The Quarterly Review

The Quarterly Review was founded in 1809 as a liberal-conservative political and literary journal to combat the Edinburgh Review. While the Edinburgh Review espoused the ideas of the Whig Party and supported a laissez-faire economy, the Quarterly Review identified with the Tories and the gradual abolition of slavery.

The journal was not necessarily helpful in influencing actual government policy, but it quickly surpassed the Edinburgh Review in readership and exercised a strong influence over the opinion of the majority of the reading public. The same went for literary influence. In fact, the Quarterly Review was the journal that published the scathing review of Keats’ “Endymion” that Shelley blamed for his death. The publication printed influential reviews of Jane Austen’s work as well.

There were several reviews and articles published in 1811, the year Austen began writing Mansfield Park, that concern works about plantations and slavery in Jamaica and the East Indies.