Now and Then

a periodical begun as a house magazine by the publishers Jonathan Cape in 1921, the year in which the company was formed. It contained reviews, articles on authorship and various aspects of the literary life, poetry, and occasional short stories, and was frequently illustrated with photographs and wood-cuts. Among the contributors to earlier issues were Hugh Walpole, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, Virginia Woolf, and H. E. Bates; poems by W. H. Davies were regularly featured and verse by Amy Lowell also appeared. During the 1930s, the period in which Now and Then achieved its greatest distinction, contributors included W. H. Auden, Graham Greene, E. M. Forster, Anthony Powell, V. S. Pritchett, and Michael Roberts. Although Cape's own authors were invariably in the majority as contributors and the subjects of reviews, the journal tended to subordinate its promotional interests to its functions as a periodical of high literary standing. Despite various changes in design the magazine assumed a mediocre character in the 1950s and, after diminishing to little more than a pamphlet, ceased publication in 1961. Then and Now (1935) is a selection of work from its first fifty issues.