The Globe

The Globe is a Chicago magazine that publishes Martin Eden’s Sea Lyrics but radically alters many of the poems and continues printing them despite his repeated requests to stop. Its dealings with Martin make the magazine a consequential example of how an editor’s control over publication can extend beyond acceptance or rejection to the treatment of an author’s work after it has been sold.

The Magazine and Martin’s Submission

Martin holds back his collection of Sea Lyrics until repeated rejections and financial need drive him to seek publication. A dozen magazines have already turned the poems down before the collection reaches The Globe. The arrangement is to pay one dollar for each of the thirty poems, making the submission a practical attempt to obtain income from work that has so far found little welcome.

The payment begins promptly: after the first four poems appear in the magazine’s first month of publication, Martin receives a check for four dollars. That initial payment does not resolve the more serious problem. When he reads the issue, he finds that the poems have been changed in ways that go well beyond ordinary title adjustments.

Changes to the Poems

The Globe alters some titles. Finis becomes The Finish, while The Song of the Outer Reef becomes The Song of the Coral Reef. In another case, Medusa Lights is replaced by The Backward Track, a title Martin regards as wholly inappropriate to his poem. The changes thus range from revisions of wording to a substitution that, in his view, misrepresents the work.

The poems’ contents are altered as well. Lines, phrases, and stanzas have been removed, rearranged, or exchanged, and some lines and stanzas that Martin did not write appear in their place. The extent of these revisions leaves him unable to accept the printed poems as faithful versions of his work. He writes immediately, asking the editor to stop publishing the lyrics and return them to him.

Continued Publication and Martin’s Appeals

Martin follows his first request with further letters, pleading and then threatening, but receives no response. The Globe continues to publish the collection month by month until all thirty poems have appeared. As each group is printed, Martin receives a check for the poems in that issue; payment therefore continues even as his objections go unanswered and the publication proceeds against his stated wishes.

The episode contrasts a clear payment arrangement with Martin’s lack of control over the form in which his work reaches readers. The magazine pays for the poems as they appear, but the evidence does not show that it consults him about the alterations or responds to his requests to halt publication. Its silence is consequential: Martin can protest, but cannot prevent the remaining poems from appearing.

Editorial Power and Significance

The Globe’s treatment of Sea Lyrics is distinct from the simple rejection Martin has encountered elsewhere. After a dozen magazines refuse the collection, The Globe accepts it and pays for its publication, yet the acceptance comes with extensive changes to the work. The episode shows that publication alone does not guarantee that an author’s text will be preserved as written; an editor controls both the route into print and, in this case, the version presented to readers.

The novel later sets Martin’s early treatment by editors against the demand for his writing after his work becomes successful. The Globe is not identified among the magazines that later make offers, but the broader contrast gives this episode added force: editorial attention and commercial valuation change around Martin, while his earlier experience records how little recourse he had when his poems were already in print. The magazine’s place in his story is therefore not simply that it publishes Sea Lyrics, but that it publishes them on terms that expose the unequal power between a financially vulnerable writer and the periodical that controls their appearance.