Encounter (magazine)
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Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author, Irving Kristol, and published in England. The magazine ceased publication in 1990. It was a largely Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal.
Spender was an editor until 1967, when he resigned. The cause of Spender's resignation was the revelation in 1967 of the covert CIA funding of the magazine, of which he had heard rumors, but which he could not confirm. Thomas W. Braden, who headed CIA IOD's operations between 1951 to 1954, said that the money for the magazine "came from 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. Another agent became an editor of Encounter." This caused a scandal among European and American intellectuals, and has, ever since, somewhat overshadowed the magazine's literary content.
Encounter celebrated its greatest 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 closed its doors. Other editors in this period included Frank Kermode and D. J. Enright.
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