Essayist and Critic Adam Morgan with Eileen Madden
April 2021
By Eileen Madden
You know when a friend visits from out of town, you can see your home town in a whole new light? You visit places you haven’t seen in a while, and you might even learn about hidden treasures you didn’t know where there. Adam Morgan is that friend to the Chicago book community. When he came to Chicago from North Carolina for an MFA at Roosevelt University, he also started exploring Chicago’s book history, not just the writers — the printers and the binders, too. Who better to be the subject of an Artists Book House interview?
Adam Morgan has a monthly e-mail newsletter, The Lakeside Address, whose name honors R.R. Donnelly’s fine press, The Lakeside Press. In the most recent Lakeside Address, not only are there 30 recommendations of newly released books from a wide range of authors, but Adam also talks about his own experience binge reading the work of 1890s author Henry Blake Fuller, “a queer Chicago novelist who was very influential in the 1890s but has now mostly fallen out of print.”
In the most recent newsletter, Adam discusses the content of Fuller’s books, but also looks at the quality of the bindings. In his first newsletter he shared that the cover of Fuller’s first novel The Chevalier, which featured the design work of Alice Cordelia Morse who worked for the Century Company. Morse designed books, Tiffany glass, and chaired an exhibition at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. She “was one of the most influential designers of the American arts and crafts movement,” and I had never heard of her until I read the newsletter.
And there’s more! Adam launched the Chicago Literary Archive just last month. It is “an open-source guide to Chicago’s literary, printing, publishing history from 1827 to today.” Even though he has returned to North Carolina, Adam remains an important member of Chicago’s book loving community.
Adam has founded two literary reviews, The Chicago Literary Review and more recently, The Southern Literary Review. His essays and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review, The Chicago Tribune, and many other publications. He also teaches non-fiction, and is a core faculty member at Story Studio in Chicago.
To subscribe to Adam’s excellent newsletter click here. You can read more about the Chicago Literary Archive here, or hear an interview with Adam here.
You have an MFA from Roosevelt University. Did your love of Chicago printing history lead you to pick a school so close to Printers’ Row, or did the school’s proximity to Printers’ Row lead you to love Chicago’s printing history?
The latter! I grew up in the Carolinas, so when I moved to Chicago for graduate school in 2008, I knew absolutely nothing about the city except for what I’d seen in movies. I thought it was a romantic place because of the opening scenes in Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. I thought it was a handsomely noir place because of Road to Perdition and The Dark Knight and The Untouchables. That was the full extent of my knowledge.
But going to graduate school in the Auditorium Building definitely played a role in my falling in love with Chicago literature, printing, and publishing. It didn’t take me long to discover the Fine Arts Building next door — where Margaret C. Anderson founded The Little Review after working for The Dial, and where Harriet Monroe first launched Poetry magazine, and where L. Frank Baum held an office while writing the first Oz books.
And yes, it didn’t take me much longer to wander a little south to Printer’s Row. I was fascinated by the architectural details of the Lakeside Press Building and the Franklin Building in particular, which led to a lot of research on the golden age of Printer’s Row. I fell in love with all of them — R.R. Donnelley and Sons, M.A. Donohue, A.C. McClurg, Reilly & Britton, you name it. I still fantasize about what it would have been like to walk those streets at the turn of the century, and I’ve become a bit of a collector of Chicago editions.
It took me longer to formulate these questions than I would have liked, because I kept falling down reading rabbit holes at the book reviews you founded. You started the Chicago Review of Books in 2016, and last year you created the Southern Review of Books. Do you just start book reviews everywhere you live? What led you to take the leap with the Chicago Review of Books? What did you learn from that experience that’s helped you in the new publication?
I turned 30 in 2015 and had a bit of a midlife crisis — my 20s were over, and I’d been so focused on my day jobs that I hadn’t pursued the literary life I’d originally moved to Chicago for in the first place. That was the personal impetus for the Chicago Review of Books, but the cultural impetus was that the literary media has always been dominated by New York and I wanted another Midwestern player on the board.
Something similar happened with the Southern Review of Books when I moved to North Carolina in 2018. In that case, I wanted a critical venue that specialized in Southern literature. I suppose on some level I’m slowly trying to disrupt the New York literary axis and help amplify poets and writers living elsewhere. What I learned from the Chicago Review of Books was that I needed institutional support before launching another publication, since I now had two small children and a very intense day job. Luckily, Queens University of Charlotte was thrilled to publish the Southern Review of Books. Their staff, students, and alumni have been wonderful stewards of the site, just as StoryStudio has been with the Chicago Review of Books.
Another review venture you’ve started just this year is the Lakeside Address e-mail newsletter (which anyone reading an Artist Book House interview would likely enjoy). You include reviews of contemporary books and authors, which are great, but the first two have featured 19th century books as well. And you talk about the books design as well as the content. What’s your history with Lakeside Press? Do you admire from afar or collect? Have particular favorites from that press?
I first fell in love with the Lakeside Press because the origin of the Lakeside Classics series is such a great story, the bindings and illustrations are so beautiful, and the press buildings are some of my favorite Chicago architecture (both the headquarters in Printer’s Row and the plant near McCormick Place).
I’m absolutely a Lakeside collector! I have a few dozen Lakeside Classics, one of the Four American Books editions, and a few pieces of ephemera — company stationery from the 1930s, a leather-bound Manual of Style from the 1940s, things like that. My favorite piece is the 1915 Lakeside Classics edition, Reminiscences of Chicago During the Great Fire, inscribed by Thomas Donnelley himself, the man who founded the Lakeside Classics in 1903.
My favorite Lakeside Classics are the Chicago-focused editions between 1912 and 1915. I was devastated to learn the 2019 edition would be the last.
Through Chicago Review of Books Press you had the goal to republish some of Chicago’s “forgotten” works. The first work you put out was Henry Blake Fuller’s The Cliff Dwellers. I had not ever heard of him or his work, but it’s intriguing. What did you think readers in the 21st century could learn about Chicago from this 19th c. author? Do you have any future publishing plans for this press?
Henry Blake Fuller is one of my scholarly obsessions. He was such a fascinating figure — the first Chicago writer to gain national attention in the 1890s for a series of novels, including a few set in Chicago. In some ways he was progressive for his time — he incorporated queer themes into some of his work, and he wasn’t afraid to rail against capitalism. But he was also deeply misogynistic and xenophobic. He was extremely successful for a decade or so and then plunged into relative obscurity because he refused to keep writing the same kinds of book.
The Cliff-Dwellers is all over the place aesthetically. The introduction is masterful, some of the humor still clicks, and it never really drags, but it devolves into melodrama in the latter half and never really delivers on the premise established by the former. Nevertheless, it’s extremely valuable as a historical artifact because it’s set during the 1893 world’s fair and provides a really stunning portrait of downtown Chicago during that era (instead of the fairgrounds).
Sadly the Chicago Review of Books Press was shuttered after the first reprint. We had to cancel a new edition of Gwedolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha after her estate discovered a conflict in a previous publisher contract, and then a few months later I moved to North Carolina and gifted the Chicago Review of Books to StoryStudio. I would love to eventually republish several out-of-print Chicago classics if I can interest the right editors and publishers, but I doubt I’ll try to do it myself again!
Two of the works you discussed in the newsletter featured the work of binder Alice Cordelia Morse. I hadn’t ever heard of her. How did you find her work? What’s her Chicago printing history?
I discovered Alice Cordelia Morse because she designed several covers for The Century Company in New York, one of Henry Blake Fuller’s early publishers. Her covers for his first two novels were featured at the 1893 world’s fair in an exhibition of arts and crafts book design, and they’re really beautiful. Later I learned she was one of the foremost book designers at the turn of the century; a collection of her books now resides at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Your most recent venture is The Chicago Literary Archive https://chicagoliteraryarchive.org/ “an open-source guide to Chicago literature, printing, and publishing, which just launched. How’s that been going?
It’s going well! I wasn’t expecting any media attention so I was caught off-guard when the Tribune, WBEZ, and WGN all called within about an hour of me tweeting it out! It’s very small right now, just a dozen or so pages dedicated to books and writers, but I hope more readers and scholars and librarians will join the effort, and that eventually we’ll have a fairly comprehensive catalog of Chicago’s literary history — including the book arts! It’s open to any volunteers who’d like to contribute their research; just send me a note at adam@adam-stephen-morgan.com. I’m also hoping we can eventually partner with other Chicago cultural institutions to digitize literary artifacts.
About Adam Morgan
The Chicago Adam Morgan is a writer and editor based mostly in Charlotte, North Carolina, but maintains strong ties with the Chicago book. His essays and criticism have appeared in His essays and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago magazine, and elsewhere.
He received an MFA from Roosevelt University. Adam founded the founding editor of the Chicago Review of Books and the Southern Review of Books, as well as the Chicago Literary Archive.
He splits his time between Chicago and Charlotte, and writes a monthly newsletter, The Lakeside Address.