Pegasus, Vol. 2, No. 1 (April 1924)

The April 1924 issue of Pegasus brings its writers together without asking them to sound alike. It contains 10 named pieces or sections, beginning with In Praise of My Glorious Queen the Night by Mathurin Dondo, Portrait of a Youth by J. Corson Miller, and Release by June Hamilton Rhodes. That opening offers a direct path through the issue, but it is not the only one. A reader can follow the printed order, pause over a familiar contributor, or start with a title that catches the eye. No special background is needed. The magazine explains itself gradually through the choices it makes and through the company each piece keeps.

Volume II opens with the magazine's boldest cover and one of its broadest contributor lists. Mathurin Dondo's extended nocturne is followed by poems from J. Corson Miller, June Hamilton Rhodes, Edwin Renold Lane, Samuel M. Sargent, Jr., Samuel Putnam, Ruth Monroe, Jo Hartman, Margie Lee Runbeck, and Lilian White Spencer. The sequence moves from cosmic invocation to landscape, carnival, regret, narrative experiment, and classical portraiture. The poems work through compact stanzas, song structures, and descriptive miniatures; shifts in rhythm and closure distinguish voices that otherwise share a concise magazine scale. That combination gives the San Diego number a regional modernity of its own: harbor, desert, city, and intimate address enter print through inherited forms being adjusted to Western subjects.

The contents page also works like a small map. Early entries establish the issue’s first set of voices; around the middle, Sawtooth and Violet by Samuel Putnam changes the view; the closing stretch reaches Octavia by Lilian White Spencer. The works differ in length, subject, and manner, yet their placement creates connections that a simple list of names cannot show. The pleasure comes from those changes. A short piece can clear the air after a longer one, a new voice can redirect the mood, and an unexpected title can make an earlier page look different when the reader thinks back to it.

The contributor list includes Mathurin Dondo, J. Corson Miller, June Hamilton Rhodes, Edwin Renold Lane, Samuel M. Sargent, Jr, Samuel Putnam, Ruth Monroe, and Jo Hartman, along with 2 additional contributors. Some readers will arrive looking for a particular name; others will meet these contributors here for the first time. Either approach works. The publication details add useful context: the issue was edited by W. H. Lench, published by W. H. Lench, and issued from San Diego, California. A journal is also a made object, assembled by people deciding what to print, how to order it, and which voices should share a number. Reading from beginning to end lets those choices appear naturally.

The catalog subjects—Los Angeles literary culture, American poetry, and Little magazines—are useful starting points, especially for searching, but they do not set limits on what a reader may find. For a first visit, begin with In Praise of My Glorious Queen the Night by Mathurin Dondo, turn next to Sawtooth and Violet by Samuel Putnam, and finish with Octavia by Lilian White Spencer. The clean reading edition is designed for that kind of movement. Original scan: 20 PDF pages. Reader’s edition: 21 PDF pages. It keeps the contents in a stable, legible form and makes names and titles easier to find. A source facsimile remains part of the project’s private editorial record, but it is not included in the public upload. What appears here is the reading copy: a practical way to spend time with the issue and discover which pieces invite a return.