Introduction

Abstract

The Edinburgh Review placed William Hazlitt’s celebrated essay ‘The Periodical Press’ back to back with a long essay on the British Museum in the May, 1823, issue. Hazlitt claims that the 1820s are a ‘Critical age’, when widely diffused periodical criticism takes on the prominence that used to belong exclusively to poetry, novels and drama; he notes with regret that ‘periodical criticism [has] too often [been] made the engine of party-spirit and personal invective’ (212, 220). ‘The Periodical Press’ offers a pithy description of each of the leading journals, and discusses the ideological animosities and the limitations of political debate which many periodical publications reflected in the 1810s and 1820s. Immediately following Hazlitt’s piece is an article that tells us no less about the British public sphere in the 1820s: the Edinburgh’s nineteen-page review of the Annual Report of the British Museum’s Trustees. The reviewer declares straight away that:

Our object in placing these publications at the head of this article, is not to enter into any examination of their contents; but to call the attention of the public to some circumstances connected with the present state of our great NATIONAL MUSEUM, which appear to demand an early consideration. (379)

The museum is an item of interest in itself, and its review echoes and amplifies Hazlitt as a part of Francis Jeffrey’s literary and political project.