Encounter was a literary magazine founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and journalist Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991. Published in the United Kingdom, it was a largely Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal, originally associated with the anti-Stalinist left. The magazine received covert funding from the Central Intelligence Agency, after the CIA and MI6 discussed the founding of an "Anglo-American left-of-centre publication" intended to counter the idea of Cold War neutralism. The magazine was rarely critical of American foreign policy and generally shaped its content to support the geopolitical interests of the United States government.