A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense — including the short story, poetry and essay — and also literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews, letters and gossip. From a position at the start of the nineteenth century where there were a small number of such publications in English, not necessarily entirely literary in content, the literary magazine by the end of that century had become an important feature of intellectual life. Many titles were started; short lifespans were common.
In parallel with the rise of the small press, the small magazine was seen. The term, which can also be little magazine (without the press association, but not generally pejorative), may imply something esoteric or produced by a coterie; in general small magazines publish new work by authors who are not yet established, so are literary nurseries. By their nature they are very hard to track. Literary magazines may have been at their most prominent in the 1920s, when for example T. S. Eliot's Criterion for some years gave itself a high profile in relation to modernism and its reception; but it is said that there were 2000 poetry publications in English, in the 1960s.
As of 2004 the New York Review of Books is the most widely circulated literary magazine published in English.
See also