The
Quarterly Review was established by John Murray in 1809 as
a Tory rival to the Whig
supporting Edinburgh Review. The
idea for the journal came from Sir Walter Scott,
a Tory who had previously worked for Francis Jeffrey's Edinburgh
Review. The first editor was William Gifford and contributors
included Robert Southey and Tory
politicians George Canning, and the
Marquis of Salisbury.
The Quarterly Review stood politically for preserving the status
quo. The journal was very hostile to the work of writers in favour
of political reform. Writers such as Percy
Bysshe Shelley, Leigh Hunt, William
Hazlitt, Thomas Babington Macaulay
and Charles Dickens all received hostile
reviews in the journal, whereas the work of Jane
Austin and Sir Walter Scott was warmly
praised. It was alleged that John Wilson Croker's savage review of
John Keat's Endymion contributed
to the poet's early death. The Quarterly Review ceased publication
in 1967.
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