Merlin was an avant-garde British literary magazine. Seven issues were released between 1952 and 1954. It published the work of Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

, Henry Miller

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

, Christopher Logue

Christopher Logue

Christopher Logue, CBE is an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival. He has also written for the theatre and cinema as well as acting in a number of films. His two screenplays are Savage Messiah and The End of Arthur's Marriage...

, Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....

, and Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

, among others.

Merlin was edited by Scottish expatriate Alexander Trocchi

Alexander Trocchi

Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi was a Scottish novelist.-Early career:Trocchi was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys, he attended University of Glasgow. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to...

 with the collaboration of Richard Seaver

Richard Seaver

Richard Woodward Seaver was an American translator, editor and publisher. Seaver was instrumental in defying censorship, to bring to light works by authors such as Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Eugene Ionesco, E.M. Cioran, D.H. Lawrence, Jack...

 (later to become editor of Evergreen Review

Evergreen Review

Evergreen Review is a U.S.-based literary magazine founded by Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press. It existed in print from 1957 through 1973, and was re-launched online in 1998...

), Christopher Logue

Christopher Logue

Christopher Logue, CBE is an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival. He has also written for the theatre and cinema as well as acting in a number of films. His two screenplays are Savage Messiah and The End of Arthur's Marriage...

, George Plimpton

George Plimpton

George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...

 (co-founder of The Paris Review), and Patrick Bowles. The magazine brought Beckett's recent work to the attention of English-language readers. In 1953, Maurice Girodias

Maurice Girodias

Maurice Girodias was the founder of the Olympia Press. At one time he was the owner of his father's Obelisk Press, and spent most of his productive years in Paris.-Early life:...

 of Olympia Press

Olympia Press

Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane...

 collaborated on a new series called the "Collection Merlin."

Trocchi claimed that the journal came to an end when the United States Department of State

United States Department of State

The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...

canceled its many subscriptions in protest over an article by Jean-Paul Sartre.