From a Cambridge student paper to a quarterly of new writing.

Granta is named after water. English Wikipedia says the title was taken from the River Granta, the medieval name for the Cam, the river that runs through Cambridge, and a name now used only for its upper reaches. The Observer, in a long feature by Simon Garfield published on 30 December 2007 to mark the magazine’s hundredth issue, gave the same origin: a river in Cambridge, or the upper part of one, whose name was taken up by a student magazine.

That student magazine began in 1889. English Wikipedia says it was founded by students at the University of Cambridge as The Granta, with the definite article, and edited by R. C. Lehmann, who later wrote for Punch. It carried student politics, banter and literary efforts. Garfield’s feature describes the later student version as a 32-page mimeographed journal that appeared sporadically, published by a university society.

The modern Granta began in 1979. English Wikipedia says that during the 1970s the student publication faced financial difficulties and falling student interest, and was rescued by a group of postgraduates including the writer and producer Jonathan Levi, the journalist Bill Buford and Peter de Bolla. It was relaunched as a magazine of new writing, with writers and readers drawn from beyond Cambridge, and its first issue as a national publication was titled New American Writing.

The Observer describes how that first issue was made. Its two editors, William Buford and Peter de Bolla, set out a manifesto in Issue 1. The issue ran to 208 pages, and the first issues took over Buford’s rooms in Cambridge, where he was studying for a second degree in English, with sheets of film on every surface and a final edit done with scissors and tape. The magazine then moved to premises above an art gallery, and later above a hairdresser. Buford, an American, had intended to return home after the first issue.

The look was settled early. Garfield wrote that the design of the relaunched Granta was based on an American academic quarterly, and that, compared with the magazine of 2007, it was less clean and less well spaced but sturdy and readable. Asked by a bookseller what Granta was, Garfield answered that it was a literary magazine that looks like a book. Buford edited the magazine for its first 16 years in this form, according to English Wikipedia.

Hederman, Rausing and a trust.

The relaunched magazine’s owner in the 1990s came from New York. English Wikipedia says that in 1994 Rea Hederman, owner of The New York Review of Books, took a controlling stake in Granta. The Observer’s feature of 30 December 2007 also names Hederman, the publisher of the New York Review of Books, as the magazine’s owner over that period.

Editors changed alongside the owners. The Observer says Ian Jack succeeded Buford as editor in 1995, and English Wikipedia gives his editorship as 1995 to 2007. Garfield wrote that Jack developed the magazine’s interest in memoir and, with the associate editor Liz Jobey, produced photo essays.

The current ownership dates from 2005. English Wikipedia says that in October 2005 control of the magazine was bought by Sigrid Rausing. The Observer reported that Ian Jack left in June 2007, some eighteen months after Hederman sold the magazine to Rausing, whom it described as a London-based publisher and philanthropist. English Wikipedia says that when Rausing bought Granta she brought with her the imprint Portobello Books, founded in 2005, and that in 2019 she established the Granta Trust as the magazine’s owner. Sigrid Rausing has controlled Granta since 2005, through the Granta Trust since 2019.

The editor’s chair moved quickly for a while. The Guardian, in a report by Oliver Luft dated 29 May 2009, said Alex Clark had left the editorship, that the American editor John Freeman would become acting editor, and that Clark had been in the job since September 2008, following the departure of Jason Cowley, who had left seven months into his tenure to edit the New Statesman. The report quoted a statement from Granta’s board. English Wikipedia says Rausing herself served as editor from 2013 and handed the editorship to Thomas Meaney with the autumn issue of 2023.

The book list grew out of the magazine. English Wikipedia says Buford founded Granta Books in 1989, while still editor, and quotes the imprint’s stated aim to publish work that stimulates, inspires, addresses difficult questions and examines intriguing periods of history. It also says Granta has been published in Spanish in Spain since 2003.

A river name, a book-shaped magazine and a redesign.

A book publisher meets its readers mostly at the edge of a shelf, so much of its identity has to fit on a spine. The usual tool is the colophon, a small device printed at the foot of the spine and on the title page, together with the imprint’s name. Some publishers took that device from art history. Verso Books says that when New Left Books was launched by the journal New Left Review in 1970, it took as its logo the Tatlin Tower, the monument Vladimir Tatlin designed but which was never built. The name came from the book itself: the company describes Verso, launched as a paperback imprint at the end of the 1970s, simply as “the left-hand page”.

Other houses carry their identity in a series, or in the physical form of each edition. Verso grouped books under series names such as Haymarket, edited by Mike Davis and Michael Sprinker, inside one imprint. The Folio Society, founded in London by Charles Ede in 1947, took a different route: the Financial Times reported in 2022 that each Folio edition has its own artwork, typefaces, binding and introduction and comes in a bespoke slipcase or clamshell box, and English Wikipedia names binding designers such as Jeff Clements, Neil Gower and Neil Packer. When reading a publisher’s identity, look at the device on the spine, the way a series is named and grouped, and how much of the brand sits in the cloth, foil and case rather than in a logo.

A magazine that looks like a book, and a book list that shares its name.

Granta’s identity rests on one word with a Cambridge origin. The magazine dropped the definite article of The Granta but kept the river’s old name through the 1979 relaunch, the Hederman years and the Rausing era, and the same word now names both the quarterly and the book imprint, Granta Books, founded in 1989 according to English Wikipedia.

The format is part of the brand. The Observer’s feature of 30 December 2007 said the relaunched Granta was designed after an American academic quarterly, and Garfield’s own short description of it was a literary magazine that looks like a book. The same feature said that from 1983 Granta was distributed by Penguin, and it described rows of Granta spines on home bookshelves next to orange Penguins and green Viragos.

The look has been reworked under new editors. Garfield reported in December 2007 that the magazine was being redesigned under its incoming editor, Jason Cowley, and that a new logo had been made, and English Wikipedia says Cowley redesigned and relaunched the magazine and launched a new website. Garfield also wrote that the design of the 2007 magazine was cleaner and better spaced than the 1979 original.

Themed issues give each number its own title. Garfield’s feature lists examples from the Buford and Jack years, including a first issue called New American Writing, an issue on travel writing and, after the attacks of September 2001, an issue titled What We Think of America.

For a design guide, Granta shows how a river’s old name can carry a student paper, a book-shaped literary quarterly and a book imprint at once, and how a magazine can borrow the format of a paperback. Compare Penguin Books, which distributed Granta from 1983, or Pushkin Press, another London literary list. For this guide we use river blue, slate and night with a high-contrast serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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