle-brow print culture and modernist experimentation, because it remained embedded in familiar bourgeois publishing references while manipulating them self-consciously. Brad Evans emphasized its carefree but critically alert use of parody and interpreted its proto-Cubist and proto-Dadaist visual language as an early contribution to the development of experimental little magazines. Burgess himself was less enthusiastic in retrospect, describing the magazine in a 1904 letter as part of the period’s excess of foolish short-lived magazines. Despite that dismissal, the surviving issue is studied for its unusual object design, its satire of literary gatekeeping, and its role in the history of American avant-garde print culture.

Le Petit Journal des Refusées emerged from the flourishing American little-magazine culture of the 1890s. More than two hundred short-lived periodicals appeared in the United States during that decade, reflecting the expansion of print, the growth of literary and artistic networks, and an appetite for publications that could operate outside established commercial and editorial institutions. The magazine was based in San Francisco, a city with an active local publishing scene and a distinctive relationship to popular illustration, humor, literary experimentation, and regional print production. The magazine was created by humorist Gelett Burgess, who used the pseudonym James Marrion 2nd. Burgess had connections to several San Francisco publications, including The Lark, The Wave, and The Wasp. The Lark announced the proposed publication in an October 1895 issue, inviting writers to submit work in a deliberately comic appeal that framed the United States as having vast numbers of aspiring authors but very limited periodical space. This announcement established the magazine’s central joke: it would offer a final opportunity to writings supposedly rejected by more conventional editors. Published on July 1, 1896, Le Petit Journal des Refusées was intended to be quarterly but did not continue beyond its first issue. Its short run was not simply a consequence of limited duration; ephemerality was compatible with the little-magazine tradition, in which experimentation, satire, and material invention could matter more than sustained circulation. The publication’s title, French phrasing, and theatrical editorial persona allowed it to imitate the prestige and cosmopolitan tone of literary journals while exposing that tone as a form of performance. The issue’s material construction was unusually distinctive. It was printed on trapezoidal pieces of old wallpaper, producing copies with different combinations of page colors, including black and white as well as gold and green. The pages were cut after printing and binding, and the resulting object opened in a form compared with a butterfly. Its 16 pages used a combination of typeset and hand-drawn lettering, letterpress text, dense decorative borders, and entirely hand-drawn illustrations. The irregular format made the publication visibly different from standard books and periodicals and turned the magazine’s physical presence into part of its argument: it literally stood apart from ordinary publications on a shelf. The visual language combined references from elite and popular culture. The magazine parodied the elaborate graphics associated with European Decadent literary journals, particularly through bold black-and-white designs and crowded ornamental framing. At the same time, it drew on American college yearbooks, lifestyle magazines, commercial catalogues, news journals, literary-art publications, and other forms of accessible print culture. The result was not a polished imitation of high art but an intentionally unstable mixture of styles, jokes, and borrowed conventions. Text and image worked together throughout the issue. The editorial claimed that women writers had been denied publication elsewhere, but the claim was presented through exaggeration and comic disguise. The supposed editor’s portrait conceals Burgess behind a silhouette surrounded by rejection letters and theatrical tears. Other pages use visual absurdity to make the magazine’s subject matter inseparable from its design. A border around “The Naughty Archer” contains a drawing later characterized as cubist; “Abstrosophy” is surrounded by animals with textile-like patterned bodies; and “The Ghost of a Flea” is accompanied by imagery referring to William Blake and Le Chat Noir. The issue also recycles Burgess’s Goop characters and invokes the work of Aubrey Beardsley, Japanese print imagery, Old West illustration, skeleton jokes, and bicycle-poster design. The magazine’s later reputation rests primarily on its formal and cultural significance rather than its commercial scale. Johanna Drucker interpreted it as both modern in its visual experimentation and middle-brow in its continued participation in familiar bourgeois print culture. Brad Evans placed greater emphasis on its critical use of parody, arguing that its proto-Cubist and proto-Dadaist imagery helped open a path for later little magazines. In this reading, the magazine did not merely make jokes about rejected writing; it transformed rejection and marginality into a visual and editorial convention. Burgess himself later minimized the achievement. In a 1904 letter to Thomas Newell Metcalf, he expressed embarrassment about the publication and grouped it with the many foolish magazinelets of the period. Nevertheless, the surviving issue has continued to attract scholars and collectors because it demonstrates how a tiny publication could manipulate typography, illustration, parody, and material form. Its legacy lies in the combination of literary satire and graphic invention, and in its position as an early, self-conscious experiment within the history of American modernist and avant-garde periodical design.

1. 1904Burgess retrospectively dismisses the magazine

   In a letter to Thomas Newell Metcalf, Burgess expressed embarrassment about the publication and described it as part of the era’s proliferation of foolish short-lived magazines.

   Source
2. 1896Only issue published

   Le Petit Journal des Refusées was published in San Francisco on July 1, 1896. It was intended to be quarterly but ceased after one issue.

   Source
3. 1895Publication announced in The Lark

   The Lark announced the planned magazine and invited submissions from writers, introducing its humorous premise as a venue for work rejected by other periodicals.

   Source

A playful, deliberately amateurish and visually unconventional literary magazine that parodied rejected-author publishing, Decadent-era periodicals, and the authority of literary editors.

• Le Petit Journal des Refusées, 1896 issueLiterary magazine1896

  The magazine’s sole issue contained 16 pages of literary jokes, poems, editorial parody, hand-drawn illustrations, and elaborate decorative borders. It was printed on irregular trapezoidal pieces of old wallpaper, with copy-to-copy variation in page color and a butterfly-like opening shape. Its visual program combined letterpress typography with hand-drawn lettering and imagery influenced by Decadent journals, popular print, Japanese prints, commercial illustration, and San Francisco periodicals.

• 1896Launch of an intentionally irregular literary magazineProduct launch

  Burgess created the magazine within the 1890s little-magazine movement and positioned it as a comic refuge for writings allegedly rejected by other editors.

  What changed. The publication used an irregular wallpaper format, dense hand-drawn decoration, mixed typography, and an editorial persona that concealed the creator’s identity.

  Aftermath. Although it was planned as a quarterly, only one issue appeared. Its design later became a subject of scholarship on early modernist and avant-garde periodical culture.

  Source

• 1896Le Petit Journal des Refusées publishes its only issue

  The San Francisco literary magazine was published on July 1, 1896. Although planned as a quarterly, it produced only one issue.

  Product launchOther
  Source

1. Le Petit Journal des Refusées