70: Adam Morgan, author of A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature

Adam Morgan discusses his new biography, A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025). Morgan's book is the first biography solely devoted to Margaret C. Anderson, the founder of the avant-garde literary and arts magazine The Little Review, which she began publishing in Chicago in 1914. The influential Little Review showcased many famous writers of its time, including T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway. But it would become most celebrated—and notorious—for being the first publisher of James Joyce's towering modernist novel Ulysses. After putting out nearly two thirds of the novel in serial installments from 1918 through 1920, Margaret Anderson and her romantic partner and co-editor Jane Heap were charged and found guilty of obscenity under the Comstock Act for distributing Joyce's sexually frank passages through the mail. They were deemed "a danger to the minds of young girls." A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls tells a very compelling story of an iconoclastic woman who was determined to make a space for difficult and challenging art and whose efforts changed forever what could be addressed in literature and what could be considered beautiful. Adam Morgan is himself the founder of the indispensable Chicago Review of Books , and a great promoter of the literature of our city. We are especially thrilled to be having this conversation now, as we just began a six-month discussion group on Ulysses at our library. Listen to hear why Ulysses wouldn't exist without Chicago and how understanding Anderson's life helps reveal the true stakes, triumphs, and world-changing "dangers" of James Joyce's masterpiece. Adam Morgan is a culture journalist and critic who lives near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His writing has appeared in Esquire, WIRED, Scientific American, Inverse, The Paris Review, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He writes a newsletter about forthcoming books called The Frontlist . He is the founding editor of the Chicago Review of Books , the Southern Review of Books , and the Chicago Literary Archive . You can check out A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls in our Podcast Collection , featuring books and other materials by past guests of the show. Find out more about Adam Morgan at his website. We hope you enjoy our 70th interview episode! ​​Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page . You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org.

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70: Adam Morgan, author of A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature is an episode from The Deerfield Public Library Podcast by Deerfield Public Library.

This episode is 01:08:30 long.

This episode was published on Jan 20, 2026.

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