Gideon Burton's Blog

Mormon Literary Studies: The Relief Society Magazine

This image is the cover of the Relief Society Magazine, which was published by and for Mormon women from 1915-70. Over the decades Mormon women published literally thousands of short stories, poems, and plays in this periodical, not to mention the hundreds of Relief Society Lessons on literary topics that introduced Mormon women to the best British and American authors. I have uploaded a PowerPoint sample of one issue from 1923 to give a flavor of this rich source of Mormon culture and literature. This is just one of the many primary texts available for serious students of Mormonism. Those seriously interested in this may wish to contact Connie Lamb (Connie_Lamb@byu.edu), a librarian at BYU who has put together this index to the Relief Society Magazine.

Mormon Literary Studies: Introduction

The field of Mormon literary studies is so young that I am constantly made aware of various authors, works, and themes that have yet to be seriously addressed by students, critics, and scholars. So I think I'll keep track of those ideas here, urging any interested to take up the baton and carry these ideas forward.

I'm especially eager to help provide some starting points for those wanting to know about the field generally. For an overview, see Eugene England's "Mormon Literature: Progress and Prospects," a bibliographic essay that sets out four periods of Mormon literary writing. I'll take various genres in turn within future posts and discuss highlights, bibliographic sources, etc. Long ago I created the Mormon Literature Website to help beginners in the field. This site needs updating--and in many ways has been subsumed within my larger project, the Mormon Literature & Creative Arts database--but it still contains some basic works of Mormon literary criticism and an online anthology or sampler.