ABSTRACT
First published in The Monthly Repository, Enlarged Series, I, July 1837, pp. 1–2. The Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature was established in 1806 under the editorship of Robert Aspland (1782–1845; DNB). It was a Unitarian journal devoted to religious and political dissent, with strong links to the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and little actual interest in literature. In 1828 the editorship passed to William Johnson Fox, who transformed the journal three years later by shortening the title to simply The Monthly Repository, and shifting the emphasis from theology to political and social reform, with a much stronger focus on literary criticism. But Fox could not make it prosper. In July 1836 he hired Richard Henry Horne (1803–84; DNB) as editor, but the arrangement brought no greater success, and in the spring of 1837 he gave The Monthly Repository to Hunt as a free gift.
