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Abstract

Taking their cue from the recommendation systems of Amazon and Netflix, which use networks of like-minded customers to suggest new titles to users, the authors investigate how networks in little magazines a hundred years ago helped readers navigate an overloaded literary market by recommending to them a taste for modernism. Focusing on The Freewoman, The New Freewoman and The Egoist—and drawing on data generated by the Modernist Journals Project—this essay shows how authors in these magazines' review and co-appearance networks became increasingly well-connected, and appeared more frequently, as the magazines became more modernistic and exclusive over time.