Preview

a Canadian journal largely devoted to poetry and short stories, founded in Montreal in 1942 by an editorial group which included Patrick Anderson, F. R. Scott, P. K. Page, and Bruce Ruddick. It was intended as a platform for innovative and socially concerned literature and stood in opposition to the more traditional and conservative modes which Canadian Poetry Magazine was felt to espouse. The critical and ideological essays featured in Preview testified to the essentially socialist persuasions of its editors, who had declared themselves in the first issue's editorial in the following terms: ‘all antifascists, we feel that the existence of a war between democratic culture and the paralysing forces of dictatorship only intensifies the writer's obligation.’ Although intended as a monthly, the magazine was published irregularly, twenty-three issues appearing in all. It was, however, strongly instrumental in affecting the course of Canadian literature through its refusal to comply with any narrowly nationalistic conceptions of indigenous poetry. The character of the work it favoured tended to reflect the examples of W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and other leading British poets of the 1930s. Its role in the fostering of new modes in Canadian verse was complementary to that of First Statement, which favoured the models provided by American Modernism; in 1945 the two magazines merged to form Northern Review, which continued to appear until 1956.