Co-editor | Elsa Gidlow [1] |
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Co-editor | Roswell George Mills [1] |
Staff writers |
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Categories | Literary magazine |
Publisher |
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Founder |
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First issue | 1918 |
Final issue Number | 1920 5 |
Country | Canada |
Based in | Montreal |
Language |
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Les Mouches fantastiques ( lit. The Fantastic Flies) was a Canadian underground magazine published between 1918 and 1920. [2] [3] Based in Montreal, Quebec, it is the first known LGBT-themed publication in Canadian and North American history.
The magazine arose out of a local writing circle established by poet Elsa Gidlow, [4] with Gidlow and journalist Roswell George Mills as its primary contributors. The publication's working title, prior to the publication of its first issue, was Coal from Hades. [2] Its content included both poetry and non-fiction writing about gay and lesbian identity and politics, [2] as well as editorials opposing the war. [5]
The magazine was widely distributed far beyond Montreal, within both gay and lesbian social networks and the underground community of amateur journalists. [2] The magazine received correspondence from as far away as Havana, Cuba; an Episcopal priest from South Dakota left the priesthood and moved to Montreal to become Mills' partner after being exposed to the magazine; [6] and the magazine was heavily criticized in a 1918 essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. [2] [6] The essay appears in Miscellaneous Writings, a posthumous collection of Lovecraft's shorter writings, which was published in 1995.
Five issues of the magazine were published; [2] it was discontinued in 1920 when Mills and Gidlow moved from Montreal to New York City. [2] Few copies of the publication are known to still exist today. [2] One is in the archives of the University of South Florida, [2] the University of Iowa library has an original of all five issues, [7] and the Quebec Gay Archives has a reprint of the final issue. The New York Public Library catalog notes two issues (Vol. I, no. 5, May 1918; and Vol. II, no. 1, March 1920).