Littérature was a literary magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 edited by André Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

, Philippe Soupault

Philippe Soupault

Philippe Soupault was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later founded the Surrealist movement with André Breton...

, and Louis Aragon

Louis Aragon

Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...

. Its first issue was published on March 19, 1919. Because of dwindling circulation, Breton decided to terminate publication after the August 1921 issue. In March of 1922, however, he relaunched the magazine with the cover illustrating a Man Ray

Man Ray

Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...

drawing of a shiny top hat, and the title, "Littérature: New Series." In 1923, again because the magazine was not selling enough, Breton decided to limit the publication to special issues, the first of which appeared on October 15th, 1923. However, there was only one more of these, in June of 1924, before publication ceased altogether.