Lillian Smith's <i>Strange Fruit</i> and Periodical Readerships

Recent scholarly interest in Lillian Smith and her controversial best-selling novel Strange Fruit (1944) has ignored the importance of the magazine she edited with her partner Paula Snelling, South Today (1936–45). After considering Smith and Snelling's cultivation of an ideal southern literature through their book reviews, this article reads the short stories Smith published in South Today, which functioned as early drafts of Strange Fruit . Tracing the significance of the magazine's readers, I argue that the process of editing a magazine shaped the structure and style of Smith's novel, considering what literary magazines can tell us about southern identity.