In its first few years NAR published poetry, fiction, and miscellaneous essays on a bimonthly schedule, but in 1820, it became a quarterly, with more focused contents intent on improving society and on elevating culture.

NAR's editors and contributors included several literary and political New Englanders as John Adams, George Bancroft, Nathaniel Bowditch, William Cullen Bryant, Lewis Cass, Edward T. Channing, Caleb Cushing, Richard Henry Dana Sr., Alexander Hill Everett, Edward Everett, John Lothrop Motley, Jared Sparks, George Ticknor, Gulian C. Verplanck, and Daniel Webster.

[1] To revive NAR, Dana successfully negotiated arrangements with Claiborne Pell, at the time Senator from Rhode Island, who asserted that he had the rights to the magazine.

NAR was moved to the University of Northern Iowa from Cornell College in 1968 under the editor Robley Wilson.

Since then, its literary contributors have included Lee K. Abbott, Margaret Atwood, Marvin Bell, Vance Bourjaily, Raymond Carver, Eldridge Cleaver, Guy Davenport, Gary Gildner, David Hellerstein, George V. Higgins, Donald Justice, Yosef Komunyakaa, Barry Lopez, Jack Miles, Joyce Carol Oates, David Rabe, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Anthony Storr, Kurt Vonnegut, and many others.

[6] Prior to the creation of the North American Review Press imprint, books were published under the name of the magazine.

Types of books that the NAR Press has released is poetry, short stories, collections from past magazine issues, and crime fiction.