[Rarebooks] fa: THE MONTHLY REVIEW 1797-98 - Complete Run of 20 ISSUES in ORIG. WRAPS

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, Jan. 24. Details and images can be  
found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

Thanks yet again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A., CA USA

THE MONTHLY REVIEW; or, Literary Journal, Enlarged. Volumes XXIV-XXVII  
(September 1797 to December 1798), inclusive. With Appendixes. London:  
Printed for R. Griffiths; and Sold by T. Beckett, in Pall Mall,  
1797-98. Twenty issues, softcover 8vos (ca. 23 x 15 cm) in printed  
wraps; ca. 120-150 pp. each.
Volumes 24, 25, 26, and 27 of The Monthly Review for 1797 & 1798,  
complete, including the four Appendixes focusing primarily on Foreign  
Literature: an uninterrupted run of twenty separate numbers in their  
original printed blue paper wraps and stitched bindings, with all  
advertisements, etc., as first issued 212 years ago. Some tearing to  
the spines, bumping and dust-soiling to the untrimmed edges; some  
covers with a few short tears, creases and light foxing; corner  
missing from one cover; one Appendix lacking front cover; Oct. 1798  
issue lacking rear cover; occasional tanning and light spotting to the  
leaves; otherwise contents are sound, quite clean and bright, some  
leaves unopened. With the contemporary ownership signatures of P.  
[Paul] Methuen Esq. (Lord Methuen of Corsham Court, Wiltshire).

The Monthly Review (1749-1845), founded by the Nonconformist publisher  
Ralph Griffiths, was "the earliest Review of importance in English  
literature" and the first periodical in England to regularly offer  
reviews of books, though it wasn't until the mid-1780s that it truly  
evolved from the more established format of offering mere abstracts  
and excerpts from the works in question. Numbering among its  
contributors such writers as Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Holcroft,  
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Charles Burney, John Wolcot (Peter Pindar),  
William Gilpin, Richard Porson, William Taylor, and Alexander Hamilton  
of Edinburgh, it earned a reputation for hostility to Church and  
State. Nevertheless, it established "what was to be for one hundred  
years the standard type of periodical criticism." (see Walter Graham:  
English Literary Periodicals)