ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the state of periodical reviewing left something to be desired. Some of the more outstanding eighteenth-century monthlies, it is true, were still in existence; both the venerable Monthly Review and the Critical Review had survived and were responsible critical organs. More recently established periodicals, the British Critic and the Antijacobin Review and Magazine, had a political raison d’être, but on the whole they provided competent appraisals of non-political works. There were, as well, magazines, such as the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Monthly Magazine, which had short but serious reviewing sections. And yet, although it is perhaps unfair to compare the state of the reviewing periodicals as it existed in 1800 with that existing a mere fifteen years later, in the heyday of reviewing, nevertheless, if the comparison is made, something unmistakably is missing in reviewing at the turn of the century.
