Encounter (magazine)

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Encounter was a literary magazine founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and journalist Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991. Published in the United Kingdom, it was an Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal, originally associated with the anti-Stalinist left. The magazine received covert funding from the Central Intelligence Agency who, along with MI6, discussed the founding of an "Anglo-American left-of-centre publication" intended to counter the idea of Cold War neutralism. The magazine was rarely critical of American foreign policy and generally shaped its content to support the geopolitical interests of the United States government.^[1][2]

Spender served as literary editor until 1967, when he resigned.^[3] The revelation of the covert CIA funding of the magazine occurred that year. He had heard rumours but had not been able to confirm them. Thomas W. Braden, who headed the CIA's International Organisations Division's operations between 1951 and 1954, said that the money for the magazine "came from the CIA, and few outside the CIA knew about it. We had placed one agent in a Europe-based organization of intellectuals called the Congress for Cultural Freedom."^[3][4] Frank Kermode replaced Spender, but he too resigned when it became clear the CIA was involved.^[5] Roy Jenkins observed that earlier contributors were aware of U.S. funding but believed it came from philanthropists, including a Cincinnati gin distiller.^[6]

Encounter experienced its most successful years in terms of readership and influence under Melvin J. Lasky, who succeeded Kristol in 1958 and would serve as the main editor until the magazine ceased publication in 1991. Other editors in this period included D. J. Enright.