Harold Ross

Ross, a high-school dropout born in Colorado, wasthe unlikely visionary behind a new fifteen-cent “comic paper” that sought to cater to sophisticated Manhattan readers. During his tenure, from 1925 until 1951,The New Yorker established itself as a leading source of cultural criticism, humor, and reporting.

Jane Grant

Grant, who is often overlooked in histories of the magazine, was the firstwoman reporter in the New YorkTimes’ city room. She met Ross in Europe during the First World War, and the pair later married and startedThe New Yorker. Together, they recruited the magazine’s primary financial backer, Raoul Fleischmann.

Rea Irvin

Irvin, originally from San Francisco,designed the signature font ofThe New Yorker’s title and the top-hatted dandy Eustace Tilley, the figure on the début cover. Irvin was also crucial to the development of the magazine’s cartoons, whose single-line captions marked a minor revolution in illustrated humor.

Katharine S. White

White joinedThe New Yorker six months after its first issue, and had asweeping influence on the magazine. In three and a half decades on the staff, White refined the publication’s comic sensibilities, cultivated women writers, and pressed for the inclusion of serious poetry.

Dorothy Parker

“I could bite my tongue out,” Parker wrote with faux regret in awithering book review in 1928. Readers were glad she didn’t. When Parker began contributing, a year earlier,The New Yorker was struggling to find readers; herhumor pieces and witty criticism increased the magazine’s influence and appeal.

A. J. Liebling

In twenty-eight years at the magazine, Liebling, a reporter ofprolific output, wrote about boxing and cuisine, newspapers and rogues. His dispatches from Europe during and after the Second World War—including athree-part series on D Day—reflected the magazine’s growing ambition and attunement to global events.

James Thurber

The New Yorker rejected twenty submissions from Thurber before publishing his first piece, in 1927. He later contributed stories such as “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” and became celebrated for his comic drawings—occasionally done on the walls ofThe New Yorker’s offices.

Janet Flanner

Recruited by Jane Grant, Flanner wrote the magazine’s Letter from Paris, under the name Genêt, from 1925 to 1975. Her 1943 series “The Escape of Mrs. Jeffries,” about the flight of an American expat from Nazi-occupied Paris, pioneered techniques in narrative journalism that would distinguish the magazine for decades to come.

E. B. White

White, the author of “Stuart Little” and “Charlotte’s Web,” joined the staff in 1926. The husband of Katharine S. White and an office mate of James Thurber, White wrote the caption forone of the firstNew Yorker cartoons to become a public sensation, and developed the magazine’s Notes and Comment section, the precursor of today’sComment.

Tell us whatThe New Yorker means to you.

At this milestone inThe New Yorker’s history, we’re collecting our readers’ stories of life with the magazine. Perhaps you grew up with issues on your coffee table, or you tape up covers and cartoons, or you can pinpoint a piece that changed you. Share your favorite moments with the magazine atthemail@newyorker.com.

Submissions may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium.

A weekly game, inspired by the magazine’s hundred-year archive of cartoons, challenges you to place six cartoons in chronological order according to when they were originally published.

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