The Retrospective Review
Preface by Yasuo Deguchi
978 1 85196 494 9: 234x156mm: £1600.00/$2850.00
Availability: Japan: Maruzen
The Retrospective Review was founded in 1820 by Henry Southern. Unimpressed by the way in which publications such as the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review allowed their reviewers' prejudice to impinge on critical rigour, the Retrospective Review strove to be non-partisan and to consider each piece as if it were newly published, its previous reputation disregarded. All contributors were anonymous.
The periodical focused predominately on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature. The emphasis was on British books, but reviews of foreign works and translations of classical, modern Continental and Arabian works were also included. There were occasional thematic essays on topics such as witchcraft and 'the Prolongation of Age', regular reviews of travel books and women's writing, a high concentration of essays on the history of English drama, and regular reviews of biographies of notable clergymen and statesmen.
Given this scope, the periodical is a fascinating document of nineteenth-century literary criticism. This edition reproduces in facsimile all 18 volumes of the periodical: volumes 1-14, 1820-6; volumes 1 and 2 of the renamed Retrospective Review and Historical and Antiquarian Magazine, 1827-8; and volumes 1 and 2, renamed the Retrospective Review, consisting of Criticisms upon, Analysis of and Extracts from Curious, Valuable and Scarce Old Books, 1853-4. All original indexes are retained which consist of individual indexes to each volume, and a consolidated index of books reviewed in volumes 1-14.
Contents
Works reviewed include: Francis Bacon: Novum Organum and Letters; William Beckford: Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters and Thoughts on Hunting; Aphra Behn: Dramatic Writings; Thomas Carew: Poems; Margaret Cavendish: Selected Works; Geoffrey Chaucer: Works and Troilus and Criseyde, trans. into Latin by Kinaston; Colley Cibber: An Apology for the Life of Mr Colley Cibber, Comedian; William Cooper: translation of Homer; William Cowley: Works; Richard Crashaw: Poems; Daniel Defoe: Memoirs of a Cavalier and A Journal of the Plague Year; John Donne: Poems; John Dryden: Dramatic Works and Prose Works, English Political Songs and Satires; Richard Hakluyt: Historie of the West Indies; George Herbert: Poems; Thomas Hobbes: translation of Homer; Ben Jonson: Works; Richard Lovelace: Lucasta; John Mandeville: travel writing; Christopher Marlowe: Plays; Andrew Marvell, Works; Thomas Middleton: Plays; John Milton: History of Britain, Areopagitica and Poetical Works; Michel Montaigne: Essays; Thomas More, The Apology of Syr Thomas More; Thomas Nashe, Selected Works; Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin; Sir Walter Raleigh: Remains; Thomas Rymer: On Tragedy; Walter Scott: Poetry 'contained in the Novels, Tales and Romances of the Author of Waverly' and Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; Thomas Shadwell: Dramatic Works; William Shakespeare: Poetical Works; Philip Sidney: Arcadia and Defence of Poesy; Edmund Spenser: Minor Poems; John Suckling: Poems, Letters and Plays; Horace Walpole: Anecdotes of Painting in England; Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton: The Compleat Angler; Mary Wollstonecraft: Rights of Woman