[needs update] The magazine was established in 1866 by Alexander Strahan and a group of intellectuals intent on promoting their views on current affairs.
[citation needed] They intended it to be the church-minded counterpart[1] and in May 1877 published an article on the "Ethics of Belief" from a distinguished Cambridge don on moral skepticism in law and philosophy.
He widened the coverage and attracted contributors of great distinction, including Cardinal Manning, Frances Power Cobbe, Julia Wedgwood, John Ruskin, Vernon Lee, Aldous Huxley, Robert Spence, Emilia Dilke, Henry Stanley, W. E. Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, F. D. Maurice and J. M. Barrie.
It was in the period from 1882 to 1911, under the long editorship of Percy Bunting, that The Contemporary Review turned increasingly to politics and social reform, acquiring a general, liberal outlook, though without party ties; and continuing to provide a platform for debate.
In 1911, G. P. Gooch, the historian and Liberal MP for Bath (1906-1910), was appointed editor and continued to preside over the magazine for forty-nine years.
For many years, under Gooch's editorship, J. E. G. de Montmorency was literary editor, and John Scott Lidgett, the Methodist theologian and leader, was in editorial charge of religious contributions, providing a Free Church background very different from the establishment churchmanship of Dean Alford.
It also continues to have a broad spectrum of interests, including home affairs and politics, literature and the arts, history, travel, and religion.