Murray, John, publishers -- Quarterly Review
£400
Books, Maps, Manuscripts & Photographs
Auction: 26 May 2010 at 12:00 BST
Description
London: John Murray, 1809-1821. 25 volumes, 8vo, contemporary half calf, spines gilt, head of six spines slightly chipped
Footnote
The Quarterly Review was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 primarily to counter the influence on public opinion of The Edinburgh Review. The review espoused a Canningite liberal-conservative position and opposed major political reforms. Two of its key writers were Walter Scott and the poet laureate Robert Southey. In an infamous article in volume XIX (April & December 1818) John Wilson Croker savagely reviewed Endymion and attacked Keats for his association with Leigh Hunt and the so-called Cockney School of poetry. Shelley blamed Croker's article for bringing about the death of the seriously-ill poet, 'snuffed out', in Byron's ironic phrase, 'by an article'.