Florence Gilliam, journalist and theatre critic, visited France in 1913 and again in 1919, but it was not until after she had left her high-school teaching job in Columbus, Ohio, and met editor Arthur Moss, whom she later married, that she decided to settle in Paris. Gilliam had spent her summers studying acting and attending the theatre in New York City before she moved there in the summer of 1920. She soon met Moss and went to work briefly for his Greenwich Village magazine the Quill. The September 1920 issue lists Gilliam as managing editor.

Early in 1921, Moss and Gilliam left Greenwich Village--and the Quill--for Europe, and they settled in Paris in February. They became involved in the intellectual atmosphere of the Left Bank, and in August 1921, they founded Gargoyle, the first English-language review of arts and letters to appear in Continental Europe during the period between the two World Wars...