Magazine History

You can read more about who we currently are here.

The Columbia Review was founded in 1815 as the first college literary magazine in the United States. Originally named the Columbia Literary Monthly, the magazine was associated with the Philolexian Society, Columbia College’s literary society (established in 1802). The Literary Monthly featured work by Hjalmar Boyesen, John Erskine, Charles Tuttle, and Hans Zinsser. Although Columbia was an all-male institution at the time, the magazine published two short stories by feminist and writer Alice Duer, then a student at Barnard College, in 1898.

In 1897, John Erskine, an undergraduate student at Columbia College, founded The Morningside as an alternative publication, including literary and social criticism along with student work. However, the two publications remained connected, with Erskine himself publishing poems in 1897-99 issues of the Columbia Literary Monthly while serving on the 1899 Board of Editors of The Morningside. It is not clear whether The Morningside was intended as a separate magazine or as a supplement to the Literary Monthly.

The Morningside continued to exist until its 1931 merger with the Literary Monthly’s successor, The Varsity. Whittaker Chambers served as editor-in-chief of The Morningside during the 1920s, contributing the highly controversial play “A Play for Puppets.”

In 1910, Erskine, having returned to the college as a professor in Columbia’s English Department, founded the Boar’s Head Society as a forum for undergraduate literary arts. Under the guidance of John Erskine and with the support of the Boar’s Head Society, the Literary Monthly was revitalized in December 1919 as The Varsity, still also known as the Columbia Literary Monthly.

By 1924, The Varsity was known as The New Columbia Varsity, and later was called the Varsity Review in 1931. During this period, the magazine dealt with such issues as communism, unemployment, and academic freedom. The Varsity Review featured articles on art and music written by Jacques Barzun, Meyer Schapiro, and Barry Ulanov, all of whom later joined various University faculties. Charles Frankel, Herman Wouk, and James Wechsler also wrote articles for the Varsity Review, and faculty members James Gutmann and Mark Van Doren (who had also written for the magazine as an undergraduate), contributed literary criticism to the magazine. Corey Ford, Joyce Kilner, Aline Murray Kilner, and Louis Zukofsky are other notable figures involved during this period.

After a December 1931 merger with The Morningside, the Varsity Review became known as the Columbia Review. The newly unified editorial boards adopted a stricter format, publishing original fiction, poetry, and essays written by students and professors at Columbia. An emphasis was still placed on criticism, and in 1932, an article by John Dewey called for political writing and criticism within the newly branded magazine. In 1933 the Columbia Review took over the Boar’s Head Poetry Contest, a prize for the best undergraduate writing, and since then has published exclusively literary work, no longer reporting campus news.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s the magazine was supervised by Mark Van Doren and Lionel Trilling. During these years, the Columbia Review featured the work of Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, Robert Giroux, Paul Goodman, and Milton Crane. Many of these authors served on the editorial board of the magazine and wrote criticism along with original poetic work. John Berryman was especially involved with the Review, editing and contributing to the magazine. During World War II, wartime paper rationing forced the campus humour magazine Jester to temporarily merge with Columbia Review for a few years in the early 1940s.

John Hollander began his tenure as editor-in chief in 1946, and one year later, Allen Ginsberg joined the publication as an editorial assistant. Both poets published work in the magazine throughout the successive years. Ginsberg also contributed essays on W.H. Auden, Hart Crane, and Pavel Tchelitchew. During this time, the magazine included work by Stephen Dunn, Herbert Gold, Seymour Shifrin, and Louis Simpson.

In 1950, Richard Howard became editor-in-chief, serving alongside Robert Gottlieb and Byron Dobell on the editorial board. In 1951 the magazine published an issue on French author André Gide, which contained a personal tribute by E.M. Forster to Gide and a letter from André Gide to the students of the Columbia Review.

The Review faced censorship in 1963 when it was denied funding by the Activities Board unless it removed “obscene content” it hoped to include in its next issue. In response, the editorial board resigned and chose to publish the work anyway. Artistic and political freedom remain central to the editorial mission of the Columbia Review.

Other contributors to the Columbia Review include Paul Auster (who served as editor-in-chief in the 1960s), Lydia Davis, Irwin Edman, Daniel Hoffman, Terrence McNally, Ron Padgett, Steven Millhauser, William Carlos Williams, Cornell Woolrich, and Ottessa Moshfegh. The Columbia Review, unlike other publications on campus, continues to accept submissions from authors unaffiliated with Columbia University. Today, printed copies of the Columbia Review are completely free.

This description was updated in Summer 2025. We hope to continue to add to it and to upload work from the archive in the coming semesters. We welcome any input from readers.