The Public Domain Review brings an odd story about The Little Journal of Rejects. The idea was proposed as a joke in 1895 by Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) a humorist of whom we heard previously in connection with the word “blurb” which he is alleged to have invented. The suggestion was for a journal including only pieces which had previously been rejected by some other “leading magazine”. The announcement appeared in The Lark, a San Francisco literary magazine of which Burgess was the editor.

For whatever reason Burgess carried through on his joke-announcement and in 1896 the single issue of Le petit journal des refusées was published. It is suspected that the articles and poems included, although labelled as being by various women, were in fact all written by Burgess himself. The PDR article includes a gallery from the Internet Archive showing all 16 pages of the booklet which was printed on wallpaper and trimmed to mimic the shape of a butterfly which gives you the queazy feeling that type is not aligned properly.

Our author suggests that Burgess’ motivation may have been to parody the artsy literary magazines which were enjoying a vogue at the time. OK if you can afford to.