Priscilla Buckley joined her brother William F. Buckley Jr.'s newly launched magazine National Review at its founding in November 1955, beginning a nearly three-decade editorial career.
When William F. Buckley Jr. launched National Review on November 19, 1955, he brought his sister Priscilla Buckley on board as part of the founding editorial team, drawing on her prior experience as a wire-service reporter for United Press International in Paris and New York. She quickly became one of the magazine's indispensable figures.
National Review was conceived as the intellectual flagship of the emerging American conservative movement, aiming, in Buckley's famous words, to stand 'athwart history, yelling Stop.' Priscilla's role was to bring professional journalistic rigor and organizational discipline to a publication staffed largely by opinionated intellectuals. Her steady editorial hand helped transform the fledgling magazine into a durable and influential institution that shaped Republican and conservative thought for generations, including the Goldwater and Reagan movements.
Her involvement from the very founding issue represents a rare instance of a woman holding senior editorial authority at a major American political magazine in the mid-20th century, at a time when such roles were overwhelmingly held by men. Her long tenure there, eventually rising to managing editor, cemented her legacy as an unheralded architect of modern American conservatism.