Early Reviews of English Poets

s was marked by the publication, on May 1, 1749, of the first number of the Monthly Review, destined to continue through ninety-six years of varying fortune and to reach its 249th volume. It bore the subtitle: A Periodical Work giving an Account, with Proper Abstracts of, and Extracts from, the New Books, Pamphlets, etc., as they come out. By Several Hands. The publisher was Ralph Griffiths, who continued to manage the review until his death in 1803. It seems remarkable that this periodical which set the norm for half a century should have appeared not only without preface or advertisement, but likewise without patronage or support of any kind. From the first it reviewed poetry, fiction and drama as well as the customary classes of applied literature, and thus appealed primarily to the public rather than, like most of its predecessors, to the learned. Its politics were Whig and its theology Non-conformist. Griffiths was not successful at first, but determined to achieve popularity by enlisti