Breaking the Code of Anonymity: The Case of the 'Spectator', 1861-1897

Abstract

In his still indispensable article, Oscar Maurer stated nearly forty years ago that although the Victorian rule of anonymity in periodical writing began to be broken in the I860s it was not broken by the leading weeklies: 'The Spectator remained anonymous throughout the century, as did the Athenaeum. . . The Saturday Review also maintained a rigid system of anonymity until the nineties, when under Frank Harris it began to publish dramatic criticisms signed G.B.S. and Max.' The conviction of the Saturday Review from its founding in 1855 to I894 was that anonymity was conducive to the public interest: scores and scores of men of affairs who had full-time professions or vocations could publish in its pages their opinions and judgements without fear of disparagement or reprisal.2 The conductors of the Athenaeum took a similar view; Charles Wentworth Dilke, its editor from 183o to 1864, perceived anonymity as a safeguard of independent reviewing. Like John Douglas Cook of the Saturday Review, Dilke kept close watch over the secrets of authorship: Not only were the reviews unsigned so that the author or publisher could not identify the critic and so exert influence on him, but Dilke never signed anything that he himself wrote, and he carefully refrained from putting the names of reviewers of books written by members of the Athenaeum staff in the marked office file. Nor were the sacred secrets of authorship of reviews permitted to go out of the office.3