Resources
Access materials related to the book and the fad in general by clicking through the following galleries.
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In the course of writing Ephemeral Bibelots, I had the assistance of a great team of undergraduate and graduate research assistances who helped compile the following Bibelot Index, which can be used to trace network affiliations. I make it available here with the sole request that it be acknowledged in any future work based on its findings.
The Bibelot Index covers approximately twenty magazines and tracks: 1) contributions by authors, artists and musicians; 2) citations of the same; 3) citations of other magazine titles; and 4) images corresponding to certain themes in the bibelots.
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Early on in the project, I thought that using network visualization tools would answer many of my questions about the ephemeral bibelots. As it turns out, learning more about the tools led me to think less of their potential. They are good for providing clues about what to consider next when contemplating an uncharted archive. They are less good for providing an explanation of that archive’s meaning. The biggest drawback is that the algorithm used to create the visualizations is so complex that you’ll never end up with the same picture twice, as I learned over the course of several months working through the 10,000 or so data points contained in the Bibelot Index (see previous entry).
Nonetheless, for what they are worth, I provide here some of the more striking visualizations I made tracking the most simple kind of direct, magazine to magazine citation (m to m). The images represent moments when a bibelot cited another bibelot by name on its pages. They provide snapshots of the way the bibelot network took shape and came undone. The visualizations were made using the Bibelot Index and the free visualization tool, Gephi.
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For a thorough historical survey of the social and print-cultural contexts for the American little magazines, as well as for the most complete bibliography of them to date, see Kirsten MacLeod, American Little Magazines of the Fin de Siècle (University of Toronto Press, 2018). MacLeod and I have shared our enthusiasm for the ephemeral bibelots for many years, and I am grateful for her book’s painstaking bibliographical and contextual work.
For other overviews of these publications, see:
Drucker, Johanna. “Bohemian by Design: Gelett Burgess and Le Petit Journal des Refusées.” Le Petit Journal des Refusées, by Frank Gelett Burgess, 29-40. Houston: Rice University Press, 2009.
——. “Le Petit Journal des Refusées: A Graphical Reading.” Victorian Poetry 48:1 (Spring 2010): 137-169.
Evans, Brad. “‘Ephemeral Bibelots’ in the 1890s.” In The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Volume 2: North America 1894-1960, edited by Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker, 132-153. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012.
——. “Review Essay: Johanna Drucker, ed., Le Petit Journal des Refusées.” Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 1:2 (2010): 229-241.
MacLeod, Kirsten. “The Fine Art of Cheap Print: Turn-of-the-Century American Little Magazines.” In Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880-1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms, edited by Ann Ardis and Patrick Collier, 182-198. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
——. American Little Magazines of the 1890s: A Revolution in Print. Sunderland, UK: Bibelot Press, 2013.
