Analytical Review
The Analytical Review was a periodical begun in 1788 by Joseph Johnson and Thomas Christie.[1] The Analytical Review was intended to provoke debate on current issues and to provide a forum for radical political and religious ideas. A gadfly publication, its articles were often critical of the British government, and supportive of the American and French revolutions. Its conservative counterpart and nemesis was the Anti-Jacobin Review. Its publication was suspended in December 1798, following the deaths of Christie and Wollstonecraft in 1796 and 1797, respectively, the conviction of Johnson for sedition in 1798 and the retirement of other contributing editors.
Anti-Jacobin Review
The self-styled nemesis of the Analytical Review was the Anti-Jacobin Review, a loyalist periodical begun in November 1797 by William Gifford at the suggestion of George Canning, with the tacit encouragement of the William Pitt administration.[1] The chief editor and writer was John Richards Green (writing under the pseudonym John Gifford), together with Andrew Bisset. The Anti-Jacobin Review published a regular feature, "The Reviewers Reviewed", which analyzed the "Jacobin" reviews to identify bias and errors. The editor gloried in his role of destroying the Analytical Review
The other object of our immediate attacks, the Analytical Review, has received its death-blow, and we have more reason to congratulate ourselves upon the share which we have had in producing its dissolution, than it would be expedient here to unfold.
— John Richards Green, in "Prefatory Address to the Reader", Anti-Jacobin Review (1798), 1, pp. iv–v
A representative quotation from the Anti-Jacobin Review suffices to clarify its perspective
Does he imagine that we do not know that the proprietor of the Analytical Review is himself under prosecution for selling this same pamphlet of Mr. Wakefield's? It is not the prosecution of Mr. Cuthell, then, but the prosecution of Mr. JOHNSON, that excites the indignation of these venal and contemptible critics, as well as that of the whole party, who are bursting with spite, and thirsting for revenge. It is by his orders to men whom he pays for scribbling in his miserable Review, that every writer who exposes the defects, as they are delicately termed, of Mr. Wakefield's pamphlet, is abused in the most scurrilous and indiscriminate manner. We advise, therefore, these critics, in future, to throw off a mask which will no longer conceal their object, and boldly, if they dare, pronounce an eulogy on the loyalty of this favorite publisher and friend of the PRIESTLEYS, the DARWINS, the GODWINS, and other unprejudiced authors, who have kindly taken upon themselves, for the last twenty years, the important task of enlightening the public mind.
— John Richards Green, in the Anti-Jacobin Review (July 1798), 1, pp. 84–85
Brief resurrection
After its suspension with the December 1798 issue, the periodical lay dormant until it was briefly revived as The Analytical Review (New Series) in the first half of 1799. It was printed and sold by T. Hurst trading in Paternoster Row, apparently without any connection to Johnson or the prior reviewers.[1] Unlike its predecessor, the new series was rather cautious; it reviewed relatively uncontroversial works and its articles were unsigned. This series lasted but a few months.