The London Magazine

About The London Magazine

The London Magazine is England's oldest literary periodical, with a history stretching back to 1732 — a bimonthly magazine of arts, literature and poetry, published from London under editor Steven O'Brien and publisher Burhan Al-Chalabi. Across nearly three centuries and six incarnations, its pages have hosted canonical writers from Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt and John Keats to T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh, William Boyd, Nadine Gordimer and Derek Walcott. Its website is thelondonmagazine.org.

"Today — reinvigorated for a new century — the Magazine's essence remains unchanged," its publisher states: "it is a home for the best writing and an indispensable feature on the British literary landscape." A number of Nobel laureates, including Annie Ernaux, Albert Camus, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer, have been published in its pages.

Founded 1732: The Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer

The London Magazine, or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer was founded in 1732 in political opposition and rivalry to the Tory-supporting Gentleman's Magazine, and ran for 53 years until its closure in 1785. Edward Kimber became editor in 1755, succeeding his father Isaac Kimber; Henry Mayo was editor from 1775 to 1783; publishers included Thomas Astley.

That first incarnation established the title's character: a London journal of arts, politics and literature, engaged with the public life of its time.

Revived 1820: The Romantic Heyday

In 1820 the London Magazine was resurrected by the publishers Baldwin, Craddock & Joy under the editorship of John Scott, who formatted the magazine along the lines of the Edinburgh publication Blackwood's Magazine. It was during this time that the magazine enjoyed its greatest literary prosperity, publishing William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Clare and John Keats.

In September 1821 the first two instalments of Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater appeared in the magazine; Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt and Thomas Carlyle were also contributors. But Scott's editorship ended in tragedy: after a long rivalry with Blackwood's, he died in a duel in 1821, shot by an associate of John Gibson Lockhart. Publication ceased in 1829.

Later Incarnations

The London Magazine is the title of six different publications that have appeared in succession since 1732 — with further incarnations spanning 1875–1879, 1900–1930 and 1954 to the present. All six have focused on the arts, literature and poetry.

The modern incarnation, dating from 1954, carried the title through the second half of the twentieth century — publishing T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and Evelyn Waugh in its early decades, and William Boyd, Nadine Gordimer and Derek Walcott in recent ones.

England's Oldest Literary Journal

The magazine's claim — "England's oldest literary periodical" — rests on the continuity of the title across its incarnations: nearly three centuries of The London Magazine, from 1732 to the present day. Its history ranges across the Augustan age, Romanticism, modernism and contemporary writing.

Its pages have featured, across the centuries, Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, John Keats, William S. Burroughs and Winston Churchill — a roll-call few periodicals in any language can match.

The Magazine Today

Today The London Magazine is published bimonthly — six times a year — from 11 Queen's Gate, London SW7 5EL, under editor Steven O'Brien and publisher Burhan Al-Chalabi. It publishes the best original poetry, short fiction, cultural reviews and literary essays: "a meeting place of the day's greatest minds," in Duotrope's description.

Recent contributors have included Christopher Reid, Helen Dunmore, John Sutherland, Michael Holroyd, Beryl Bainbridge, George Szirtes and many more — "consistently on the pulse of what is happening on the literary scene."

The London Magazine's Place

Reinvigorated for a new century, the magazine's essence remains what it was in 1732: a home for the best writing. As the UK's oldest cultural journal, it carries nearly 300 years of literary history into each new issue — and remains, in its own words, "an indispensable feature on the British literary landscape."

The Lehmann Revival of 1954

The modern London Magazine was revived in 1954 under John Lehmann, with the public endorsement of T. S. Eliot — a blessing that gave the new venture immediate literary credibility. Lehmann's magazine set out to be a home for the best new writing in English, and its contributors across the decades read like a roll call of post-war literature: Sylvia Plath, Gabriel García Márquez, Hilary Mantel and Annie Ernaux all appeared in its pages, alongside Nobel laureates including Albert Camus, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer.

The revival re-established the title as England's oldest literary journal in continuous — if intermittent — lineage, carrying forward the name that had first appeared in 1732. Lehmann's editorship defined the magazine's post-war identity: international in outlook, serious in intent, and willing to publish the new alongside the established.

That identity has survived every subsequent change of ownership and editorship. The contributors Lehmann attracted set a standard — the Nobel laureates, the Booker winners, the poets who would become household names — against which the magazine has measured itself ever since.

Alan Ross, 1961–2001

In 1961 Alan Ross took over the editorship under the Chatto & Windus imprint, and he held it for forty years, until his death in 2001. The Ross era was the longest single stewardship in the magazine's modern history, and it gave The London Magazine its distinctive post-war voice: cosmopolitan, cricket-loving, poetry-centred, and fiercely loyal to its contributors.

After Ross's death the magazine was relaunched in 2001 by Christopher Arkell, with Sebastian Barker as editor and then Sara-Mae Tuson from 2008. In July 2009 it was sold to Burhan Al-Chalabi, who became its publisher — a change that secured the title's financial future while preserving its editorial independence.

Today The London Magazine appears bimonthly, six issues a year, under editor Steven O'Brien, from its base at thelondonmagazine.org. The lineage from Kimber's Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer of 1732, through Lehmann and Ross, to the present day makes it one of the oldest continuously published literary titles in the English language.

Six Magazines, One Name

There have been six publications bearing the title The London Magazine since 1732 — a lineage that makes the name one of the oldest in English periodical publishing. The original, The London Magazine, or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, was founded in 1732 by Isaac Kimber as a direct rival to the Gentleman's Magazine, and it ran until 1785: a monthly miscellany of politics, literature and general intelligence for the capital's readers.

The title's eighteenth-century incarnation set the template that every revival has followed: a London magazine, in the broadest sense — concerned with the life of the mind in the capital, but open to the world. Kimber's magazine published essays, poems, political commentary and news, and its rivalry with the Gentleman's Magazine was one of the defining commercial battles of early English journalism.

Later incarnations kept the name alive through the nineteenth century before the twentieth-century revivals — Lehmann's in 1954, Ross's long stewardship from 1961 — gave it its modern form. Today's bimonthly, edited by Steven O'Brien and published by Burhan Al-Chalabi, is the sixth bearer of a name first printed nearly three hundred years ago: a continuity few literary titles in any language can match. From Kimber's monthly intelligencer to O'Brien's bimonthly, the name has survived every change in the trade that first printed it.