The Paris Review was founded by Peter Matthiessen and Harold L. Humes in 1953 with the idea of featuring the best new fiction and poetry writing. William Styron said of The Paris Review that it "hopes to emphasize creative work--fiction and poetry--not to the exclusion of criticism, but with the aim in mind of merely removing criticism from the dominating place it holds in most literary magazines and putting it pretty much where it belongs, i.e., somewhere near the back of the book."
State