Granta was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge as The Granta, a periodical of student politics and literary affairs, named after the river that runs through the town. In this original incarnation it had a long and distinguished history, publishing the early work of many writers who later became well known, including A. A. Milne, Michael Frayn, Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.
During the 1970s, it ran into trouble--dwindling money, mounting apathy — from which it was rescued by a small group of postgraduates who successfully relaunched it as a magazine of new writing. Since 1979, the year of its rebirth, Granta has published many of the world's best-known writers, including: