A Century of Literary Criticism: A Large-Scale Analysis of the Monthly Review

Abstract

ABSTRACT For almost 100 years, the Monthly Review documented literary history in Britain through its efforts to review every published text. Appearing monthly from 1749 to 1844, the periodical sheds light not only on texts published during this time, many of which are now “lost” to scholarly analysis, but also on the original critical discourse surrounding these texts. Analysis of the Monthly Review presents an opportunity to discern influential trends in publishing and literary criticism, yet close examination of the periodical proves formidable due to its size. In this paper, we use statistical topic modeling to “read” the over 140,000 pages of the Monthly Review, revealing prominent themes and discourses in the corpus. In particular, we highlight the periodical’s presentation of genre differences and its privileging of specific discourses and frameworks of critical evaluation, all of which served to shape contemporary readers’ perceptions of the rapidly expanding literary sphere.