Virginia Quartly Review - Home 2025

100 Years of VQR!

Since its first issue in 1925, the Virginia Quarterly Review has distinguished itself among literary magazines for its iconoclastic approach to American letters and world affairs. A century later, we’re naturally curious to know what motivated its founders and how they imagined a magazine would complement the mission of Thomas Jefferson’s small but mighty university in the post–World War I era. To find out, VQR’s staff spent roughly 250 hours over eighteen months researching in the archives housed at the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, combing through manuscripts, correspondence, galleys, and other ephemera that brought the early years of that editorial mission into clearer focus.