Quarterly Review

Quarterly Review (1809–1967), was founded by John Murray as a Tory rival to the Whig Edinburgh Review. Sir W. Scott, who had been harshly reviewed in the Edinburgh, became an ardent supporter of the venture. The journal stood, politically, for the defence of the established order, Church, and Crown. The first editor, Gifford, brought with him several clever writers from the Anti-Jacobin, including Canning and Frere. The Quarterly, unlike the Edinburgh, supported the ‘Lake School’ and Byron, although it fiercely condemned Keats, Hunt, Hazlitt, Lamb, Shelley, and later Tennyson, Macaulay, Dickens and C. Brontë. Two of its more famous early articles were those of Scott in praise of J. Austen's Emma; and a review of Keats's ‘Endymion’, by J. W. Croker, which, according to the poet's friends, hastened Keats's death. Gifford was succeeded as editor in 1825 by Lockhart, who was in his turn followed by a distinguished line, including members of the Murray family. In the second half of the 19th cent. the Quarterly published the work of many notable writers and critics, including Bulwer-Lytton, Thackeray, Martineau, Borrow, M. Arnold, and Swinburne.