"Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will"

"The review was founded in 1960 out of a merger of two existing journals, Universities and Left Review and the New Reasoner, the former representing an upsurge of political and cultural radicalism in the late 1950s, especially strong in universities, that repudiated the reformism of the Labour party, while the latter provided a rallying ground for those communists and ex-communists who, post-1956, disowned orthodox Stalinism. New Left clubs were formed around the country, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament provided a mobilising and unifying focus. For a brief period, the review was part of a wider movement. But after the 1962 changeover, it focused more exclusively on preparing the theoretical ground for 'revolution' (it can be hard now to remember what an everyday term 'revolution' was in the 1960s and 1970s)."

Stefan Collini in The Guardian marks the fiftieth anniversary of New Left Review.

And in NLR, Stuart Hall traces the journal's origins.