Introduction

“We must please to live, and therefore should live to please,” asserted William Hazlitt in his 1823 article “The Periodical Press,” an attempt to assuage—or possibly to intensify—contemporary anxieties about the expansion of periodical writing. “Therefore, let Reviews flourish—” Hazlitt added with a rhetorical flourish of his own, “let Magazines increase and multiply—let the Daily and Weekly Newspapers live for ever!” ¹ Each of the categories of publication identified by Hazlitt had already taken on a new lease of life during the first two decades of the nineteenth century, in what amounts to a series of paradigm shifts within British print culture. Substantial “Reviews” or reviewing periodicals, lighter and more miscellaneous magazines, and of course newspapers had already increased and multiplied during the eighteenth century, especially the 1790s, but three developments in particular helped to shape the distinctive periodical culture of the Romantic era.