Quarterly Review
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quarterly Review was a literary and political magazine founded in March 1809 (though the first issue bore a title page date of February 1809) by well known London publishing house John Murray, in order to counter the influence on public opinion of the Edinburgh Review. The first editor was William Gifford, and early contributors included John Wilson Croker, George Canning, Robert Southey, and Walter Scott.
Under Gifford, the journal consistently took the Canningite liberal-conservative position on matters of domestic and foreign policy. It opposed political reform, but it supported Catholic emancipation, the gradual abolition of slavery, and the liberalizing of trade. In a series of brilliant articles, in its pages Southey advocated a progressive philosophy of social reform.
One of the most well-known of the Quarterly articles was a scathing attack on John Keats's Endymion. Shelley and Byron erroneously blamed this article for bringing about the death of the seriously-ill poet, 'snuffed out', in Byron's phrase, 'by an article'. It was long believed to be written by Gifford, though later shown to be the work of Croker.
One of the most important Italian writers, Mr. Ugo Foscolo, once wrote on this review.
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.
The Quarterly Review stopped publication in 1967. However, a new publication taking this name was founded in 2007, in succession to Right Now! and edited by Derek Turner.
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.
- Jonathan Cutmore, The Quarterly Review Archive [1]
- John O. Hayden, The Romantic Reviewers, 1802-1824 (Chicago: UCP, 1969)