| Les Mouches fantastiques | |
| Editor: | Elsa Gidlow[1] |
| Editor Title: | Co-editor |
| Editor2: | Roswell George Mills |
| Editor Title2: | Co-editor |
| Category: | Literary magazine |
| Finalnumber: | 5 |
| Country: | Canada |
| Based: | Montreal |
Les Mouches fantastiques (The Fantastic Flies) was a Canadian underground magazine published between 1918 and 1920.[2] [3] Based in Montreal, Quebec, it is the first known LGBT-themed publication in Canadian and North American history.
The magazine arose out of a local writing circle established by poet Elsa Gidlow,[4] with Gidlow and journalist Roswell George Mills as its primary contributors. The publication's working title, prior to the publication of its first issue, was Coal from Hades.[2] Its content included both poetry and non-fiction writing about gay and lesbian identity and politics,[2] as well as editorials opposing the war.[5]
The magazine was widely distributed far beyond Montreal, within both gay and lesbian social networks and the underground community of amateur journalists.[2] The magazine received correspondence from as far away as Havana, Cuba; an Episcopal priest from South Dakota left the priesthood and moved to Montreal to become Mills' partner after being exposed to the magazine;[6] and the magazine was heavily criticized in a 1918 essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft.[2] [6] The essay appears in Miscellaneous Writings, a posthumous collection of Lovecraft's shorter writings, which was published in 1995.
Five issues of the magazine were published;[2] it was discontinued in 1920 when Mills and Gidlow moved from Montreal to New York City.[2] Few copies of the publication are known to still exist today.[2] One is in the archives of the University of South Florida,[2] the University of Iowa library has an original of all five issues,[7] and the Quebec Gay Archives has a reprint of the final issue. The New York Public Library catalog notes two issues (Vol. I, no. 5, May 1918; and Vol. II, no. 1, March 1920).