Quarterly Review
literary and political periodical (London, 1809-1967)
The Quarterly Review was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by London publishing house John Murray. It ceased publication in 1967. It was referred to as The London Quarterly Review, as reprinted by Leonard Scott, for an American edition.
Early years
Initially, the Quarterly was set up primarily to counter the influence on public opinion of the Edinburgh Review. Its first editor, William Gifford, was appointed by George Canning, at the time Foreign Secretary, later Prime Minister.
Early contributors included Secretaries of the Admiralty John Wilson Croker and Sir John Barrow, Poet Laureate Robert Southey, poet-novelist Sir Walter Scott, Italian exile Ugo Foscolo, Gothic novelist Charles Robert Maturin, and the essayist Charles Lamb.
Under Gifford, the journal took the Canningite liberal-conservative position on matters of domestic and foreign policy, if only inconsistently. It opposed major political reforms, but it supported the gradual abolition of slavery, moderate law reform, humanitarian treatment of criminals and the insane, and the liberalizing of trade. In a series of articles in its pages, Southey advocated a progressive philosophy of social reform. Because two of his key writers, Scott and Southey, were opposed to Catholic emancipation, Gifford did not permit the journal to take a clear position on that issue.
“Quarterly Review” enters the record as literary and political periodical (London, 1809-1967). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Quarterly, Review and literary can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Quarterly Review” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Quarterly, Review and literary provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2441261. VIAF identifies the subject as 317149413. The Library of Congress control number is no89006738. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1809 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Quarterly Review” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.