The Nantucket Review

Note: This is a significant work in progress but enough data has been correlated and complied that I feel comfortable releasing it now in this state. 

This is, frankly, an essay I have wanted to write for the longest time but have been unable to devote significant attention to outside of preliminary research, and the occasional outreach email to the Nantucket Book Foundation, which have all gone unanswered. I was introduced to this periodical via my extensive rummaging around in the graduate lounge in late 2025 with Issue #11 and #19 being the only two copies found on campus, with the rest I have personally held and inspected being found on second hand bookseller profiles across eBay and AbeBooks. 

The Nantucket Review put out around 25 or 26 issues. I say ‘around’ because I have only four issues and fragmentary sources on publication dates, all agreeing on a 1974 start date, but one stating a potential 1987 end date, and another stating a 1986 end date. There was also a Broadside series, and while I have seen several copies for sale online, I have brought none due to storage constraints and pricing constraints. 

As best I can reconstruct with the time and data I have publicly available, here is what I know about its timeline:

• Issue #1 1974 – personally held and inspected

• Issue #6 1976 – confirmed via a finding aid for the Roy C Bates papers, compiled by the University of Albany New York

• Issue #11 (XXX) – personally held and inspected 

• Issue #13 ‘Spring’ 1979 – confirmed via a finding aid for the John McKernan papers, compiled by the Marshal University, West Virginia. 

• Issue #14 1979 – A wikipedia page for John Stewart Wynne has a publication credit to this issue and this date in the footnote

• Issue #16 'Summer' 1980 – via an editorial introduction from from the Research Catalog of the New York Public Library which reads: "The Nantucket Review wishes to see recent work by Massachusetts poets for a special section which will appear in #17, our Summer issue, 1980. Deadline for submission of manuscripts is June 1. The editors are also eager to see excerpts from book-length works-in-progress by writers anywhere for publication in the Fall issue, 1980, The deadline for that issue is September 20."

• Issue #17 'Fall' 1980 – via extrapolation from the above, this issue was, I believe, another 'special issue' dedicated to poetry, but cannot confirm this from the PDF I received from the New York City Public Library, as what they sent was 2 pages laid over one another, with the above editorial introduction obscuring most of the cover except for:

'[illegible]SUE

'[illegible]tts Poets' 

Were I to hazard a guess, I would suggest it reads: Special Issue // Massachusetts Poets

• Issue #19 (XXX) – personally held and inspected

• Issue No. 23/24 (1984). The Research Catalog of the NewYork City Public Library describes this issue as a “special double issue called also 10th Anniversary issue.” If that is the case, having established Issue #1 in 1974 allows us to date Issue 23/24 to 1984. 

• Issue #25  (XXX) – personally held and inspected

• Issue #27 ‘Spring’ 1986 – per the Research Catalog of the New York City Public Library. 

Regarding the 1987 cut off, one of my primary sources, a news article from August 23rd 2026 about the 3rd annual poetry festival. It states: From 1974 to 1987, Nantucket had its own small literary press: The Nantucket Review. But according to Billy Sherry, the review’s former poetry editor, Nantucket and The Nantucket Review had a titular relationship. While The Nantucket Review was well-known in the literary world, it didn’t publish anything from the island it was named after. Instead, the review garnered submissions from authors on the mainland and beyond, operating primarily by mail.”

Setting this aside for a moment, The Nantucket Book Foundation states: “Richard Burns (he/him/his) is a Massachusetts native who moved to Nantucket in 1972. In 1974, with Richard Cumbie and Louise Meredith, he co-founded and then co-edited the literary magazine The Nantucket Review, which ran until 1987. For several years during the '80s, he taught literature and writing at UMass-Boston and at other mainland schools.”

So the local record is quite clear. However, the external bibliographic record from the New York City Library states in its Research Call Number: JFL 86-562 Library has: 1 (spring 1974)-27 (summer 1986). I sent an, perhaps in retrospect, overly enthusiastic email for clarification and request for scans via their online portal, and at the time of writing have not heard back. I will update this essay once more data is found or acquired. 

Beyond that, unlike many of the other publications found at UMass Boston from 1970-2026 we have some concrete, verified, data on funding per this document on the internet archive titled ‘Annual report’ by Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, and uploaded by UMass Amherst. 

• In 1981 it received $750 dollars. 

•  In 1982 it received $500 dollars. 

However I am personally of the opinion that, and this must be taken with an extreme grain of salt, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities (or some other Massachusetts State specific grant system) awarded them $2,000 in the 1970s. My reasoning for this is that I found a PDF of a financial report from the period which listed The Nantucket Review as a recipient when preliminary research was being done in this subject. I now cannot find this 500 page PDF online and am continually rerouted to the ‘Annual report’ from UMass Amherst listed above. I know what I saw, and yet have no proof.