Analytical Review
Encyclopedia
1788 in literature
-Events:*Ann Ward marries William Radcliffe, gaining the surname under which she will become known as a writer of Gothic novels.*Joseph Johnson and Thomas Christie found the Analytical Review.-New books:...
by the publisher Joseph Johnson
Joseph Johnson (publisher)
Joseph Johnson was an influential 18th-century London bookseller and publisher. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues...
and the writer Thomas Christie
Thomas Christie
Thomas Christie was a radical political writer during the late 18th century. He was one of the two original founders of the important liberal journal, the Analytical Review....
. Part of the Republic of Letters
Republic of Letters
Republic of Letters is most commonly used to define intellectual communities in the late 17th and 18th century in Europe and America. It especially brought together the intellectuals of Age of Enlightenment, or "philosophes" as they were called in France...
, it was a gadfly publication, which offered readers summaries and analyses of the many new publications issued at the end of the eighteenth century.
Perhaps most important, the Analytical Review provided a forum for radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
political and religious ideas. Although it aimed at impartiality, its articles were often critical of the British government and supportive of the French revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
aries. While the journal had low circulation numbers for its day, it still influenced popular opinion and was feared by the conservative Pitt
William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
administration. In late 1797, the Anti-Jacobin Review
Anti-Jacobin Review
The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, or, Monthly Political and Literary Censor , a conservative British political periodical, was founded by John Gifford [pseud. of John Richards Green] after the demise of William Gifford's The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner...
, the self-styled nemesis of the Analytical Review, was founded by supporters of the government and other reactionary interests; it criticized the radical politics of the Analytical and monitored it for unpatriotic and irreligious sentiments.
Organized into separate departments, each with its own chief reviewer, the Analytical Review focused on politics, philosophy, natural history, and literature. To promote a disinterested air, its reviewers were anonymous, signing their work with pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
ous initials. Nevertheless, the journal recruited several prominent writers, such as the poet William Cowper
William Cowper
William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...
, the moralist William Enfield
William Enfield
William Enfield was a British Unitarian minister who published a bestselling book on elocution entitled The Speaker .-Life:...
, the physician John Aikin
John Aikin
John Aikin was an English doctor and writer.-Life:He was born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, son of Dr. John Aikin, Unitarian divine, and received his elementary education at the Nonconformist academy at Warrington, where his father was a tutor. He studied medicine at the...
, and the polemicist Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
.
The Analytical Review suspended publication in December 1798 after the deaths of Christie (1796) and Wollstonecraft (1797), the conviction of Johnson for seditious libel
Seditious libel
Seditious libel was a criminal offence under English common law. Sedition is the offence of speaking seditious words with seditious intent: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel...
(1798), and the retirement of other contributing editors.
Forerunners
The WhigBritish Whig Party
The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...
Monthly Review
Monthly Review (London)
The Monthly Review was an English periodical founded by Ralph Griffiths, a Nonconformist bookseller. The first periodical in England to offer reviews, it featured the novelist and poet Oliver Goldsmith as an early contributor. William Kenrick, the "superlative scoundrel", was editor from 1759 to...
, founded in 1749 by Ralph Griffiths
Ralph Griffiths
Ralph Griffiths was a journal editor and publisher of Welsh extraction...
, and the Tory Critical Review
The Critical Review
The Critical Review was first edited by Tobias Smollett from 1756 to 1763, and was contributed to by Samuel Johnson, David Hume, John Hunter, and Oliver Goldsmith, until 1817....
, founded in 1756 by Tobias Smollett
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...
, were the first journals dedicated to reviewing books in Britain. Although they were joined by smaller publications such as the Analytical Review, these two journals dominated reviewing in the second half of the eighteenth century. They focused on poetry, novels, drama, belles-lettres
Belles-lettres
Belles-lettres or belles lettres is a term that is used to describe a category of writing. A writer of belles-lettres is a belletrist. However, the boundaries of that category vary in different usages....
, travel literature
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
, biographies, science writing, and other forms of popular literature. They did not review many complex theological or scholarly works, particularly those in foreign languages.
Just prior to the founding of the Analytical Review, two periodicals with similar aims had collapsed. The first was the Theological Repository
Theological Repository
The Theological Repository was a periodical founded and edited from 1769 to 1771 by the eighteenth-century British polymath Joseph Priestley...
(1770–73; 1784–88), whose driving force was Dissenting
English Dissenters
English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....
theologian, clergyman, and scientist Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...
. Its articles were intended to be rigorously analytical and attempted to "settl[e] the [Biblical] text by a comparison of various readings; by accurate translation, division, and punctuation; by a concise, well-digested commentary; by notes philosophical and explanatory; and finally by adding doctrinal and moral conclusions". Sold by Joseph Johnson
Joseph Johnson (publisher)
Joseph Johnson was an influential 18th-century London bookseller and publisher. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues...
at a low price to encourage a wide readership, the Repository was open to all opinions, provided that they were expressed courteously: "In this Repository not only will room be given to the freest objections to natural or revealed religion, but they are sincerely requested; and nothing that is new will be rejected, if it be expressed in decent terms". Although the Theological Repository was a financial liability for Johnson by 1771, he continued to publish it until 1773 and helped Priestley renew its publication in 1784.
A second forerunner of the Analytical Review was Paul Henry Maty
Paul Henry Maty
Paul Henry Maty was an English librarian.He was born in London, the son of the librarian Matthew Maty and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He vacated a Trinity fellowship to marry in 1775. In 1777 he published his religious doubts about the 39 articles in the Gentleman's Magazine...
's periodical A New Review (published 1782–86), which was likewise devoted to reviewing books and offering a summary of their contents. Like its successor, the New Review paid special attention to foreign literature and took a leading role in introducing German literature to the British public.
Founding and ideals
The demises of the Theological Repository and the New Review left a publishing vacuum; the arrival in London of the author Thomas ChristieThomas Christie
Thomas Christie was a radical political writer during the late 18th century. He was one of the two original founders of the important liberal journal, the Analytical Review....
, who was dedicated to starting a new periodical that would replace and perhaps even improve upon these precursors, was the primary impetus in the creation of the Analytical Review. Johnson and Christie were mutual friends of Priestley and others, and their combined interest in beginning such a journal resulted in the foundation of the Analytical Review.
Republic of Letters
Republic of Letters is most commonly used to define intellectual communities in the late 17th and 18th century in Europe and America. It especially brought together the intellectuals of Age of Enlightenment, or "philosophes" as they were called in France...
as a vision of society in which "all rational individuals could have their say, and in which an increasingly enlightened reading public would be able to judge the merit of different arguments for themselves". The practical goal of the Analytical Review was to facilitate this society by summarizing serious new and foreign publications in great depth so that intelligent readers might form their own opinions. This aim was embodied in its initial title: The Analytical Review; or, History of Literature, domestic and foreign, on an enlarged plan. Containing Scientific Abstracts of important and interesting Works, published in English; a general account of such as are of less consequence, with short characters; Notices, or Reviews of valuable foreign Books; Criticism on New pieces of Music and Works of Art; and the Literary Intelligence of Europe, etc. The periodical sought to avoid ephemeral works and to review only "standard works which add to the stock of human knowledge and will live beyond a day". Johnson and Christie also intended to eschew editorializing and to avoid shaping the tastes of the public. Scrupulous attention to this point was meant to bring the reviewed work into the foreground and not the reviewer (a goal shared by many eighteenth-century journals). An early review, for example, criticized historian Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...
for "so frequently and unnecessarily obtruding his particular prejudices on the eye of his readers". All editors signed their reviews with initials (sometimes not their own) rather than with their names. This practice was meant to prevent the appearance of collusion between the reviewers and the authors reviewed, although this did not succeed in practice. It was also intended to prevent any unethical puffing, or false advertising, of friends' or one's own books; nevertheless, both Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...
and Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
reviewed their own books for the journal.
In repackaging other publications for its readers, the Analytical Review participated in the encyclopedic movement of the eighteenth century, a movement largely begun by Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie...
Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert...
. Excited and yet overwhelmed by what they viewed as a dramatic increase in human knowledge, encyclopedists of the era aimed to organize and classify all of this new knowledge using a new reference system: the encyclopedia. The Analytical Review was part of this project and its editors believed that they were preserving the knowledge of the past and the present for the future. The journal was, according to scholar Nathaniel Teich, "the most important radical review adopting the encyclopedic format for the attempted universal coverage of published works". Yet, the editors also recognized the ultimate futility of such a project.
The Analytical Review was meant to enlighten the public as well as to simplify communication between authors separated by great distances; most importantly, the debates between those authors could be read by the public. In granting authors a public forum in which to communicate, periodicals such as the Analytical helped to define authorship—they encouraged the professionalization of writing and granted prestige to writers and journalists.
Unusually for its time, the Analytical Review brought current foreign-language publications, particularly those with a scientific, philosophical, or aesthetic bent, to its readers' attention. For example, it approvingly reviewed Friedrich Schiller's
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
Fiesco (published by Johnson) and argued that more of the author's works should be translated. The Analytical also emphasized the emerging middle-class Protestant work ethic
Protestant work ethic
The Protestant work ethic is a concept in sociology, economics and history, attributable to the work of Max Weber...
, specifically tying it to scientific knowledge. One issue celebrated successful British merchants, calling them "the most liberal and enlightened men that have appeared in Europe" because of their "love of science" and their "patronage of learned men".
Organization and reviewers
William Cowper
William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...
; the popular moralist William Enfield
William Enfield
William Enfield was a British Unitarian minister who published a bestselling book on elocution entitled The Speaker .-Life:...
; the writer and physician John Aikin
John Aikin
John Aikin was an English doctor and writer.-Life:He was born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, son of Dr. John Aikin, Unitarian divine, and received his elementary education at the Nonconformist academy at Warrington, where his father was a tutor. He studied medicine at the...
; the poet, essayist, and children's author Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Anna Laetitia Barbauld was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and children's author.A "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career at a time when female professional writers were rare...
; the Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
minister William Turner
William Turner (Unitarian minister)
William Turner was a Unitarian minister and educator who advanced the anti-slavery movement in Northern England, contributed to the development of intellectual institutions in Newcastle upon Tyne, and published sermons on a variety of topics.-Life:...
; the physician and literary critic James Currie; the artist Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...
; the writer Mary Hays
Mary Hays
Mary Hays was an English novelist and feminist.- Early years :Mary Hays was born in Southwark, London on Oct. 13, 1759. Almost nothing is known of her first 17 years. In 1779 she fell in love with John Eccles who lived on Gainsford Street, where she also lived. Their parents opposed the match but...
; the scholar Alexander Geddes
Alexander Geddes
Alexander Geddes was a Scottish theologian and scholar.He was born at Ruthven, Banffshire, of Roman Catholic parentage, and educated for the priesthood at the local seminary of Scalan, and at Paris; he became a priest in his native county.His translation of the Satires of Horace made him known as...
; and the theologian Joshua Toulmin
Joshua Toulmin
Joshua Toulmin of Taunton, England was a noted theologian and a serial Dissenting minister of Presbyterian , Baptist , and then Unitarian congregations...
. The reviewers were all paid, however scholars have been unable to discover their rates. Christie was often absent after the founding of the Analytical Review, leaving the day-to-day operations of the journal up to Johnson. In 1790 he went to Paris for six months, during which he met with revolutionary leaders and started a business; in 1792 he returned to help the French translate their constitution and to dissolve his business. He left for Surinam in 1796 to collect money owed him and died there.
The first issue of the Analytical Review was dated May 1788 and the last issue was dated December 1798. The issues were published monthly and averaged 128 pages. They were also collected into volumes, which consisted of four monthly issues and an appendix (volumes 21–28 switched to a semi-annual publication run without appendices). Each issue contained an extensive table of contents, several major reviews of 10 to 20 pages (sometimes extending to a second issue), many minor reviews, and a "catalogue of books and pamphlets published" during the previous six months.
Compared with other major periodicals of its day, the Analytical Review had a low circulation. While both the Tory Critical Review
The Critical Review
The Critical Review was first edited by Tobias Smollett from 1756 to 1763, and was contributed to by Samuel Johnson, David Hume, John Hunter, and Oliver Goldsmith, until 1817....
and the British Critic
British Critic
The British Critic: A New Review was a quarterly publication, established in 1793 as a conservative and high church review journal riding the tide of British reaction against the French Revolution.-High church review:...
had a circulation of 3,500 by 1797 and the Monthly Review realized 5,000, Johnson and Christie's journal only ever achieved about 1,500. However, it was common practice during the eighteenth century for an individual copy of each publication to be read by many different people. Scholars have estimated that each copy of a London newspaper, for example, was read by thirty people; coffeehouse
Coffeehouse
A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on...
s and taverns were well-stocked with copies of newspapers and journals, as were circulating libraries. Hence, circulation numbers offer only a small glimpse into how many people actually read such publications.
Beginning with the Analytical Reviews third issue, Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
became the key editor for dramas, romances, and novels. Scholars have speculated that her reviews are signed by the letters "M", "W", or "T", corresponding roughly to her initials, in large part because they have identified her writing style in these pieces. Her reviews, which number over 200, are generally characterized by their concern for women's issues. Wollstonecraft scholar Mitzi Myers concludes that Wollstonecraft "is not only a pioneer feminist, but also a pioneer feminist critic, whose analysis of the mesh between gender and genre inaugurates the feminist critical project". Wollstonecraft wrote excoriating reviews, criticizing the passive novelistic heroines of the time and praising, for example, the "wise and resilient" Mrs Stafford of Charlotte Smith’s
Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Turner Smith was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility....
autobiographical novel Emmeline
Emmeline
Emmeline, The Orphan of the Castle is the first novel published by English writer Charlotte Turner Smith. A Cinderella story in which the heroine stands outside the traditional economic structures of English society and ends up wealthy and happy, the novel is a fantasy...
(1788). In highlighting this character, she "singles out ... the knowledgeable mother figure who has felt and thought deeply", one who resembles the women she described in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th...
(1792) as having "power ... over themselves". She derides the "derivative, prescriptive, imitative, and affected" and celebrates the "natural, innovative, [and] imaginative". Evincing a particular regard for the works of Thomas Holcroft
Thomas Holcroft
Thomas Holcroft was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer.-Early life:He was born in Orange Court, Leicester Fields, London. His father had a shoemaker's shop, and kept riding horses for hire; but having fallen into difficulties was reduced to the status of hawking peddler...
, such as Anna St. Ives (1792), Wollstonecraft celebrated their championing of innate nobility and virtue over aristocratic titles. Romanticist
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
Anne Chandler argues that Wollstonecraft's reviews demonstrate "an earlier Augustan
Augustan literature
Augustan literature is a style of English literature produced during the reigns of Queen Anne, King George I, and George II on the 1740s with the deaths of Pope and Swift...
politics of knowledge, variously outlined by Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
, Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, and, to a lesser extent, Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
" which "may be seen in her insistence on a continuum between aesthetic integrity and civic virtue; her belief in a metaphysical dialogue between human wit and divine Nature; and her perception of belletristic criticism as the proper tribunal for a new onslaught of scholarly and scientific research". While writing her last novel, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman is the 18th century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novelistic sequel to her revolutionary political treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman...
(1798), Wollstonecraft took advantage of her position with Johnson and reviewed almost nothing but novels, exposing herself to the wide variety of novelistic forms.
The other reviewers have been the focus of far less scholarship. According to Eudo Mason, "Fuseli's peculiar style, his favourite phrases and quotations, themes and ideas make it possible to determine his authorship beyond reasonable doubt in most cases". He signed reviews "Z.Z." and "R.R." (of which there are about 40), initials which appear throughout the run of the journal. He also occasionally signed reviews "Y.Y.", "U.U.", "V.V.", and "L.L." (although this last was used be another reviewer as well). In total, Mason counts 66 reviews, 56 of which he is certain. Fuseli made it a practice to review texts which mentioned him, works written by friends he wanted to assist with flattering reviews, artistic works, and German literature (in particular those written by Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.-Biography:...
).
Geddes, who contributed from the first issue, wrote forty-six articles, almost all on topics of biblical criticism or ecclesiastical history. However, he left the Analytical in September 1793 to edit for the Monthly Review. Cowper, who probably submitted articles under the initials P.P. and G.G., predominantly reviewed poetry.
Content and political leanings
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
issued his politically controversial Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France , by Edmund Burke, is one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution...
(1790), the Analytical Review reviewed it extensively, as well as the many responses to it, such as Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), Vindiciae Gallicae (1791) by James Mackintosh
James Mackintosh
Sir James Mackintosh was a Scottish jurist, politician and historian. His studies and sympathies embraced many interests. He was trained as a doctor and barrister, and worked also as a journalist, judge, administrator, professor, philosopher and politician.-Early life:Mackintosh was born at...
, and Rights of Man
Rights of Man
Rights of Man , a book by Thomas Paine, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard its people, their natural rights, and their national interests. Using these points as a base it defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke's attack in...
(1791) by Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...
. However, the majority of the excerpts that the reviewers chose to publish came from the rebuttals to Burke's work.
Consistent with Joseph Johnson
Joseph Johnson (publisher)
Joseph Johnson was an influential 18th-century London bookseller and publisher. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues...
's attitudes, the Analytical Review tended towards a "moderate radicalism", meaning that it opposed the Pitt
William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
administration and celebrated the general values of Paine's Rights of Man. It advocated a moderate reform of Parliament
Parliament of Great Britain
The Parliament of Great Britain was formed in 1707 following the ratification of the Acts of Union by both the Parliament of England and Parliament of Scotland...
, emphasized the benefits of representative government, and outlined the protections afforded by a separation of powers
Separation of powers
The separation of powers, often imprecisely used interchangeably with the trias politica principle, is a model for the governance of a state. The model was first developed in ancient Greece and came into widespread use by the Roman Republic as part of the unmodified Constitution of the Roman Republic...
. While the journal supported the ideals of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and opposed Britain's war against France
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...
, it did not endorse the violent methods of some of the revolutionaries. Johnson continued his attempts to remain even-handed in political debates, arguing that faction
Political faction
A political faction is a grouping of individuals, such as a political party, a trade union, or other group with a political purpose. A faction or political party may include fragmented sub-factions, “parties within a party," which may be referred to as power blocs, or voting blocs. The individuals...
alism in government was detrimental.
Helen Braithwaite, in her book on Johnson, argues that "by July 1798 … the Analytical had become a deep thorn in the side of the government"; at Johnson's trial for seditious libel
Seditious libel
Seditious libel was a criminal offence under English common law. Sedition is the offence of speaking seditious words with seditious intent: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel...
, an issue of the periodical was entered as evidence against him, demonstrating that the government did not view the journal as non-partisan. Derek Roper, in his survey of late eighteenth-century periodicals, describes the Analytical as "more radical both in politics and in religion than any other journal". As he explains, however, "these sentiments were not always fully explicit, and might be conveyed through the tone and manner of a summary rather than paragraphs of criticism".
Many of the founding members of the Analytical Review were Unitarian and quite a few of its contributors were Dissenters
English Dissenters
English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....
, so contemporaries believed there to be a bias in the journal (most eighteenth-century journals were overtly partisan). Christie attempted to assuage these fears in his advertisement:
This sincere attitude seems to have largely prevailed in practice. Theophilus Lindsey
Theophilus Lindsey
Theophilus Lindsey was an English theologian and clergyman who founded the first avowedly Unitarian congregation in the country, at Essex Street Chapel.-Life:...
, who had helped establish Unitarianism in Britain, wrote to the Reverend Newcome Cappe
Newcome Cappe
Newcome Cappe , was an English unitarian divine.-Life:Cappe was the eldest son of the Rev. Joseph Cappe, minister of the nonconformist congregation at Millhill Chapel, Leeds, who married the daughter and coheiress of Mr. Newcome of Waddington, Lincolnshire, and was born at Leeds 21 February 1733....
to express his displeasure at a review in the first issue of the Analytical, demonstrating that Unitarian theology was not being promulgated by the journal. Furthermore, Johnson chose as his theological reviewer, not a Dissenter as his friend Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...
urged, but Alexander Geddes
Alexander Geddes
Alexander Geddes was a Scottish theologian and scholar.He was born at Ruthven, Banffshire, of Roman Catholic parentage, and educated for the priesthood at the local seminary of Scalan, and at Paris; he became a priest in his native county.His translation of the Satires of Horace made him known as...
, a talented Scot who had been ordained in Paris as a Roman Catholic priest. However, modern scholars have suggested that he did so not for religious reasons, but because Geddes lived in London and had close connections both to Wollstonecraft and Johnson's friend, Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...
.
Anti-Jacobin Review
Anti-Jacobin Review
The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, or, Monthly Political and Literary Censor , a conservative British political periodical, was founded by John Gifford [pseud. of John Richards Green] after the demise of William Gifford's The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner...
), a loyalist periodical begun in November 1797 by the writer 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...
at the suggestion of the politician 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:...
, and with the tacit encouragement of the administration of William Pitt
William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
. The chief editor and writer was John Richards Green (writing under the pseudonym "John Gifford") together with Andrew Bisset. In its prospectus, the Anti-Jacobin Review announced:
The editors therefore decided to "counteract the pernicious effects of this dangerous SYSTEM" [emphasis in original] and to "restore criticism to its original standard"—they would "frequently review the Monthly, criticise the Critical, and analyse the Analytical Reviews [sic]" [emphasis in original]. The Anti-Jacobin Review published a regular feature, "The Reviewers Reviewed", which analyzed the "Jacobin
Jacobin (politics)
A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...
" reviews for politically unacceptable statements and images. The Anti-Jacobin Review also attacked the Analytical Review for its perceived atheism and for what they deemed its lack of patriotism.
During Johnson's 1798 trial for seditious libel
Seditious libel
Seditious libel was a criminal offence under English common law. Sedition is the offence of speaking seditious words with seditious intent: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel...
for publishing a pamphlet by Gilbert Wakefield
Gilbert Wakefield
Gilbert Wakefield was an English scholar and controversialist.Gilbert Wakefield was the third son of the Rev. George Wakefield, then rector of St Nicholas' Church, Nottingham but afterwards at Kingston-upon-Thames. He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. as second...
, they wrote:
The Anti-Jacobin also published parodies of the works of liberal poets; most famously, "Loves of the Triangles" mocked Erasmus Darwin's
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave trade abolitionist,inventor and poet...
Loves of the Plants
The Botanic Garden
The Botanic Garden is a set of two poems, The Economy of Vegetation and The Loves of the Plants, by the British poet and naturalist Erasmus Darwin. The Economy of Vegetation celebrates technological innovation, scientific discovery and offers theories concerning contemporary scientific questions,...
(1791).
Dissolution and brief resurrection
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
and female fashions, and although it reviewed Mary Hays's
Mary Hays
Mary Hays was an English novelist and feminist.- Early years :Mary Hays was born in Southwark, London on Oct. 13, 1759. Almost nothing is known of her first 17 years. In 1779 she fell in love with John Eccles who lived on Gainsford Street, where she also lived. Their parents opposed the match but...
Appeal to the Men of Great Britain on Behalf of Women, it did not do so with any "political bite". In the same months that the Anti-Jacobin Review launched its first critiques of the Analytical and other journals, the Analytical published extensive articles on the picturesque
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
and other aesthetic theories.
The editors of the Anti-Jacobin Review took credit for the "dissolution" of the Analytical Review in the preface to their bound 1798 volume, writing: "The other object of our immediate attacks, the Analytical Review, has received its death-blow, and we have more reason to congratulate ourselves upon the share which we have had in producing its dissolution, than it would be expedient here to unfold." They also published a cartoon by Thomas Rowlandson
Thomas Rowlandson
Thomas Rowlandson was an English artist and caricaturist.- Biography :Rowlandson was born in Old Jewry, in the City of London. He was the son of a tradesman or city merchant. On leaving school he became a student at the Royal Academy...
entitled "A Charm for a Democracy, Reviewed, Analysed, & Destroyed". However, scholars attribute the end of Johnson and Christie's journal to Johnson's trial for seditious libel and the ensuing negative publicity, in addition to the deaths of Christie and Wollstonecraft in 1796 and 1797 respectively.
After its suspension with the December 1798 issue, the Analytical Review lay dormant until it was briefly revived as The Analytical Review (New Series) during the first six months of 1799. It was printed and sold by T. Hurst of Paternoster Row, apparently without any connection to Johnson or the prior reviewers. Unlike its predecessor, the new series was cautious; it reviewed relatively uncontroversial works and its articles did not have initialled signatures. This series lasted only from January until June of 1799.
Butler writes that "one marker of the end of the bourgeois republic of letters was the jailing in 1798 of the doyen of publisher-booksellers, Joseph Johnson". Moreover, she explains that the seeming ideological "coherence" of the Republic of Letters
Republic of Letters
Republic of Letters is most commonly used to define intellectual communities in the late 17th and 18th century in Europe and America. It especially brought together the intellectuals of Age of Enlightenment, or "philosophes" as they were called in France...
, as it was represented in late eighteenth-century British journals, was eliminated with the founding of the Anglican British Critic
British Critic
The British Critic: A New Review was a quarterly publication, established in 1793 as a conservative and high church review journal riding the tide of British reaction against the French Revolution.-High church review:...
in 1792 and the establishment of the Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh 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,...
in 1802. The Edinburgh, according to Butler, "plainly set out to break the mould of existing journal culture". Rather than attempting to cover a wide variety of texts, as had the Analytical Review and its cohorts, it focused on only a few texts and restricted itself to subject areas that the editors deemed worthwhile. For example, it emphasized academic fields for which Scottish universities were well-known, such as the natural sciences, moral philosophy, and political economy. Radical political writings, classical studies, clerical writings, and popular literature were either excluded or ridiculed.