Arthur Moss

This article is about the poet. For the English footballer, see Arthur Moss (footballer). For the American cardiologist, see Arthur J. Moss.

Arthur Harold Moss (November, 1889 in Greenwich Village – February 20, 1969 in Neuilly-sur-Marne) was an American expatriate poet and magazine editor.

Life

His parents were German-Jewish and Turkish immigrants. After serving in World War I, he attended Cornell University for three years, but dropped out.

The Quill

In 1917, he returned to Greenwich Village, founding The Quill with partner Harold Hersey and was managing editor and wrote articles. It included artists Clara Tice, Wood Gaylor, Mark Toby and Alfred J Frueh; writers included Ben De Casseres.

He married Millia Davenport (1895–1992) and worked with her at The Quill. They co-authored, The Quill: For And By Greenwich Village, vol.4, no.8, 1919. They separated shortly thereafter. She went on to design costumes, and in 1948 wrote The Book of Costume. In 1920, he hired his future wife Florence Gilliam to edit Quill. In 1921 they moved to Paris, into a small apartment near Shakespeare & Company, the bookstore owned by Sylvia Beach.

Gargoyle

In August 1921, they began publishing Gargoyle, an intense literary magazine. Gargoyle published reproductions of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Amedeo Modigliani, Paul Cézanne. Writers contributing to the publication included Ezra Pound, Robert Coates, Malcolm Cowley, Hart Crane, Stephen Vincent Benet, Hilda Doolittle and Sinclair Lewis. Without outside backing and lacking a subscriber base, in October 1922, Gargoyle ceased publication. For the next few years Arthur would write a column for The New York Times and the Paris Herald.

Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway and his wife moved to Paris in December 1921. He loved books and frequented Shakespeare & Co. where he met Moss, who convinced Hemingway to submit articles to Gargoyle. These early writings drew the attention of Robert McAlmon, who published Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1925. The original writings are now in the JFK Library.

Boulevardier

In 1927 Arthur began publishing Boulevardier with Erskine Gwynne. Patterned after The New Yorker, one of the regular illustrators was Raymond Peynet. Contributors included Michael Arlen, Noël Coward, Louis Bromfield, Sinclair Lewis and Ernest Hemingway.

Moss and Gilliam divorced in 1931. By 1932 he married Evalyn Marvel. He was survived by his widow Doreen Vidal.

Works

• Hiler Harzberg, Arthur Moss (1924). Slapstick and Dumbbell: A Casual Survey of Clowns and Clowning. New York: Lawren Publishers.
• The Legend of the Latin Quarter: Henry Murger and the Birth of Bohemia. Beechhurst Press. 1947. ISBN 978-1-4191-3909-3.
• Second Childhood in Villefranche. Villefranche: Editions de la Rade. 1952.
• Cancan and Barcarolle: The Life and Times of Jacques Offenbach. Exposition Press. 1954. Facsimile Edition. Greenwood Press. March 1976. ISBN 978-0-8371-8045-8.
• Tale of Twelve Cities and Other Poems. Paris: Two Cities Editions. 1963.
• One More River and Other Poems. A.H.Stockwell. 1967.

Non-fiction

• "The Turkish Myth", The Nation, Arthur Moss & Florence Gilliam, June 23, 1923

Editor

• Arthur H. Moss, ed. (1918). Greenwich Village anthology of verse: being a compilation of poetry from the pages of the first year's issues of The Quill, a magazine of Greenwich Village. Moss.

External links

• "Author Moss", The Lost Generation
• Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2009. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009