Partisan Review, The

a periodical founded in New York in 1934 and run by an editorial board whose members included Philip Rahv and Dwight MacDonald. The magazine originally had strong affiliations with the Communist Party and espoused the cause of proletarian literature; literary standards were often subordinated to ideological evaluations of the poetry, prose, and criticism featured. Following its reconstitution in 1937, it declared independence of the Communist Party and became committed to publishing work of quality. Delmore Schwartz (who joined the editorial board in 1943), Wallace Stevens, Edmund Wilson, James T. Farrell, and James Agee were among its new contributors. In 1940 MacDonald left after a bitter disagreement with Rahv over the magazine's publication of T. S. Eliot's ‘East Coker’. The Review subsequently aligned itself with the national consensus in support of America's war effort from 1941 onward. Its political concerns were gradually displaced by its growing reputation for the quality of its criticism of literature and art. In the course of its continuing career, its many distinguished contributors have included W. H. Auden, Theodore Roethke, Randall Jarrell, George Orwell, Robert Lowell, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth.