In the following essay, Jones examines sources for establishing a factual history of Imagism.

SOURCE: "Notes towards a History of Imagism," in The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 60, Summer, 1961, pp. 262-85.

"Imagism is a faded legend," wrote J. Isaacs in 1951, "and its history has been misrepresented by interested parties."¹ If Imagism was ever a faded legend, recent criticism and research has quickened interest in the period to which it belongs until it has begun to take on brighter, even blatant, coloring. The interest of the modern critic in the early years of this century has now little or nothing to do with any nostalgia for the good old Edwardian days, which was the case with much of the earlier writings on the period; nor have most of the recent critics any personal axe to grind in their telling of the history of the time. It is not, for most...