Quarterly Review
Encyclopedia
The Quarterly Review was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by the well known London
publishing house John Murray
. It ceased publication in 1967.
. Its first editor, William Gifford
, was appointed by George Canning
, at the time Foreign Secretary, later Prime Minister.
Early contributors included the Secretaries of the Admiralty John Wilson Croker
and Sir John Barrow, the Poet Laureate
Robert Southey
, the poet-novelist Sir Walter Scott, the Italian exile Ugo Foscolo
, the Gothic novelist Charles Robert Maturin, and the essayist Charles Lamb.
Under Gifford, the journal took the Canningite liberal-conservative position on matters of domestic and foreign policy, if only inconsistently. It opposed major political reforms, but it supported the gradual abolition of slavery
, moderate law reform, humanitarian treatment of criminals and the insane, and the liberalizing of trade. In a series of brilliant articles, in its pages Southey advocated a progressive philosophy of social reform. Because two of his key writers, Scott and Southey, were opposed to Catholic emancipation, Gifford did not permit the journal to take a clear position on that issue.
Reflecting divisions in the Tory party itself, under its third editor, John Gibson Lockhart
, the Quarterly became less consistent in the political philosophy it espoused. While Croker continued to represent the Canningites and Peelites, the party's liberal wing, it also found a place for the more extremely conservative views of Lords Eldon and Wellington.
(Sydney Owenson), the English poet and essayist Walter Savage Landor
, the English novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her husband the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
. In an 1817 article, John Wilson Croker attacked John Keats
in a review of Endymion
for his association with Leigh Hunt and the so-called Cockney School
of poetry. Shelley
blamed Croker's article for bringing about the death of the seriously-ill poet, 'snuffed out', in Byron's ironic phrase, 'by an article'.
, the new Quarterly Review is a successor to Right Now!, and was revived under the aegis of the former Conservative MP and author, Sir Richard Body, who is Chairman of the Editorial Board. Other members of the Editorial Board include philosophers Antony Flew
and Thomas Molnar
, ecologist Edward Goldsmith
, economist Ezra Mishan
and Diana Schumacher. Columnists include socialite Taki Theodoracopulos
, ecologist Rev John Papworth
and Roy Kerridge. The deputy editor is Dr Leslie Jones, and the managing editor is Luise Hemmer Pihl. Each issue of the new Quarterly Review includes an article from the original publication.
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
publishing house John Murray
John Murray (publisher)
John Murray is an English publisher, renowned for the authors it has published in its history, including Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Lyell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Melville, and Charles Darwin...
. It ceased publication in 1967.
Early years
Initially, the Quarterly was set up primarily to counter the influence on public opinion of the Edinburgh ReviewEdinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...
. Its first editor, William Gifford
William Gifford
William Gifford was an English critic, editor and poet, famous as a satirist and controversialist.-Life:Gifford was born in Ashburton, Devonshire to Edward Gifford and Elizabeth Cain. His father, a glazier and house painter, had run away as a youth with vagabond Bampfylde Moore Carew, and he...
, was appointed by George Canning
George Canning
George Canning PC, FRS was a British statesman and politician who served as Foreign Secretary and briefly Prime Minister.-Early life: 1770–1793:...
, at the time Foreign Secretary, later Prime Minister.
Early contributors included the Secretaries of the Admiralty John Wilson Croker
John Wilson Croker
John Wilson Croker was an Irish statesman and author.He was born at Galway, the only son of John Croker, the surveyor-general of customs and excise in Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1800...
and Sir John Barrow, the Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
, the poet-novelist Sir Walter Scott, the Italian exile Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo , born Niccolò Foscolo, was an Italian writer, revolutionary and poet.-Biography:Foscolo was born on the Ionian island of Zakynthos...
, the Gothic novelist Charles Robert Maturin, and the essayist Charles Lamb.
Under Gifford, the journal took the Canningite liberal-conservative position on matters of domestic and foreign policy, if only inconsistently. It opposed major political reforms, but it supported the gradual abolition of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, moderate law reform, humanitarian treatment of criminals and the insane, and the liberalizing of trade. In a series of brilliant articles, in its pages Southey advocated a progressive philosophy of social reform. Because two of his key writers, Scott and Southey, were opposed to Catholic emancipation, Gifford did not permit the journal to take a clear position on that issue.
Reflecting divisions in the Tory party itself, under its third editor, John Gibson Lockhart
John Gibson Lockhart
John Gibson Lockhart , was a Scottish writer and editor. He is best known as the author of the definitive "Life" of Sir Walter Scott...
, the Quarterly became less consistent in the political philosophy it espoused. While Croker continued to represent the Canningites and Peelites, the party's liberal wing, it also found a place for the more extremely conservative views of Lords Eldon and Wellington.
Notable reviews
Typical of early nineteenth-century journals, reviewing in the Quarterly was highly politicized and on occasion excessively dismissive. Writers and publishers known for their Unitarian or radical views were among the early journal's main targets. Prominent victims of scathing reviews included the Irish novelist Lady MorganLady Morgan
Sydney, Lady Morgan , was an Irish novelist, best known as the author of The Wild Irish Girl.-Early life:...
(Sydney Owenson), the English poet and essayist Walter Savage Landor
Walter Savage Landor
Walter Savage Landor was an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity...
, the English novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her husband the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
. In an 1817 article, John Wilson Croker attacked John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
in a review of Endymion
Endymion (poem)
Endymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. Beginning famously with the line "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever", Endymion, like many epic poems in English , is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter...
for his association with Leigh Hunt and the so-called Cockney School
Cockney School
The "Cockney School" refers to group of cockney poets writing in England in the second and third decade of the 19th century. The term came in the form of hostile reviews in Blackwood's Magazine in 1817. Its primary target was Leigh Hunt but included John Keats and William Hazlitt...
of poetry. Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
blamed Croker's article for bringing about the death of the seriously-ill poet, 'snuffed out', in Byron's ironic phrase, 'by an article'.
Later history
The Quarterly Review stopped publication in 1967. A publication taking this name was founded in 2007. Edited by Derek TurnerDerek Turner (journalist)
Derek Turner is a freelance journalist. In the early 1980s he served in the Irish Navy and moved to England in 1988.Derek Turner was editor of Right Now! magazine from 1995 until its demise in December 2006...
, the new Quarterly Review is a successor to Right Now!, and was revived under the aegis of the former Conservative MP and author, Sir Richard Body, who is Chairman of the Editorial Board. Other members of the Editorial Board include philosophers Antony Flew
Antony Flew
Antony Garrard Newton Flew was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, he was notable for his works on the philosophy of religion....
and Thomas Molnar
Thomas Molnar
Molnár Tamás, Thomas Molnar or Molnar, Thomas Steven was a Catholic philosopher, historian and political theorist.- Life :...
, ecologist Edward Goldsmith
Edward Goldsmith
Edward René David Goldsmith , widely known as Teddy Goldsmith, was an Anglo-French environmentalist, writer and philosopher....
, economist Ezra Mishan
E. J. Mishan
Ezra J. Mishan is an English economist best known for his work criticising economic growth. Between 1956 and 1977 he worked at the London School of Economics where he became Professor of Economics. In 1965, while at the LSE, he wrote his seminal work The Costs of Economic Growth, but was unable to...
and Diana Schumacher. Columnists include socialite Taki Theodoracopulos
Taki Theodoracopulos
Taki Theodoracopulos , originally named Panagiotis Theodoracopulos is a Greek/American journalist, socialite, and political commentator.Better known as Taki, diminutive for Panagiotis, he is a Greek-born journalist and writer living in New York City, London and Switzerland...
, ecologist Rev John Papworth
John Papworth
John Papworth After being reared in an orphanage, the Reverend John Papworth has been at various times a baker, journalist, economist - London University graduate, ecologist, a self proclaimed 'futurist' and Church of England priest...
and Roy Kerridge. The deputy editor is Dr Leslie Jones, and the managing editor is Luise Hemmer Pihl. Each issue of the new Quarterly Review includes an article from the original publication.
The aims of the revived QR are the same as that of its illustrious forebear – to draw upon a wide range of opinions to provide counter-intuitive writing for people who like to think, and to enhance literary, philosophical and political debate.
Nineteenth-century editors
- William GiffordWilliam GiffordWilliam Gifford was an English critic, editor and poet, famous as a satirist and controversialist.-Life:Gifford was born in Ashburton, Devonshire to Edward Gifford and Elizabeth Cain. His father, a glazier and house painter, had run away as a youth with vagabond Bampfylde Moore Carew, and he...
(February 1809 – December 1824. Vol. 1, Number 1 – Vol. 31, Number 61) - John Taylor ColeridgeJohn Taylor ColeridgeSir John Taylor Coleridge was an English judge, the second son of Captain James Coleridge and nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.-Life:...
(March 1825 – December 1825. Vol. 31, Number 62 – Vol. 33, Number 65) - John Gibson LockhartJohn Gibson LockhartJohn Gibson Lockhart , was a Scottish writer and editor. He is best known as the author of the definitive "Life" of Sir Walter Scott...
(March 1826 – June 1853. Vol. 33, Number 66 – Vol. 93, Number 185) - Whitwell ElwinWhitwell ElwinWhitwell Elwin was an English clergyman, critic and editor of the Quarterly Review.Son of a country gentleman of Norfolk, Whitwell Elwin studied at Caius College, Cambridge, and took orders...
(September 1853 – July 1860. Vol. 93, Number 186 – Vol. 108, Number 215) - William Macpherson (October 1860 – January 1867. Vol. 108, Number 216 – Vol. 122, Number 243)
- William SmithWilliam Smith (lexicographer)Sir William Smith Kt. was a noted English lexicographer.-Early life:Born at Enfield in 1813 of Nonconformist parents, he was originally destined for a theological career, but instead was articled to a solicitor. In his spare time he taught himself classics, and when he entered University College...
(April 1867 – July 1893, Vol. 122, Number 244 – Vol. 177, Number 353) - John Murray IV (October 1893 – January 1894. Vol. 177, Number 354 – Vol. 178, Number 355)
- Rowland Edmund Prothero (April 1894 – January 1899. Vol. 178, Number 356 – Vol. 189, Number 377)
- George Walter ProtheroGeorge Walter ProtheroSir George Walter Prothero, KBE was an English writer and historian, and President of the Royal Historical Society....
(April 1899 – October 1900. Vol. 189, Number 378 – Vol. 192, Number 384)
Further reading
- Jonathan Cutmore (ed.), Conservatism and the Quarterly Review: A Critical Analysis (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007)
- Jonathan Cutmore, Contributors to the Quarterly Review 1809-25: A History (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008)
- John O. Hayden, The Romantic Reviewers, 1802-1824 (Chicago: UCP, 1969)
- Joanne Shattock, Politics and Reviewers: The Edinburgh and the Quarterly in the Early Victorian Age (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989)
- Hill Shine and Helen Chadwick Shine, The Quarterly Review Under Gifford: Identification of Contributors 1809-1824 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949) [Shine is superseded by Cutmore, Contributors (2008)]
- The main repository of manuscript papers relating to the Quarterly Review is the archive of John Murray (publisher)John Murray (publisher)John Murray is an English publisher, renowned for the authors it has published in its history, including Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Lyell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Melville, and Charles Darwin...
. In 2007, the archive was purchased by the National Library of ScotlandNational Library of ScotlandThe National Library of Scotland is the legal deposit library of Scotland and is one of the country's National Collections. It is based in a collection of buildings in Edinburgh city centre. The headquarters is on George IV Bridge, between the Old Town and the university quarter...
, Edinburgh.