The Egoist was founded by
Dora Marsden as a successor to her feminist magazine
The New Freewoman, but was changed, under the influence of
Ezra Pound, into a literary magazine. Pound got his benefactor
John Quinn to buy him an editorial position in the magazine, and quickly it became a leading publication for
imagist poetry. Its group of friends and contributors includes almost every writer of significance of the time, though some, like
D. H. Lawrence (whose "Once" was published in the magazine in 1914), came to denounce it for "editorial sloppiness" and for the philosophical attitudes of its editorial staff. Among the work published in
The Egoist is the work of
James Joyce and
T. S. Eliot, as well as letters and criticism. Marsden was the editor in the first half of 1914, when it was a fortnightly; for most of its life it was a monthly. Editorship was taken over in July 1914 by
Harriet Shaw Weaver. Assistant editors were
Richard Aldington and Leonard A. Compton-Rickett, with
H. D. When Aldington left in 1917 for the Army, his place was taken by
T. S. Eliot, who was also working on
Prufrock and other Observations at the time (published as a small book by
The Egoist). When it folded in 1919, there were only 400 subscribers, down from 2,000 in 1911 when it was
The Freewoman. ==Notable contributions==