[1] Cox's intellectual formation was in the Department of English Literature at the University of Cambridge, then dominated by the figure of F. R. Leavis.

The latter's legacy was a notable feature of Critical Quarterly's early years, when it published work by a new generation of scholars including Raymond Williams, David Lodge, and Frank Kermode.

[2] In 1987, after nearly 30 years of Cox's editorship, Colin MacCabe took over as editor, announcing some new ambitions for the journal in "Aims for Critical Quarterly".

Its website now claims that the journal "addresses the whole range of cultural forms so that discussions of, for example, cinema and television can appear alongside analyses of the accepted literary canon.

"[6] Under MacCabe's editorship, Critical Quarterly has published the work of Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Zizek, Jacqueline Rose, and Paul Gilroy, among many other prominent scholars.