[2] Eliot's goal was to make it a literary review dedicated to the maintenance of standards and the reunification of a European intellectual community.
[3] Although in a letter to a friend in 1935 George Orwell had said "for pure snootiness it beats anything I have ever seen",[4] writing in 1944 he referred to it as "possibly the best literary paper we have ever had".
[9] The Criterion became the first English periodical to publish Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry and Jean Cocteau.
[7][10] Lady Rothermere (Mary Lilian Share, the wife of the London newspaper magnate Harold Harmsworth, Viscount Rothermere) originally financed the journal, but on reading the first issue, she wrote three letters to Eliot criticizing it, and suggested ideas for later issues, including a story by Katherine Mansfield.
[12] While the former's definitions of literature were based on romanticism allied to liberalism and a subjective approach, Eliot used his publication for expounding his defense of classicism, tradition, and Catholicism.