ABSTRACT
Monthly Literary Recreations; or Magazine of General Information and Amusement ran for only three volumes (1806–1807). Virtually nothing is known about its editorial structure, if it had one. Byron, who contributed both the review of Wordsworth’s Poems, in Two Volumes (below) and a poem, “Stanzas to Jessy,” to the July 1807 issue, claims not to have known the editor or any of the contributors besides himself (see Byron to Elizabeth Pigot, August 2, 1807). He sent his poem directly to the publisher Crosby, who was the London correspondent of Ridge, Byron’s Newark publisher. Monthly magazines (the European Magazine, for example) tended at this period to be informally organized; the publisher often acted as editor and asked friends and correspondents to contribute whatever they pleased, selecting enough material to fill out each issue.
