The journal was founded in the late 1970s by Ian McLeod, Ann Wordsworth and Robert J. C. Young, and publishes articles on the history and development of deconstructive thinking in intellectual, cultural and political life.

Oxford Literary Review has published new work by Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Hélène Cixous, and continues to publish new work in the tradition and spirit of deconstruction.

The Oxford Literary Review is now published twice yearly by Edinburgh University Press in July and December.

Special issues on specific themes alternate with general issues which include articles from varied intellectual disciplines on issues and writers belonging to or engaging with the work of deconstructive thinking (such as Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas, and Luce Irigaray).

This article about a literary magazine published in the United Kingdom is a stub.