The National Review: A Nine Year Run

The National Review was a quarterly periodical started by Unitarian minister James Martineau. Besides Unitarian topics, the periodical ran articles on literature, politics, and social affairs, featuring essays from such influential figures as Matthew Arnold, Coventry Patmore, and David Brewster. The editors, R. H. Hutton and Walter Bagehot, attempted to reach a wide readership while keeping their Unitarian supporters happy. This balance proved difficult to support in the long run, and after nine years, most of their sponsors left to begin backing the Theological Review, a newer and more strictly Unitarian periodical. Several years before its demise, the journal published a review of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh that reflected the author's Unitarian sympathies. 

To read a related blog post, click here: https://blogs.baylor.edu/19crs/2020/01/17/reactions-to-aurora-leighs-christianity-in-contemporary-book-reviews/

Associated Place(s)

Event date:

Jul 1855 to Nov 1864