Horizon

a literary periodical founded by Cyril Connolly in association with Stephen Spender, who was assistant editor, and Peter Watson, who acted as art editor. Connolly intended it for readers formerly served by the Criterion, the London Mercury and New Verse, all of which had ceased publication in 1939. In the first issue of January 1940 he stated that ‘Our standards are aesthetic and our politics are in abeyance’; the magazine's opposition to Nazism was, however, invariably clear. The authors who gained Horizon its high reputation included Graham Greene, Sean O'Faolain, Evelyn Waugh, Henry Miller, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas, Patrick Kavanagh, and Alun Lewis. Work by numerous distinguished American and European writers was also regularly featured. In commercial terms the magazine was moderately successful, though its sales never exceeded 10,000 copies. In 1950 the final issue's editorial voiced Connolly's sense of cultural beleaguerment in his remark that ‘it is closing time in the gardens of the West’.