The Southern Review is a quarterly literary magazine that was established by Robert Penn Warren in 1935 at the behest of Charles W. Pipkin and funded by Huey Long as a part of his investment in Louisiana State University.

The Southern Review continues to follow Warren's articulation of the mission when he said that it gives "writers decent company between the covers, and [concentrates] editorial authority sufficiently for the journal to have its own distinctive character and quality".

[2] Past editors-in-chief and co-editors have been Albert R. Erskine Jr., Lewis P. Simpson, Donald E. Stanford, James Olney, Fred Hobson, Dave Smith, Bret Lott, Jeanne M. Leiby, Cara Blue Adams, and Emily Nemens.

In 1936, shortly after the journal's founding, poetry editor Morton D. Zabel credited The Southern Review with "a competence almost unrivaled at the moment in American letters."

In 1941, on the occasion of the journal's 5th anniversary, John Crowe Ransom stated "The Southern Review's five year achievement is close to the best thing in the history of American letters."