ABSTRACT
‘Annus Mirabilis’ is the second parody of a literary journal in Warreniana, this time of the then highly successful New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal (1821–36). The New Monthly, which was generally liberal in its politics, was founded by Henry Colburn. It published several significant literary figures, notably Thomas Campbell (the journal’s nominal editor), 1 Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb and the parodists P. G. Patmore and Horace Smith. Whilst its ‘Historical Register’ carried the usual journalistic accounts of political events, lists of births, marriages and deaths and announcements of forthcoming publications, it was the ‘Original Papers’ which defined the tone of the magazine. These included much ephemeral material about contemporary London manners and fashions. As Marilyn Butler has written, ‘The New Monthly . . . seemed to exist to catch “fashion as it flies”. It was indeed so preoccupied with the epiphenomena of urban social life and amusements that it seemed to live by them and for them, achieving the highest monthly sale for the highest price.’ 2 The magazine included a great deal of humorous writing, notably whimsical essays (with such titles as ‘Advantages of having no Head’ 3 and ‘Reflections on Plum-Pudding’) 4 and comic verse. The account of the New Monthly in Blackwood’s, though highly, and unsurprisingly, 5 antipathetic, is accurate in many respects:
I have been looking occasionally, and rather carelessly, over Campbell’s Magazine, ever since its commencement; sometimes amused by light playful humour, though even that is local, transitory, and merely suited to the atmosphere of fashion; sometimes pleased with poetry, at most graceful and elegant; often wearied with frivolity, which is revolting to a sound masculine taste; but always dissatisfied with the prevalent tone of sentiment and opinion that runs through the whole work. 6
