The magazine features new fiction and poetry, biographical and critical essays, cultural commentary, and reviews of books, art, film, drama, and dance.

[2] Historian Michael King said that during the twentieth century, "Landfall would more than any other single organ promote New Zealand voices in literature and, at least for the duration of Brasch's editorship (1947–66), publish essays, fiction and poetry of the highest standard".

[3] Denis Glover, of Caxton Press, visited Brasch in London while on leave from naval service during World War II, and it was then the two "discussed the idea for a new, professionally produced literary journal in New Zealand".

[8] Tom Weston noted in 1985 that in its early years, "Landfall in Unknown Seas" was "something of a motto": "There was a sense of discovery, of sorting out a place [for New Zealand literature] in this world.

[11] Brasch devoted himself to editing the journal on a full-time basis, and applied high and exacting standards to the work published.

[12] At times, Brasch's high standards led to friction, with some young writers resenting what they saw as his inflexibility and solemnity, and calling the journal elitist.

[12] His vision for the journal was that it would be "distinctly of New Zealand without being parochial",[15]: 388  and he viewed the likely audience as the educated public: "Everyone for whom literature and the arts are a necessity of life.

Stead, Ruth Dallas, Curnow, James K. Baxter and Fleur Adcock, and there were reproductions of paintings, sculptures and photographs by various New Zealand artists including Colin McCahon, Evelyn Page and others.

[12] In 2013, the Charles Brasch literary and personal papers archive at the Hocken Collections were included as an entry on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

[20] Dudding's noteworthy achievements were to commission artists to illustrate short stories, and to publish issue number 100, which included a lengthy interview with Brasch.

[2] Issue 129, released in March 1979, was themed around stories and myths about death, which Smart described in his editorial as "that final stage of growth".

[23] Commenting on the magazine's development in The Press in 1986, Weston revisited his earlier reviews and felt that Landfall had transformed since 1984 into something more "vibrant, attentive and engaging".

[26] Tim Upperton, in his 1987 review of issue 161 for The Press, observed that for New Zealand authors, publication in Landfall "is, literarily speaking, to have arrived".