Guide to the Primavera Records 1975-2006


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Table of Contents

• Descriptive Summary
• Information on Use
• Access
• Citation
• Historical Note
• Scope Note
• Related Resources
• Subject Headings
• INVENTORY
• Series I: Administrative
• Series II: Content and Design
• Series III: Magazines
• Series IV: The Other Side of the Hill
• Series V, Photographs
• Series VI: Oversized
• Series VII: Restricted

Descriptive Summary

Information on Use

Access

Series VII contains recommendation letters for members of Primavera staff, which are restricted for 50 years from date of creation, and subscriber addresses, which are restricted for 30 years. The rest of the collection is open.

Citation

When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Primavera. Records, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Historical Note

Primavera was a feminist literary magazine founded at the University of Chicago in 1975. It was conceived of by Janet Ruth Heller, Celia Josephson, and Deborah Gordon Fisher, and was proposed at the first meeting of the University of Chicago Feminist Organization. The intention was to give women an outlet for their creative work and also to counterbalance another campus publication, Wild Onions, which at the time published work mainly by men. The magazine had several unique attributes from its inception, particularly the invitation extended to all contributing authors and artists to sit on its editorial board, and the commitment to providing feedback for manuscripts that were not selected for publication. These practices could not be sustained for the life of the magazine, however, and by Issue 8 it was operating with a 6-person editorial board. In the mid-1980s the policy of returning all manuscripts with feedback was modified and authors given the option to request comments on their work.

Initially a student organization, the magazine received funding from the University, though that had to be supplemented by grants and loans to cover printing costs. In the 1980s Primavera began to have difficulty in continuing to secure University funding due to their women-only acceptance policy, though it remained affiliated with the University of Chicago until 1990. When the magazine went its own way, a nonprofit corporation was established (Moveable Type, Inc.), under whose auspices operations continued. It was around this time that Primavera began accepting submissions from men, though the focus remained on the lives and experiences of women.

Primavera came into being among many similar publications, among them Black Maria, Calyx, and Sing, Heavenly Muse! While these were all in some sense women's literary journals, they varied in focus. Primavera is notable for its lack of political content; very few essays were published, and the editorial focus was on the artistic merit of the pieces selected. The magazine was more concerned with reflecting the experiences of women than with encouraging activism or overt political messaging. The women reflected in its pages were often older than the demographic reflected by many feminist magazines, were more likely to come from the Midwest (or other areas besides the Northeast and West Coast, which were well represented in the mainstream feminist movement and its associated publications), and there was less of an emphasis on lesbian issues or experiences in Primavera than in some journals.

Issues for the feminist movement at large were also issues for Primavera. That Primavera was a Midwestern magazine placed it somewhat outside the (largely coastal) mainstream of the feminist movement. There was some initial difficulty in getting the magazine reviewed in Ms., which the editors may have felt had to do with the differing values, experiences, and needs of women in large coastal cities and women in the Midwest and south.

The magazine was the recipient of multiple Illinois Arts Council grants and literary awards, awards from Chicago Women in Publishing, and a Puffin Foundation grant used to translate poems by women from around the world. Notable authors who appeared in its pages include Louise Erdrich, 1997 Pulitzer Prize winner Lisel Mueller, Pamela Gemin, Michael Lee West, Diane Seuss, Lori Ostlund, and Chitra Divakaruni.

Members of Primavera's editorial board undertook other publishing-related work as well. In 1986 designer Lisa Grayson and editor Ruth Young worked on a side project preparing and publishing a booklet of early poems by Margaret Pearce Rummel, entitled The Other Side of the Hill. Grayson also work as a designer for other periodicals.

Scope Note

The Primavera Records are organized into eight series: Series I: Administrative; Series II: Content and Design; Series III: Magazines; Series IV: The Other Side of the Hill; Series V: Photographs; Series VI: Oversize; and Series VII: Restricted. The collection contains records, correspondence, submissions, marketing materials, proofs, layouts, and published volumes of the literary magazine. Materials date from 1975 to 2006. The records document some of the financial and legal matters surrounding the running of a non-profit literary magazine, sources of grant funding, and include several folders of reviews and press mentions. There is a considerable amount of advertising and promotional material, including Primavera ad copy in various stages of creation and pieces of copy from outside advertisers. Much of the collection comprises accepted manuscripts (often accompanied by notes from the editorial board and ensuing correspondence with the author) and proofs. Series VI contains complete sets of paste-ups (layouts) for several issues and a set of (layout) flats with printer negatives for Vol. 1.

Included in the collection is a complete run of the published magazine with the exception of Vol. 9.

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Subject Headings

• University of Chicago
• Poetry, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
• Feminism
• Literature -- Women authors
• Small Presses -- Periodicals

INVENTORY

Series I contains materials relating to the non-editorial operation of the magazine, its history and reception in the press, and correspondence (except manuscript acceptances). The series is arranged by type of material: internal correspondence and memos, meeting minutes, personal/contributor and business correspondence, promotional materials, ad copy, budgets, grant materials, reviews, and articles about the magazine and about feminist publications generally. There are a few items of personal ephemera, presumably from members of the editorial board, at the end of the series.

Series II contains manuscript acceptances (including, in most cases, notes made by the editorial board about the pieces accepted), typescripts with printer's notes, proofs and galleys, and layouts. These are grouped by issue and arranged chronologically.

Series III contains a complete published run of Primavera, with the exception of Vol. 9.

Series IV contains materials related to the publication of a book of poems by Margaret Pearce Rummel, undertaken at the behest of her son by Primavera editor Ruth Young and designer Lisa Grayson.

Series V contains snapshots of Primavera staff members at a gathering in the late 1970s or early 1980s, several photo collages of contributors to issue 6/7, photographs submitted to the magazine, and photographs related to the Other Side of the Hill project.

Series VI contains oversized paste-ups, dummies, and other layouts for Primavera, and layouts for The Other Side of the Hill and Health and Medicine, both designed by Lisa Grayson. Primavera materials are arranged chronologically with the exception of vol. 1 and vol. 9, which are separated due to size.

Series VII contains recommendation letters for members of Primavera staff, which are restricted for 50 years from date of creation, and a box of subscriber records on note cards, which are restricted for 30 years.