“He wanted us to be pretty, he wanted us to act that role, and if we didn’t, we weren’t in the light of favor,” said Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn, a former senior editor at the journal who left in 2012 and recently shared her impression with the internal investigators. “It was clear to me that a lot of the decisions being made were not about the work, and I could work as hard as I wanted and not be rewarded for it.” (Ms. Foley-Mendelssohn spoke to the Times before Mr. Stein resigned).

In literary circles, whispers about Mr. Stein’s relationships with women circulated for years and The Times described him in a 2011 profile as a “serial dater.” In recent weeks, The Times spoke to more than a dozen women in the publishing industry who worked with Mr. Stein, including current and former Paris Review employees, current and former employees at FSG, as well as writers and agents. While some of the women said they regarded Mr. Stein as a harmless, if aggressive, flirt, others said he made unwelcome advances and that they felt he took advantage of his role as a gatekeeper to one of the world’s most important literary outlets. For an aspiring writer, a poem or story in magazine could launch a career, often leading to interest from editors and publishers and possibly a book deal.

“I have long admired Lorin as a really dedicated, talented editor,” said Meghan O’Rourke, a poet and the former poetry editor at the Paris Review. “But the editor-writer relationship is a very intimate relationship, and you have a lot of power when you’re finding young writers and cultivating them and giving them a platform, and to routinely sexualize that is to send a damaging message to young female writers who are trying to get a toehold in a world that is still male dominated.”

One of the women who complained to the Paris Review lawyers, a writer whose work Mr. Stein published in the review, told The Times that he had initiated a sexual relationship with her a few years ago, and had sex with her in the magazine’s office, while he was her editor. While she said the relationship was consensual, she said that it had ended badly, and afterward, when the magazine rejected three submissions she made, she thought the outcome was tied to the souring of their romance.

The woman requested anonymity because she said she feared professional repercussions. Her literary agent confirmed that the writer had told her of the relationship with Mr. Stein in 2013.

In a statement he released Thursday, Mr. Stein said: “The suggestion that I put a premium on looks over talent is not just mistaken but, frankly, an insult to the staff who put that magazine together, to say nothing of the writers and artists who honored us with their work. However irresponsibly I behaved, I never made an editorial or hiring decision to reward anyone, man or woman, for anything but the quality of the work they did for the magazine. And I never passed up a story, by anybody, if I thought it was right for the Review.”

Another woman in publishing who said she had an uncomfortable encounter with Mr. Stein told The Times that Mr. Stein had touched her inappropriately at a work dinner about a decade ago when she was employed by a literary scouting agency and he was an editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She requested anonymity because of concerns about hurting her career.