The Egoist

What it is

This is the masthead and contents page of issue No. 14 of The Egoist: An Individualist Review, a London literary magazine, dated 15 July 1914. It was founded by Dora Marsden and later edited by Harriet Shaw Weaver, with Richard Aldington as assistant editor.

Why it matters

The magazine began as a feminist publication called The New Freewoman before being renamed The Egoist under the influence of Stirner's ideas of individualism. It went on to publish major modernist writers including James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, becoming one of the most important literary magazines of its era.

Its existence shows how Stirner's philosophy of radical individualism reached far beyond philosophy into early twentieth-century literature and culture.

Look closer

• Why might writers in 1914 have found the idea of the 'egoist' appealing as a name for a literary magazine?
• What does the list of editors and contributors tell you about who ran the magazine?
• Why might a magazine change its name and purpose over time?