Quarterly Review

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Quarterly Review was a review journal started by John Murray, the celebrated London publisher, in March 1809 (though it bore a title page date of February), in rivalry with the Edinburgh Review, which had been seven years in possession of the field, and was exerting, as he judged, an evil influence on public opinion; in this enterprise he was seconded by George Canning, Robert Southey, and Walter Scott, the more cordially that the Edinburgh Review had given offence to the latter by its criticism of "Marmion." It was founded in the Canningite Tory interest for the defence of Church and State, and it had William Gifford for its first editor, while the contributors included, besides Southey and Scott, all the ablest literary celebrities on the Tory side, of which the most zealous and frequent was John Wilson Croker.

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.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.