American novelists and poets who came of age in the early twentieth century were taught to avoid journalism "like wet sox and gin before breakfast." It dulled creativity, rewarded sensationalist content, and stole time from "serious" writing. Yet Willa Cather, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, James Agee, T. S. Eliot, and Ernest Hemingway all worked in the editorial offices of groundbreaking popular magazines and helped to invent the house styles that defined McClure's, The Crisis, Time, Life, Esquire, and others. On Company Time tells the story of American modernism from inside the offices and on the pages of the most successful and stylish magazines of the twentieth century. Working across the borders of media history, the sociology of literature, print culture, and literary studies, Donal Harris draws out the profound institutional, economic, and aesthetic affiliations between modernism and American magazine culture.

Starting in the 1890s, a growing number of writers found steady paychecks and regular publishing opportunities as editors and reporters at big magazines. Often privileging innovative style over late-breaking content, these magazines prized novelists and poets for their innovation and attention to literary craft. In recounting this history, On Company Time challenges the narrative of decline that often accompanies modernism's incorporation into midcentury middlebrow culture. Its integrated account of literary and journalistic form shows American modernism evolving within as opposed to against mass print culture. Harris's work also provides an understanding of modernism that extends beyond narratives centered on little magazines and other "institutions of modernism" that served narrow audiences. And for the writers, the "double life" of working for these magazines shaped modernism's literary form and created new models of authorship.

"A welcome addition to the fields of periodical and New Modernist studies, particularly in its consideration of modernism’s vexed relationship with the mainstream. . . . Lucidly written and ambitious." - Journal of American Studies

"Highly recommended." - Choice

"Literary critics and magazine scholars alike should find merit in On Company Time. Scholars passionate about the history of magazine media will appreciate Harris’s research and relish details relevant to the development of the industry." - Journal of Magazine Media

"A nuanced and provocative study. . . . On Company Time offers new perspectives on some of the twentieth century’s most important writers and their relationship with some of the period’s most storied publications." - J-History

"Donal Harris delivers an exceptionally thought out book that highlights the complexities that have shaped our modern magazine system." - Publishing Research Quarterly

"On Company Time illuminates the intersections between American literature and journalism in the decades that witnessed the professionalization of both fields." - American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism