PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
“There is no wealth but life” (John Ruskin, Unto This Last)
The Quarterly Review was founded in 1809, to act as a counterbalance to the Whig Edinburgh Review.The founders included George Canning (later a Conservative Prime Minister), Robert Southey (later Poet Laureate) and the novelist Sir Walter Scott, and it was published by the eminent London publisher John Murray. It became one of the 19th century’s most influential journals.
Its first editor was William Gifford, a former seaman and cobbler’s apprentice from Derbyshire. A benefactor paid for Gifford to go to college (he graduated BA from Oxford in 1782). He made a name as a satirist, and was appointed editor of Canning’s Anti-Jacobin in 1797. He rapidly became the best-known Tory polemicist of his day, and a noted translator of Juvenal. A later editor was John Gibson Lockhart, Walter Scott’s son-in-law, whose Life of Scott is widely regarded as one of the classic biographies.
The Review launched the career of Jane Austen, and contributor John Wilson Croker penned such a blistering review of John Keats’ Endymion that it was actually blamed for his death – “snuffed out by an article”, as Lord Byron expressed it. As well as Scott, Southey, Canning, Gifford and Croker, QR contributors included the Duke of Wellington, Lord Salisbury, William Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, George Borrow, John Ruskin, Ugo Foscolo, Henry James, John Buchan – and innumerable other cultural arbiters.
The Quarterly Review was revived in 2007, under the aegis of former Conservative MP Sir Richard Body, who is Chairman of the Editorial Board. It appeared as a print journal between Spring 2007 and Autumn 2011 – PDFs of all issues are available at our Archive page – but like many other journals has migrated to the internet.
The present Editor is Derek Turner, the Deputy Editor Dr. Leslie Jones, the American Editor Prof. Mark G. Brennan and the Australian editor Edwin Dyga. Stuart Millson is Classical Music Editor.
Each issue contains a mixture of in-depth political essays on all the most important and controversial subjects, written by leading intellectuals and opinion-formers. Our writers have included leading academics and public figures as well as a range of new writers.
- Jillian Becker
- Senator Cory Bernardi
- Sir Richard Body
- Prof. Archie Brown
- Dr. Frank Ellis
- Prof. Paul Gottfried
- Prof. Ronald J. Granieri
- Niels Hav
- Prof. Richard Heinberg
- Anton Kannemeyer
- Prof. Patrick Keeney
- Roy Kerridge
- Prof. Michael Levin
- Dr. Stoddard Martin
- Ilana Mercer
- Prof. Ezra Mishan
- Horatio Morpurgo
- Prof. Anthony O’Hear
- Prof. Kirby Olson
- Rev. John Papworth
- Rep. Ron Paul
- Tito Perdue
- Prof. Robert Plomin
- Sir Julian Rose
- Prof. Kenneth Royce Moore
- Kirkpatrick Sale
- Catharine Savage Brosman
- Prof. Rupert Sheldrake
- Kazuo Shii
- Ann Stevenson
- The Lord Sudeley
- Taki Theodoracopulos
- Rt. Rev. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury
- Prof. Glenn Wilson
There are also book reviews, features on music, film and classic books, and poetry, plus rare articles from the QR archives.
The aims of the revived QR are the same as that of its forebear – to provide counter-intuitive writing for people who like to think.
Hello, I’m from Brazil, Master on Literary Studies. I’m specially interested in an article about Emma (Jane Austen), writen in 1939 by Sir Walter Scott. Could you please help me? Is it published in any number of this Magazine? If so, in which? How can one have access to it?
Thanks
M. Esther Torinho
Hello
I was wanting to know if it is possible to get back issues of July 1871 and the last issue of 1874. Thanks for your help.
Kind regards
Stephen Kilpatrick
Finally found something on the ‘Net which redeems this medium. Tired of all the fatuous US-sourced conspiracy nonsense & faux Odinism. Thanx QR!
I liked the article on Zwieg but wondered whether I counted as being petit-bourgois? Regarding your photo above: next time you have a shave, stand closer to the razor.
Love to Amanda,
Roger.
I think everyone is petit-bourgeois by his standards!
You seem moderately obsessed by my personal grooming, or lack thereof…
Greetings, Andrew Lawler here, a science journalist. I’m attempting to access articles in the Quarterly Review from the 1840s and 1850s by Edmund Saul Dixon and Edward Blyth(e). I’m on a deadline–can you help? Thank you.
Hello, Andrew. I’m sorry to say we don’t have access to the back issues, which were never reprinted and are consequently rare. When we need to see an old article, like everyone else we need to go to the British Library or one of the London club libraries. Have you contacted the British Library?
We wish to read the valuable cultural, literal magazine QUARTERLY REVIEW regularly.
This priceless publication is not available here to read and see.
I humbly request you that please put this important library’s address in your complimentary mailing list of the magazine. Please send the publication, one copy each,
to the library regularly (through sea mail–surface mail)
Expecting a special consideration and favourable response from you…..
Address: The Librarian,
SOUTH INDIAN CENTRAL PUBLIC LIBRARY,
Elluvila- P.O.,, Karakkonam- 695504, Kerala, S.INDIA.
—–Sunny Stephen (Librarian)
We have many thousands of original printed articles from the Quarterly Review and similar journals for sale that may help with your researches if you are having trouble accessing a library collection.
How – or where – can I find issues from October 1821 to September 1824 please ?
Thanks.
Please my I have the source/reference for your cartoon “Time is – Time was”.
Thanks
Hello, and apologies for the delay in responding. The cartoon is an unattributed 17th C. representation (from an old book of mine) of Bacon’s supposed experiments with “The Brazen Head of Prophecy”, which according to alchemical myth he manufactured in his laboratory in Stamford, Lincolnshire. The story goes that he was called away just as his experiments were about to bear fruit and the Head “come alive”, so he left in charge an apprentice who failed to fetch him when the thing began to speak. It spoke three times, with long gaps in between – “Time Was”, then “Time Is” and lastly “Time Past”, upon which it burst into flame and was consumed. A lot of nonsense, obviously, but a colourful and resonant piece of 16th C. folklore, which hopefully evokes the QR’s identity as a journal that is concerned with culture, but also with current affairs and futurology
Please help me to sign in
Hello. What seems to be the problem exactly? You don’t need to sign in to anything in order to be able to post comments. If you like, e-mail me at editor@quarterly-review.org Best wishes, Derek Turner (Editor)