ABSTRACT
In December 1864 George Eliot noted in her journal that Mr. Trollope and Mr. F. Chapman came to dinner and discussed a new periodical of which it was hoped that Lewes might become the editor. 1 It was planned as an attempt “to be for England what the Revue des Deux Mondes was for France,” that is, a national forum for responsible expression of a wide variety of opinion. 2 Besides Trollope and Frederic Chapman, who in 1864 had become head of the firm of Chapman & Hall, other supporters included Huxley, E. A. Freeman, Frederic Harrison, R. T. Burton, and Alfred Austin, as well as the less known Charles Waring and Danby Seymour. 3
