Reviewing and Writing: Sex and Gender

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Victorian periodicals came out at quarterly, monthly, and weekly intervals. The four main quarterlies, in order of importance, were the Quarterly Review, the Edinburgh Review, the Westminster Review and the North British Review.1 The first three of these prestigious periodicals pre-date many Victorian journals: their respective starting dates were 1809, 1803 and 1824. In general, as Houghton states (1957), quarterlies were considered “weightier and more authoritative” than monthlies (“Periodical literature”, p. 17). All four of these journals could be classified as literary and general; Kathleen Tillotson singles out the Westminster Review and the North British Review as vehicles for serious novel criticism, but all four periodicals contained reviews and/or articles on the state of contemporary literature. They were also four of the twenty-three periodicals stocked by Mudie’s Circulating Library. The seriousness with which these quarterlies assumed their responsibility as shapers of public opinion can be seen in Walter Bagehot’s remark about the Edinburgh: “The modern man must be told what to think — shortly no doubt, but he must be told” (quoted in Houghton, “Periodical literature”, p. 7).KeywordsLiterary CriticismWoman WriterLiterary WomanWoman QuestionSaturday ReviewThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.