Examining the ways in which modernism is created within specific historical contexts, as well as how it redefines the concept of history itself, this book sheds new light on the historical-mindedness of modernism and the artistic avant-gardes. Cutting across Anglophone and less explored European traditions and featuring work from a variety of eminent scholars, it deals with issues as diverse as artistic medium, modernist print culture, autobiography as history writing, avant-garde experimentations and modernism's futurity. Contributors examine both literary and artistic modernism, combining theoretical overviews and archival research with case studies of Anglophone as well as European modernism, which speak to the current historicizing trend in modernist and literary studies. This is a magnificent collection which conjugates modernism and history in marvellously illuminating essays. Modernism often promised to awake from the nightmare of history but it found it difficult to ignore its own historical origins. These essays which range from a reflection on the small magazines in which modernist writing found its most congenial setting to a consideration of Andre Breton as an office manager emphasise the very specific histories in which the general category of modernism took shape.