Over the years many authors contributed to the journal, like Edward Dowden, Alfred Perceval Graves and Oscar Wilde, who had early work published in it, during his period at Trinity.

[1] The magazine contained translations, parodies, lyrics, and light verse,[2] mostly written in English, but also in Greek and Latin.

[5][2] Adolphus Ward and Alfred Rayney Waller, in their The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, say that Kottabos is "perhaps the cream of Irish academic wit and scholarship.

[6] Contributors to Kottabos were among many others: In 1906 Robert Tyrrell published Echoes from Kottabos, with the editorial help of Sir Edward Sullivan, 2nd Baronet (1852-1928), as an anthology for the magazine: In the "Preface" Tyrrell shortly describes the history of the magazine.

The editors remark that a complete set of Kottabos now (1906) is very rare (they guess that not more than half a dozen are extant).

[31] Special mention is made of the prose contribution titled "Oxford Solar Myth.