The Analytical Review was a periodical established in London in 1788 by the publisher Joseph Johnson (pictured) and the writer Thomas Christie. Part of the Republic of Letters, it provided summaries and analyses of new publications and acted as a forum for radical political and religious ideas. Although it aimed at impartiality, its articles were often critical of the British government and supportive of the French revolutionaries. While the journal had low circulation numbers for its day, it still influenced popular opinion and was feared by the administration of William Pitt the Younger. Government supporters founded the Anti-Jacobin Review in 1797, which criticized the radical politics of the Analytical and monitored it for unpatriotic and irreligious sentiments. The Analytical Review focused on politics, philosophy, natural history, and literature. Its prominent writers (who signed their work with pseudonymous initials) included the poet William Cowper, the moralist William Enfield, the physician John Aikin, and the polemicist Mary Wollstonecraft. It suspended publication in December 1798 after Johnson was convicted of seditious libel and other contributors had died or retired. (Full article...)
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