The
Quarterly Review was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by the well known
LondonLondon 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 MurrayJohn 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 ReviewThe 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 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...
, was appointed by
George CanningGeorge 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 CrokerJohn 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 LaureateA 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 SoutheyRobert 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 FoscoloUgo 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
slaverySlavery 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 LockhartJohn 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 MorganSydney, 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 LandorWalter 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 ShelleyPercy 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 KeatsJohn 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
EndymionEndymion 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 SchoolThe "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.
ShelleyPercy 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 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 FlewAntony 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 MolnarMolnár Tamás, Thomas Molnar or Molnar, Thomas Steven was a Catholic philosopher, historian and political theorist.- Life :...
, ecologist
Edward GoldsmithEdward René David Goldsmith , widely known as Teddy Goldsmith, was an Anglo-French environmentalist, writer and philosopher....
, economist
Ezra MishanEzra 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 TheodoracopulosTaki 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 PapworthJohn 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 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...
(February 1809 – December 1824. Vol. 1, Number 1 – Vol. 31, Number 61)
- John Taylor Coleridge
Sir 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 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...
(March 1826 – June 1853. Vol. 33, Number 66 – Vol. 93, Number 185)
- Whitwell Elwin
Whitwell 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 Smith
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 Prothero
Sir 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 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 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.
External links