The Eclectic Review
Encyclopedia
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...
writers such as William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
and Lord Byron as well as emerging Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
novelists such as Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
. Unlike their fellow publications, however, they also paid attention to American literature, seriously reviewing the works of writers such as Washington Irving
Washington Irving
Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...
.
Although the Eclectic was founded by Dissenters, it adhered to a strict code of non-denominationalism; however, its religious background may have contributed to its serious intellectual tone. Initially modeled on 18th-century periodicals, the Eclectic adapted early to the competitive periodical market of the early 19th century, changing its style to include longer, more evaluative reviews. It remained a generally successful periodical for most of its run.
The editing history of the Eclectic can be divided into four periods: the first is dominated by co-founder Daniel Parken, who helped establish the popularity of the periodical; after Parken's death, Josiah Conder
Josiah Conder (editor and author)
Josiah Conder, sometimes spelt Condor, , correspondent of Robert Southey and well connected to romantic authors of his day, was editor of the British literary magazine The Eclectic Review, the Nonconformist and abolitionist newspaper The Patriot, the author of romantic verses, poetry, and many...
, after purchasing the periodical, edited it from 1813 until 1836, during years of financial hardship; from 1837 to 1855, Thomas Price edited the periodical, returning it to its popularity and success; in its final years, several people served as managing editor and the Eclectic had some of its best years. Although few of the contributors of the Eclectic remain famous today, such as the poet James Montgomery
James Montgomery
James Montgomery was a British editor, hymnwriter and poet. He was particularly associated with humanitarian causes such as the campaigns to abolish slavery and to end the exploitation of child chimney sweeps....
, many of them were well-known academics or reformers of the time, such as the abolitionist George Thompson
George Thompson (abolitionist)
George Donisthorpe Thompson was a British antislavery orator and activist who worked toward the abolition of slavery through lecture tours and legislation while serving as a Member of Parliament...
and the theological scholar Adam Clarke
Adam Clarke
Adam Clarke was a British Methodist theologian and Biblical scholar, born in the townland of Moybeg Kirley near Tobermore in Ireland...
.
Founding and competition
Modeled on 18th-century periodicals such as the Monthly ReviewMonthly 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...
and The 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....
, issues of the Eclectic Review typically included several long reviews in addition to many short notices. Its long reviews included both "review articles", which reviewed several books on the same subject, and "review essays", which used a single book as a way to begin discussing a larger subject of interest. However, unlike its 18th-century models, the Eclectic was able to successfully compete in the early 19th-century market, with 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,...
, the Quarterly Review
Quarterly Review
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.-Early years:...
, and the Westminster Review
Westminster Review
The Westminster Review was a quarterly British publication. Established in 1823 as the official organ of the Philosophical Radicals, it was published from 1824 to 1914. James Mill was one of the driving forces behind the liberal journal until 1828....
. As James Basker explains in his short history of the Eclectic, the Edinburgh Review was its "most illustrious and its most antagonistic rival", and like it, the Eclectic "offered sophisticated criticism that moved almost completely away from the old-fashioned techniques of quotation and abstract toward a genuine critical evaluation of books and their significance in the broader contexts both of the author's canon and of their formal or intellectual tradition". Basker writes that "the Eclectic grew to become what is now a massive and invaluable archive of the literary and intellectual history of the nineteenth century".
The Eclectic was founded on but not dominated by nonconformist principles. Unlike most periodicals at the time, it was a non-profit publication. From its foundation, all profits were donated to the British and Foreign Bible Society
British and Foreign Bible Society
The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply as Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world....
. The religious affiliation of the periodical, while non-denominational, may have affected its content. Basker speculates that its religious foundations are connected to its "high proportion of serious intellectual discussion and rather less than usual treatment of lighter literary from such as drama and the novel".
Editors and contributors
The publishing history of the Eclectic can be divided into four periods. During its first year, the periodical was edited by Samuel Greatheed, a Dissenting minister; however, it was co-founder and fellow Dissenter Daniel Parken who built up the readership and contributor list of the periodical while he served as editor from 1806 to 1812. He was also responsible for what Basker calls "the policy of enlightened, non-demoninational (if not ecumenical) editorial policies" at the Eclectic. After Parken's death in 1812, Theophilus Williams took over editorship of the periodical. It almost collapsed until it was purchased by Josiah ConderJosiah Conder (editor and author)
Josiah Conder, sometimes spelt Condor, , correspondent of Robert Southey and well connected to romantic authors of his day, was editor of the British literary magazine The Eclectic Review, the Nonconformist and abolitionist newspaper The Patriot, the author of romantic verses, poetry, and many...
in 1813, with whom the second major period began. Conder continued editing the periodical until 1836, financing it himself and often writing entire issues. From 1837 until 1855—the third period—Thomas Price edited the periodical (with the exception of one three-month period when William Linwood tried to take over the editorship). According to Basker, "Price reinvigorated the Eclectic", specifically by rigorously adhering to a neutral position on religion, by expanding the topics covered to include foreign publications, and by lowering the price from two shilling
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
s to eighteen pence. His aim was to appeal to families. As his health declined, Price co-edited with William Hendry Stowell
William Hendry Stowell
William Hendry Stowell was an English nonconformist minister, college head, writer and periodical editor.-Life:Born at Douglas, Isle of Man, on 19 June 1800, he was son of William Stowell and his wife, Susan Hilton; Hugh Stowell was his cousin. He was one of the first students at the Blackburn...
from 1851 to 1855 and during 1855 with his successor, Jonathan Edwards Ryland
Jonathan Edwards Ryland
-Life:The only son of John Ryland , by his second wife, he was born at Northampton on 5 May 1798. His early years were spent in Bristol, and he was educated at the Baptist college, over which his father presided, and at Edinburgh University, where he was a pupil of Dr...
. The last period of the Eclectics history, described by Basker as its "most unstable", began with Price's departure. An anonymous editor took over from Ryland and changed the Eclectic into a miscellany. Edwin Paxton Hood took over as editor in January 1861, changing the periodical back to a book review, increasing the size of each issue, and lowering the price still further. According to Basker, these last years were successful and the periodical produced "some of its finest review journalism".
About 60 of the contributors to the Eclectic have been identified. Basker writes that "few...were particularly famous, even in their own day". Only two or three are still notable today: James Mill
James Mill
James Mill was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He was a founder of classical economics, together with David Ricardo, and the father of influential philosopher of classical liberalism, John Stuart Mill.-Life:Mill was born at Northwater Bridge, in the parish of...
, the father of philosopher John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
; the poet and friend of Lord Byron, James Montgomery
James Montgomery
James Montgomery was a British editor, hymnwriter and poet. He was particularly associated with humanitarian causes such as the campaigns to abolish slavery and to end the exploitation of child chimney sweeps....
; and man of letters, Edwin Paxton Hood. However, as Basker points out "although the rest may be forgotten today, it is nonetheless true to say (as one of its editors said in the 1830s) that 'the pages of the [Eclectic] have been enriched by the contributions of many of the most powerful intellects of the age'". Among these were the mathematician, scientist, and theologian Olinthus Gilbert Gregory, the theological scholar Adam Clarke
Adam Clarke
Adam Clarke was a British Methodist theologian and Biblical scholar, born in the townland of Moybeg Kirley near Tobermore in Ireland...
, the abolitionist George Thompson
George Thompson (abolitionist)
George Donisthorpe Thompson was a British antislavery orator and activist who worked toward the abolition of slavery through lecture tours and legislation while serving as a Member of Parliament...
, the reformer Andrew Reed, and the theologian, scientist, and philanthropist Thomas Chalmers
Thomas Chalmers
Thomas Chalmers , Scottish mathematician, political economist, divine and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland, was born at Anstruther in Fife.-Overview:...
.
Audience
Basker writes that the Eclectic was "clearly aimed at the highly literate and thoughtful reader" but it was "anything but elitist about the audience it sought". The founders deliberately set a low price so that many classes of people could purchase the journal. Its reviews of family encyclopedias, such Dionysius Lardner'sDionysius Lardner
Dionysius Lardner , was an Irish scientific writer who popularised science and technology, and edited the 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopedia.-Early life in Dublin:...
Cabinet Cyclopedia suggest that it was aimed at the lower-middle and lower classes.
Content
Washington Irving
Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...
Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, writing that it was "the first purely literary production that has issued from the American press, which could claim to rank, in point of original talent and classic elegance of style, with the best English authors".
However, English authors were still given far more attention than American, and William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
was the most reviewed of all. Essays were written about the new Romantic
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...
movement. In general, the Eclectic preferred Wordsworth to Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
, particularly after the publication of "Kubla Khan
Kubla Khan
Kubla Khan is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep in 1816...
", calling on him "to break off his desultory and luxurious habits, and to brace his mind to intellectual exertion". 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...
was criticized for his profanity and atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
, however 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...
was judged to have "promise". After Wordsworth, it was Byron's poetry which was reviewed most often. The Eclectic criticized it, but heralded works such as Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks...
, writing that the reader would "be dazzled even to tears". The major novelists of the time were not neglected. For example, Sir Walter Scott's novels were reviewed, due to their popularity, "but his works were regarded with a certain ambivalence". In reviewing Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe is a historical fiction novel by Sir Walter Scott in 1819, and set in 12th-century England. Ivanhoe is sometimes credited for increasing interest in Romanticism and Medievalism; John Henry Newman claimed Scott "had first turned men's minds in the direction of the middle ages," while...
, for example, the reviewer wrote that it was "one of the cleverest of all our Author's productions" but that it was "a failure" as a romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
. Almost all of Charles Dickens's
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
novels were reviewed in the Eclectic, as were novels by the Brontës, William Thackeray, Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...
, Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
, and George Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
. According to Basker, "the Eclectics treatment of the novel was balanced, insightful, and sophisticated". The Eclectic also reviewed the works of important literary figures such as George Crabbe
George Crabbe
George Crabbe was an English poet and naturalist.-Biography:He was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the son of a tax collector, and developed his love of poetry as a child. In 1768, he was apprenticed to a local doctor, who taught him little, and in 1771 he changed masters and moved to Woodbridge...
, Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
, James Hogg
James Hogg
James Hogg was a Scottish poet and novelist who wrote in both Scots and English.-Early life:James Hogg was born in a small farm near Ettrick, Scotland in 1770 and was baptized there on 9 December, his actual date of birth having never been recorded...
, William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...
, Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
, and Goethe. It did not shy away from reviewing the works of controversial figures, however, such as Thomas de Quincey
Thomas de Quincey
Thomas Penson de Quincey was an English esssayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater .-Child and student:...
. It reviewed the works of both Brownings, calling Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...
"the Schiller of our higher nature" and compared Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
to Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....
. The Eclectic also claimed to be the first journal to "discover" and "to notice at any length" Christina Rossetti's
Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems...
Goblin Market and Other Poems
Goblin Market and Other Poems
Goblin Market and Other Poems was Christina Rossetti's first volume of poetry, published in 1862. It contains her famous poem "Goblin Market" and others such as "Up-hill", "The Convent Threshold", "Maude Clare", etc....
.
As Basker writes, "beyond literature, the Eclectic covered books in every field imaginable". For example, the January 1845 issue had seven major articles; three were on literary subjects and the rest were on theology, politics, education, and natural history. The Eclectic also reviewed art exhibitions. Furthermore, important contemporary scientific and philosophical subjects were given extensive space. For example, the Oxford Movement
Oxford Movement
The Oxford Movement was a movement of High Church Anglicans, eventually developing into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose members were often associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of lost Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy...
was debated and Charles Darwin's
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
On the Origin of Species was reviewed. Basker writes that "in general, over the years the Eclectic showed remarkable tolerance for other religious groups—not only the various denominations of Protestants, but also Roman Catholics and Jews." Moreover, it steadfastly opposed slavery and supported social reform.