Launched in 1927, transition was the most exciting literary magazine of 1920s Paris, and the last important artistic voice of the decade. Each issue contained new work by one of the giants of the age — Gide, Joyce, Jung, Kafka, Miro, Picasso or Gertrude Stein — alongside that of unknown writers and painters such as Hemingway and Giorgio de Chirico.

A brief haven for the European and American avant-garde during the most vital period of artistic flux since the Renaissance, Paris was a spawning ground for a myriad of movements, publishers and magazines. It was the capital of the new Europe, an artistic Mecca and, already, the cradle and cultural centre of Modernism. It was here that the great artists of the twentieth century rose to prominence, and it was in transition magazine that most of them published their work.

Drawing on extraordinary material produced during a period of unparalleled richness and vigour, this book includes a section of Finnegans Wake in Basic English, photographs by Man Ray, short stories by Kafka and Hemingway, three poems by Samuel Beckett, and a lost Max Ernst painting.

An anthology of enormous importance, this is a brilliant distillation of the best writing and art from the very best of times.