The Lyric – Vol. 1, No. 3, July 1917

Vol. 1, No. 3. Slim octavo. 12pp. Stapled wrappers soiled and last few pages with a bit of light foxing, staples somewhat oxidized, sound and near very good. Prints poems by Charles Francis Phillips, Charles Wharton Stork, Laura Benet, William Laird, Lee Wilson Dodd, Robert Haven Schauffler ("The Harmonie of Heaven" - the poem advertised on the cover), John Hall Wheelock, Jessie B. Rittenhouse, Thomas Walsh, Amy Lowell, and Virginia Woodward Cloud. However, this little literary mag is most interesting for being the first publication of Samuel Roth, who would later move to the underground publication of curiosa and be the appellant in a 1957 Supreme Court case, Roth vs the United States, the decision of which "opened the way to Constitutional protection for expression previously censored for indecency, and became a template for the liberalizing First Amendment decisions of the 1960s" (Kislak Center). A respected poet in his time, the lower wrap advertises Roth's book *First Offering*. An interesting and uncommon piece of publishing and First Amendment history.