The Paris Review

The Paris Review
Title	The Paris Review
Category	Literary magazine
Frequency	Quarterly
Firstdate	1953
Country	United States
Based	New York City
Language	English

The Paris Review Founded in 1953, The Paris Review is an American literary magazine known for publishing fiction, poetry, interviews, and criticism. It has featured work by leading writers and artists associated with Paris, New York City, London, Rome, and Buenos Aires, and has been influential in transatlantic literary networks including Beat Generation, Confessional poetry, Postmodernism, and Modernism. The magazine established a lasting reputation through its long-form interviews and its role in launching careers of writers connected to institutions like Columbia University, Harvard University, and Yale University.

History

The magazine was established in 1953 by expatriates and literary figures working between Paris and New York City, influenced by earlier periodicals such as The Criterion, Poetry (magazine), and Horizon (magazine). Early editors and founders included expatriate writers with ties to Vermont, Connecticut, and literary circles around Patti Smith-era venues and salons; key editorial figures had connections to literary communities in Paris and London. In the 1950s and 1960s it intersected with movements involving authors associated with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Elizabeth Bishop, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. Through the 1970s and 1980s editorial leadership shifted amid debates tied to prize networks such as the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Booker Prize, while archival holdings later were acquired by institutions like Princeton University and libraries in New York City.

Editorial and Publication Practices

Editorial practice combined submission reading with solicited commissions from established writers linked to Random House, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Scribner. The magazine adhered to quarterly publication rhythms aligned with literary calendars of Frankfurt Book Fair and London Book Fair, and used editorial boards drawn from faculty at Columbia University, University of Iowa, and residency programs such as Yaddo and MacDowell. Its editorial standards emphasized vetted fiction and poetry by contributors associated with awards like the MacArthur Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize, alongside experimental work connected to movements around Postmodernism and Confessional poetry. Distribution channels included partnerships with independent bookstores in Paris, New York City, San Francisco, and regional presses tied to Beacon Press and university presses.

Contributors and Notable Works

The magazine published early or formative work by writers and poets associated with Samuel Beckett, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, J.D. Salinger, Maya Angelou, Seamus Heaney, Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, Vladimir Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Carlos Fuentes, Ryszard Kapuściński, Assia Djebar, E. Annie Proulx, Alice Munro, Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Paul Celan, Seamus Heaney, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Rainer Maria Rilke, Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Czesław Miłosz, W.B. Yeats, Edna O'Brien, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, John Cheever, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Notable works and first appearances include short fiction, serialized novellas, and poetry that later appeared in collections recognized by the Pulitzer Prize and the Booker Prize.

The Paris Review Interviews

A signature feature is its long-form interview series begun in the 1950s, featuring in-depth conversations with authors linked to James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, Paul Auster, Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, William Gaddis, Don DeLillo, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Honoré de Balzac. These interviews influenced scholarship and curricula at universities such as Columbia University, Harvard University, Yale University, and University of Cambridge.

Design, Format, and Artwork

Design elements combined photographic and typographic approaches used by magazines like Vanity Fair (magazine), The New Yorker, and Granta (magazine), incorporating cover art and illustrations by artists associated with Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Jean Cocteau, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Barbara Kruger, Gerhard Richter, Ansel Adams, and photographers linked to Magnum Photos, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, and Irving Penn. The magazine's layout evolved from saddle-stitched folios to bound volumes sold through retail outlets at Tate Modern, MoMA, Galeries Lafayette, and independent bookshops in Paris and New York City.

Reception and Influence

Critical reception ranged from praise in periodicals such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, and The Washington Post to debates in scholarly journals at Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. Influence extended to literary prizes including the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, National Book Award, Costa Book Award, and foundation grants from organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Foundation. The magazine's archive and editorial practices informed studies at institutions such as Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, and The British Library.

Category:Literary magazines