Talk:Samhain (magazine)

Organ vs Publication

Does "organ" mean it was published by, or could it mean something less formal, for example "Fox News is the Organ of the Republican party" ie. the instrument through which they preach to the choir (I don't know if that's actually true about Fox News, but illustrative). Should we find another source verifying who published the magazines? Green Cardamom (talk) 03:58, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

"Organ" didn't have quite the pejorative sense in 1905 that it does most of the time now, which is one reason I felt it was misleading not to update the language. (Also, I may just have a mind inclined to hear naughty connotations.) "Published" may be ambiguous, since it can mean that a journal is a publication of the Society for Rock Eaters (written for their content purposes and edited for publication by them), or that Margareen Press "publishes" it in the sense of arranging for it to be set, printed and distributed. Many arts organizations and movements in the 19th and early 20th centuries had their own journals like this in order to publish original work and essays to advance or explain their aesthetic, and the first issue often contained a manifesto. So these don't seem to have been independent journals that became the tool of the group in question in the sense that a particular news outlet might be accused of becoming a mere "organ" for a set of views while claiming to be independent and objective. They were created for the purpose of defining and disseminating the group's aims and philosophies. I didn't spend a lot of time on this little stub; the magazine just came up in conjunction with another article, and I thought I'd just get the ball rolling. I no longer have JSTOR or MUSE access, but most of the books available in preview online only mention Samhain in passing, as the place where Yeats published such-and-such a view. Less on the history of the magazine itself. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:12, 20 August 2010 (UTC)