[1] The magazine was founded by a "set" of seven undergraduate students including William Morris (1834–1896), Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), William Fulford (1831–1882), Richard Watson Dixon (1833–1900), who later was to become secretary of Thomas Carlyle, Wilfred Lucas Heeley (1833–1876), who later became a civil servant in India, Vernon Lushington (1832-1912), later the Deputy Judge Advocate General and Cormell Price (1835–1910), later headmaster of several English Public Schools.

"[3] Morris, who was 22 of age then, and Burne-Jones met Wilfred Heeley (1833-1876), who was then a student at Trinity College, Cambridge.

For instance Morris and Burne-Jones decided to become artists, while "walking together on the quays of Havre late into the August night," on a trip to France in the summer of 1855.

They saw the magazine "as an agent of social change, rather than a vehicle for espousing specific aesthetic theories.

"[2] "The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine coupled the aesthetic revolt of William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Rossetti with the social dissatisfaction of Carlyle and Ruskin to become a periodical which despite its short existence, changed the direction of Pre-Raphaelite thinking and played an influential role in shaping social ideas and attitudes in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

So "although there was an honest effort to cover many subjects, the prevailing interest of the Brotherhood was literary in nature.

[8] The first number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, conducted by Members of the two Universities appeared on Jan. 1, 1856.

It held seven articles:[63] Two cancel leaves were printed to correct errors in the August issue.