Granta Books

Granta

Cover of Summer 2016 issue, Granta 136: Legacies of Love
Editor	Sigrid Rausing
Categories	Literary magazine
Frequency	Quarterly
Publisher	Sigrid Rausing
Total circulation (2006)	"almost 50,000"
Year founded	1889
First issue	Relaunch: 1 September 1979
Country	United Kingdom
Based in	London
Language	English
Website	www.granta.com
ISSN	0017-3231

Granta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real." In 2007, The Observer stated: "In its blend of memoirs and photojournalism, and in its championing of contemporary realist fiction, Granta has its face pressed firmly against the window, determined to witness the world."

Granta was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University as The Granta, edited by R. C. Lehmann (who later became a major contributor to Punch). It was started as a periodical featuring student politics, badinage and literary efforts. The name is from the medieval form of Cam, the name of the river that runs through the town, now belongs to two of that river's tributaries. An early editor of the magazine was R. P. Keigwin, the English cricketer and Danish scholar; in 1912-13 the editor was the poet, writer and reviewer Edward Shanks.

In this form the magazine had a long and distinguished history. The magazine published juvenilia of several writers who later became well known, including: Geoffrey Gorer, William Empson,Michael Frayn, Ted Hughes, A. A. Milne Sylvia Plath, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, John Simpson, and Stevie Smith.

During the 1970s the publication, faced with financial difficulties and increasing levels of student apathy, was rescued by a group of interested postgraduates. In 1979, it was successfully relaunched as a magazine of "new writing", with both writers and audience drawn from the world beyond Cambridge. Bill Buford (who wrote Among the Thugs originally as a project for the journal) was the editor for its first 16 years in the new incarnation. Ian Jack succeeded him, editing Granta from 1995 until 2007.