7 volume set. Vols. 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 14. John Russell Smith, 1821 and on. 8vo. Full Leather. Original boards with modern spine and end papers. Lovely spines, see our pictures. Internally excellent. Ships daily.
According to Yasuo Deguchi:
The Retrospective Review was founded in 1820 by Henry Southern. Unimpressed by the way in which publications such as the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review allowed their reviewers' prejudice to impinge on critical rigour, the Retrospective Review strove to be non-partisan and to consider each piece as if it were newly published, its previous reputation disregarded. All contributors were anonymous.
The periodical focused predominately on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature. The emphasis was on British books, but reviews of foreign works and translations of classical, modern Continental and Arabian works were also included. There were occasional thematic essays on topics such as witchcraft and 'the Prolongation of Age', regular reviews of travel books and women's writing, a high concentration of essays on the history of English drama, and regular reviews of biographies of notable clergymen and statesmen.
Given this scope, the periodical is a fascinating document of nineteenth-century literary criticism. This edition reproduces in facsimile all 18 volumes of the periodical: volumes 1-14, 1820-6; volumes 1 and 2 of the renamed Retrospective Review and Historical and Antiquarian Magazine, 1827-8; and volumes 1 and 2, renamed the Retrospective Review, consisting of Criticisms upon, Analysis of and Extracts from Curious, Valuable and Scarce Old Books, 1853-4. All original indexes are retained which consist of individual indexes to each volume, and a consolidated index of books reviewed in volumes 1-14. |
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