The Queen's Quarterly, a scholarly review journal of general interest, began its life under the inspiration of Principal George Monro Grant. In the lead article of the first issue (July 1893), he argued that something was needed to appeal to Queen's alumni and well-wishers at a high intellectual level. In addition to articles on a wide variety of topics, the earliest Queen's Quarterly also contained articles about happenings on campus, as well as the Principal's annual report.
Queen's Quarterly has been published continuously since its inception, and its standard has remained high enough to substantiate the claims of it being Canada's oldest general interest intellectual journal. It was only in 1928 that one individual was assigned to continual editorial responsibility. Before then, Queen's Quarterly had been run by editorial committees, and different members of its prevailing committee were responsible for producing each issue.
The journal's commitment has always been to offer both the academic and the general reader a lively collection of analysis and reflection, in fields as diverse as international relations, science policy, literary criticism, travel writing, economics, religion, short fiction, and poetry.
Digitized versions of the Queen's Quarterly are stored and searchable on the Internet Archive.