[James Augustine Stothert ], from ‘Living Novelists', The Rambler

The Rambler was a Roman Catholic journal, now a monthly, edited by Richard Simpson; prominent Catholics closely associated with it included J. H. Newman and Lord Acton (see No. 123). Stothert (1817–57?), a Scottish priest, was a convert to Roman Catholicism. The books reviewed with Bleak House were Thackeray’s Esmond, Lytton’s My Life, Lady Georgiana Fullerton’s Lady Bird, and Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.