Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1976 Early Evaluation of the Novel: Periodical Reviews of Mid- Eighteenth-Century London Karen Jo Ann Koenigs Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Koenigs, Karen Jo Ann, "Early Evaluation of the Novel: Periodical Reviews of Mid-Eighteenth-Century London" (1976). Dissertations. 1560. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/1560 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1976 Karen Jo Ann Koenigs EARLY EVALUATION OF THE NOVEL: PERIODICAL REVIEWS OF MID-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON by Karen Jo Ann Koenigs A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Loyola University of Chicago In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 1975 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There is too little space here to name the many people who helped me in this undertaking, but the list begins with my friends among the Dominican Sisters of Edmonds, Washington. In particular, I thank Sister Kathleen Logan for her patient assurance and Sister Corinne Epps whose typing skills and generous moral support brought me through the final labor. I am deeply indebted to my director, Dr. Douglas White, for his candid criticisms and remarkable understand­ ing; to Dr. Eileen Baldeshwiler and Dr. John Shea for their helpful corrnnents, and to the late Rev. Carl J. Stratman whose attention to the details of research was inspirational. Particular acknowledgment should be given to The Newberry Library, Chicago, for both the excellent periodical holdings and the friendly atmosphere for scholarship the staff and readers supply. Finally, I dedicate this piece to my parents, Eva and Clete Koenigs, who have never doubted in me. ii VITA Karen Jo Ann Koenigs was born in Pasco, Washington on November 6, 1936. She completed her elementary and secondary education in Seattle parochial schools, graduating from Holy Angels High School in June, 1954. In September, 1954, she entered the religious order of the Dominican Sisters, Congregation of the Holy Cross, now in Edmonds, Washington, with whom she began her college studies under the auspices of Seattle University. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Holy Names College, Spokane, in July, 1960 and did graduate work in speech and hearing therapy at the University of Washington, Seattle, while she taught in elementary and secondary schools in Washington State. She began her graduate studies in literature at Loyola University in September, 1964, as an NDEA Fellow in Literary Criticism. In September, 1968, she was awarded an Arthur J. Schmitt Doctoral Scholarship to continue her studies. Ms. Koenigs has been teaching at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, since September, 1969. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii VITA iii INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter I. THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, 1740 TO 1767 . 6 II. THE LONDON MAGAZINE: 1740 TO 1767 . 69 III. THE MONTHLY REVIEW: 1749 TO 1767 115 IV. THE CRITICAL' REVIEW: 1756 TO 1767 . 185 CONCLUSION 254 BIBLIOGRAPHY 261 APPENDICES 269 A. References to Novels in the Magazines between 1740 and 1767 . 270 B. Number of Novels and Plays Treated by the Reviews per Year . 277 c. First Appearances of Evaluative Words Expressing Emotion . 281 iv INTRODUCTION The primary objective of this study is to determine the concept or concepts of the novel held by the reviewers in London periodicals between 1740 and 1767. I will describe their notions about the nature and function of the novel, the evolving standards by which they judged it, and their techniques for dealing with the novel as an indepen­ dent genre. Since few of these critical definitions are explicitly stated in the periodicals, the standards for judgment and understanding must be synthesized from scat- tered remarks on particular novels. As a useful comparison, I have also screened the reviews of drama, in the same selected periodicals, in order to determine the basis for critical evaluations applied to a literary form with a long history. The co!Tl,non terminology and similar approaches in these contemporary reviews of both novels and plays cannot be ignored, and it was part of the original thesis of this study that early criticism of the novel was directly influenced by the standards used for judging drama. However, this hypothesis had to be modified, and comperison of later reviewers' opinions of the drama and the novel shows the process by which the concept of the novel 1 2 and the critical modes of approaching the genre differen­ tiated from the principles associated with the drama. Existing scholarship concerning the early reception of the novel in periodical reviews usually stresses the role of criticism in shaping the novel. In The History, from 1 1700 to 1800, of English Criticism of Prose Fiction, Joseph G. Heidler drew from many sources "to show the effect of the growth of criticism of the novel upon its structure and technique" (p. 15). Only a very small portion of this ambitious undertaking was drawn from periodical literature. Robert D. Mayo 2 concentrated on British periodicals to investigate the kinds of fiction they contain and the atti­ tudes towards this fiction. Besides the larger time period, his study differs from mine because his material is chiefly the fiction found in magazines and not the reviews. Edmund P. Dandridge3 studied the criticism in periodicals between 1700 and 1752 to assess the contribution of the periodical critics to the development and acceptance of literary criticism by the general reading public. His focus is on criticism as a genre and not on the development of the novel. luniversity . of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, vol. 13 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1928). 2The English Novel in the Magazines, 1740-1815 (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1962). 311 Literary Criticism in British Periodicals to the Mid-Eighteenth Century" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1959). 3 In two separate articles, Claude E. Jones4 surveys the novel and the drama as seen in the first thirty years of the Critical Review to discover public reception of the two genres. In neither case does he attempt a chronological breakdown but uses a topical outline and treats the entire period as a single block. Some of the generalizations he forms are consistent with my findings, but his work does little to integrate the Critical Review with the criticism of other publications. Therefore, he does not observe how the Critical Review often differs from the other publications in its assessment of the novel. William Park5 uses both the Monthly and Critical reviews, indiscriminately, to show that "critics were very much in touch with their times and that no critical lag existed between the understanding of the reviewers and the innovations of a new generation of novelists" (p. 35). He focuses on the shifts in emphasis from nature and verisi- militude to feeling, and from morality to propriety. Though it is helpful, the seven ~rrd one-half-page article does ./ oversimplify the tren~of criticism of the novel by starkly contrasting isolated passages before and after 1760 and by I .:+"The English Novel: A Critical View, 1756-1785," fil& 19 (1958): 147-159 and 213-224; "Dramatic Criticism in the Critical Review, 1756-1785," f:1ill. 20 (1959): 18-26 and 133-144. 511Change in the Criticism of the Novel after 1760," fQ. 46 (1967): 34-41. 4 giving little indication of the slighter and more gradual nuances of change. The four periodicals selected for the present analysis are written by and for a large sector of the read­ ing and writing public. The Gentleman's Magazine originated as an eighteenth-century Reader's Digest, culling items from the leading publications, but it eventually developed its own style and departments of information which included reviews of books and plays. It became the largest­ circulating magazine in British history and continued publi­ cation well into the nineteenth century. The London Magazine was an outright imitator of the Gentleman's Magazine but it appealed to a slightly lower class of reader. The Monthly Review, begun in 1749, was the first journal dedi­ cated solely to informing the public of the contents of the hundreds of books invading the booksellers' shops. The Critical Review, starting seven years later, was more selective than its prototype, and it also exhibited a greater refinement of critical method. The usefulness of selecting periodicals to estimate the contemporary attitudes of the reading public towards the novel should be made quite clear. First of all, they repre­ sent a relatively stable continuum in which gradual change can easily be perceived. With sporadic publications we are not only uncertain of the readership but are in danger of 5 interpreting the enthusiasm of the minute as more significant or permanent than it actually was. Secondly, we have no literary source closer to the people who bought (or borrowed) and read the early novels than the reviewer who recommended them. How these reviewers addressed their audiences, what roles they assumed, their choice of words, their arrangement of ideas within their essays, and what principles of criticism they applied tell us something about the general knowledge and taste of the reading public. We may in fact discover that the practical use of certain critical concepts precedes their solidifica­ tion in the works of major writers and philosophers. We discover, for example, that the London Magazine reviewers described novels in terms of the emotional sympathy they evoke long before they use the term "sympathy" or "sentiment" (with an emotional connotation) or before Adam Smith's publication on The Theory of Moral Sentiments.