Political Quarterly

The Political Quarterly is a British political journal founded in 1930 by Leonard Woolf, the husband of Virginia Woolf. It is broadly centre-left in outlook, but has published articles by a wide range of political thinkers including William Beveridge, Samuel Brittan, Ernest Gellner, Richard Hoggart, John Maynard Keynes, Arthur Koestler, Harold Laski, Benito Mussolini, Bertrand Russell, Leon Trotsky and Raymond Williams. The first issue stated that:

"The function of The Political Quarterly will be to discuss social and political questions from a progressive point of view. It will act as a clearing-house of ideas and a medium of constructive thought. It will not be tied to any party and will publish contributions from persons of various political affiliations. It will be a journal of opinion, not of propaganda. But it has been planned by a group of writers who hold certain general political ideas in common and it will not be a mere collection of unrelated articles..."

The current editors are Tony Wright MP (Birkbeck University of London) and Deborah Mabbett (Birkbeck University of London). Former editors include Leonard Woolf, Andrew Gamble, Kingsley Martin, Sir Bernard Crick, and David Marquand. The journal is currently published by Wiley-Blackwell and it is one of the sponsors of the prestigious annual Orwell Prize for political writing. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2014 impact factor of 0.336, ranking it 129th out of 161 journals in the category "Political Science".