ABSTRACT
The LITERARY CHRONICLE and Weekly Review was a London weekly published on Saturdays from 1819 through 1829 (with a provincial edition, 1819–1824, entitled Country Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review). After ten volumes, the Literary Chronicle, a more liberal imitator and rival of the Literary Gazette, merged with the new liberal weekly called Athenaeum (1828–1921). The reviews in the Literary Chronicle lack extended praise and blame characteristic of many periodicals. The reviews here are heavily weighted with summaries and/or excerpts designed to familiarize readers with the main aspects of current publications. Besides enabling the public to make their own value judgments, such reviews may have served a certain class of readers as a pony from which they could converse about the latest books without having ever read them.
