Granta

originally The Granta, a periodical founded as the latest in a succession of Cambridge undergraduate journals by Murray Guthrie in 1889. Although the matter of whether or not women should be permitted to take degrees was earnestly debated in the 1890s, the magazine's tone was generally humorous and satirical; several writers associated with The Granta, notably A. A. Milne, later contributed to Punch. After the First World War a more serious tone developed, and socio-cultural matters were treated with considerable gravity during the 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s it concentrated on poetry, fiction, and literary criticism, publishing work by various distinguished students, including poems by Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Having become moribund in the mid-1970s, it re-emerged as Granta in 1979 under Bill Buford's editorship to specialize in the publication of prose fiction and cultural commentary. In 1983 Granta Publications Limited entered into its continuing association with Penguin Books; work by eminent contributors including Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, James Fenton, A. N. Wilson, John Berger, Salman Rushdie, and Emma Tennant combined with high production standards to make Granta the leading journal of its kind in Britain. Among the American authors whose work has been featured are John Updike, Angela Carter, George Steiner, and John Herr. Since 1979 issues became devoted to particular themes or modes of writing; numbers 8 and 19, respectively subtitled ‘Dirty Realism’ and ‘More Dirt’, were principally devoted to recent American fiction.