Margaret Anderson was born on November 24, 1886 in Indianapolis, Indiana. she was the eldest of three daughters. In 1903, she attended the Western College for Women but left to pursue a career as a pianist. When that did not work out she began writing book reviews for magazines such as The Dial. In 1913 she became a book critic for the Chicago Evening Post. In 1914, she founded The Little Review, a journal dedicated to art and literature. She met Jane Heap in 1916; she became her lover and the co-editor of the Little Review. In 1924, the couple moved to France. After the death of Jane Heap, Margaret became involved with the widow of Enrico Caruso.

The Little Review was an invaluable resource that published new and upcoming authors. Among those who they published were James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and many of the other authors of the “lost generation .” In 1920, Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap were convicted of obscenity charges for serializing James Joyce’s Ulysses. They were each charged $100.  Margaret Anderson published a few books of her own; her three volume autobiography was published beginning in 1930. She also wrote a memoir called The Unknowable Gurdjieff in 1962.

Margaret Anderson died of emphysema on October 18, 1973.

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