Horizon: A Review of Literature and Art was a literary magazine published in London, UK, between December 1939 and January 1950. Published every four weeks, it was edited byCyril Connolly, who made it into a platform for a wide range of distinguished and emerging writers. It had a print run of 120 issues[1][2] or 20 volumes.[3]
Connolly foundedHorizon afterT. S. Eliot endedThe Criterion in January 1939, withPeter Watson as its financial backer[2] andde facto art editor. Connolly was editor throughout its publication andStephen Spender was an uncredited associate editor until early 1941.[4] Connolly described the magazine's goal duringWorld War II as[2]
encouraging the young writers-at-arms who seem to find the need to write more irresistible as the War progresses, keeping them in touch with their French and American contemporaries—in short, continuing our policy of publishing the best critical and creative writing we can find in wartime England and maintaining the continuity of the present with the past.
The magazine had a small circulation of around 9,500, but an impressive list of contributors, and it made a significant impact on the arts during and just after the war. Connolly issued an all-Irish number in 1941, an all-Swiss number in 1946 and a U. S. number in October 1947.[5] There was also a French issue and one comprisingThe Loved One, the novel byEvelyn Waugh.
Paul Fussell praisedHorizon as "one of the most civilized and civilizing of periodicals ... with material of almost unbelievable excellence". He described it as "Around 10,000 pages of exquisite poetry and prose and art reproductions, produced and read in the midst of the most discouraging and terrible destruction ... one of the high moments in the long history of British eccentricity". Waugh was less positive, telling Connolly that he heard "an ugly accent—RAF pansy" from the magazine. He twice satirized Connolly andHorizon, as Ambrose Silk andIvory Tower inPut Out More Flags, and Everard Spruce andSurvival inSword of Honour.[2] Spruce, like Connolly, was the editor of a literary review, liked good food and parties, and was surrounded by helpful young ladies. Two of the women at the magazine wereClarissa Eden[6] andSonia Brownell,[2] and Brownell met authorGeorge Orwell (whose real name was Eric Blair) throughHorizon and later married him.