Zines and Little Magazines: the art of DIY publishing
Guest post by Bruce Wilkinson that brings the history of the book into the twentieth century with a fascinating look at the zines, little magazines and DIY publications found within the University of Manchester Special Collections
There are a substantial number of little magazines and zines spread across the University of Manchester Special Collections and the volume and range of zines has increased substantially with the growth of the British Pop Archive. Little magazines often contain poetry and are small press publications produced on a reduced budget so that editors and poets may experiment without having to consider sales or censorship. These can be traced back to nineteenth century chap books but became prevalent in the early twentieth century, exploding in numbers in the 1960s and 70s.
Although fanzines have their origins in US Sci-Fi publications of the1930s and 40s, they came to prominence in the 1970s and 80s when cheap photocopying technology first became available. Initially connected with punk and post-punk music scenes in the US and Britain, zines quickly became politicised and then splintered into a myriad of themes and forms over the next few decades with queer, feminist and lifestyle journals now prominent. What both connects little magazines with zines and sets them apart from other independently produced periodicals is the DIY ethos of their editors and publishers. Unlike much of the alternative newspaper and countercultural press with offices and staff at their disposal, zines and little mags are generally produced either by a lone actor or a small band of collaborators.
Although there is a smattering of small press items held across the University of Manchester Library, most little magazines are contained within the collections of dom sylvester houédard, Jeff Nuttall, and particularly the Dave Cunliffe Collection with several thousand little magazines and small press pamphlets. These are from practically every continent with South, Central and North America particularly well represented alongside material from India, Japan and Australia. From the Americas there are pamphlets and little magazines from Detroit’s Artists’ Workshop, City Lights, The Floating Bear, Olé, Tuli Kupferberg’s Yeah and other Birth Press material. From Latin America there are several titles including Haravec from Peru and a substantial run of Mexico City’s El Corno Emplumado. These small press publications contain the work of many noted poets and authors which include Allen Ginsberg, Diane di Prima, William Burroughs, Octavio Paz, Charles Bukowski, d a levy etc.
There are substantial runs of British little magazines including New Departures, Origins Diversions, Liverpool’s Smoke, Iron, Tears in the Fence and Krax. The Cunliffe Collection holds one of the largest archives of Medway Poets material dating from the mid-1970s through to the 2000s with Billy Childish, Bill Lewis and Charles Thomson well represented and substantial numbers of Outcrowd, Hangman, Phyroid and Laserwolf press publications many of which are Xeroxed and blur the lines between punk zine and little mag aesthetics. A particular strength of the University of Manchester Special Collections is that it holds archives relating to Nuttall’s My Own Mag and Poetmeat edited by Tina Morris and Dave Cunliffe; both recognised as important little magazines within the 1960s British Poetry Revival. The Cunliffe Collection also has 111 issues of Small Press Review which analysed little magazines and zine culture and there are also copies of Jonathan Zeitlyn’ s Print: How You Can Do it Yourself — both in the original multiple volume form and as the later published book.
The British Pop Archive is made up of an increasing number of individual collections which includes those of journalist and authors Bob Dickinson, Jon Savage and Andy Spinoza, musician and cultural analyst CP Lee, the photographer Kevin Cummins and, from Factory Records, Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton and Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis. These archives hold a substantial number of British fanzines largely from the 1970s and 80s with many from the Manchester area and including some rare examples from the High Punk era.
Kevin Cummins collected numerous rare zines (many of which contain his photographs) which includes issues of Shy Talk produced by Steve Shy and Graham Leonard, Mick Middles and Martin Ryan’s Ghast Up along with Side Burns, Jolt, Kill It, Penetration, Play Thing, Printed Noises, Gabba Gabba Hey — the Ramones fanzine and The Last Trumpet from Liverpool. In Bob Dickinson’s Archive there is a copy of The Secret Public, Linda Sterling and Jon Savage’s zine collaboration of photocopied collages and montages alongside which sits Imprinting the Sticks (1997), Bob’s analysis of alternative and small press publications in Manchester. There is also a copy of Jon Savage’s London’s Outrage from 1976 and issues of the original US Punk zine within the Ian Curtis Archive.
City Fun connects the punk era with the emerging post-punk movement of the early 1980s and two of its later contributors, Liz Naylor and Cath Carroll, also produced a single issue of the extremely rare 925 zine, funded by a reluctant Tony Wilson and produced on a then extortionately expensive colour photocopier. There are copies of musician and journalist John Robb’s zine Rox with several fanzines dedicated to the music of Joy Division and New Order, a complete run of Dave Haslam’s Debris and occasional copies of titles like Attack on Bzag, Freaky Dancing and the odd early football zine. The Cunliffe Collection has copies of The Impossible Dream, a zine produced by the Crass-related Poison Girls, Toxic Graffiti and Psychedelic Fruit Juice, a zine dedicated to hallucinogenics.
Contacts:
To find out more about the Dave Cunliffe, Jeff Nuttall and dom sylvester houedard archives and the British Pop Archive please email uml.special-collections@manchester.ac.uk
Discussion Points:
Experimental forms of poetry drove the production of little magazines and new music sparked the zine revolution — new, cheaply available technology, facilitating both scenes. Why does cultural renewal spark new small press activity?
Little Magazine and Zine editors create their own distribution and retail channels to reach as wide a readership as possible but without the resources which support mainstream publications. What is their motivation for avoiding conventional production networks?
Additional Resources
Little Magazines
Wolfgang Görtschacher: Little Magazine Profiles (University of Salzburg, 1993).
Wolfgang Görtschacher: Contemporary Views on the Little Magazine Scene (University of Salzburg, 2000).
David Miller & Richard Price (Eds): British Poetry Magazines 1914–2000 — A History & Bibliography of ‘Little Magazines’ (British Library & Oak Knoll Press, 2006).
Sophie Seita: Provisional Avant-Gardes — Little Magazine Communities from Dada to Digital (Stanford University Press, 2019).
Bruce Wilkinson: Hidden Culture, Forgotten History: A Northern Poetic Underground and its Countercultural Impact (Penniless Press, 2017).
Rylands Blog The Life of ‘Little Magazines’ (rylandscollections.com)
Rylands BlogD. S. Who? Looking back at dom sylvester houédard (rylandscollections.com)
Zines
Stephen Duncombe: Notes from Underground — Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (Verso, 1997).
Teal Triggs: Fanzines — The DIY Revolution (Thames & Hudson, 2010).
Matthew Worley: Zerox Machine — Punk, Post-Punk and Fanzines in Britain, 1976–88 (Reaktion, 2024).
Rylands Blog Zines & the Art of DIY Publishing (rylandscollections.com)
