Etcetera was founded in Michaelmas Term 2007 by Jennifer Cownie, a student at Hertford College, Oxford. Jennifer was a member of OSPL (the company which publishes many of Oxford University's student publications). She asked the board of directors (constituted entirely by students) to support an 8-page literary supplement to the student newspaper, Cherwell.

The supplement was intended to provide a platform for students' creative writing and thoughts on literature. The first issue was published in November 2007 and was considered a huge success. The following term saw editors Chris Baraniuk and Patrick Macfarlane take up the reigns of the publication where Jennifer had previously held control. Their vision was to expand Etcetera's scope to coverage of all the creative arts (or as many as possible) as well as just literature.

After a lot of hard work looking for suitable submissions (from poetry to prose, drama, artwork and photography), issues 2 and 3 of Etcetera were published in January and February 2008 respectively. Chris and Patrick also made an effort to cement Etcetera's mission-statement as a publication interested in submissions of a high quality, but aware of the fact that students could not be expected (on the whole) to consistently produce great works of literature and art. Therefore, Etcetera set out to give a voice to submissions which, though perhaps not perfect, at least expressed an original thought here and there.

A similar ethos is reflected in the choice of features which are meant to be short, succinct and covering niche topics of high, but unusual interest. Etcetera does not attempt to cover the most challenging aspects of literature and art all in one go. Rather, it is aware of its (and its readers') limitations and focuses on a handful of diverse and interesting sub-topics in each issue.

The companion website to the Etcetera supplement was launched in April 2008 and was an obvious way to increase the scope for a community of authors, artists and critics. The intention of Etcetera Online is to provide a vast amount of space for users to upload their creative work and discuss others - something that simply can only be achieved through the internet.