ABSTRACT
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818); review by John Wilson Croker, Quarterly Review, XVIII (Jan. 1818), 379–385. Scott had intended (as he told Murray) to review Frankenstein for the Quarterly, but Blackwood’s Magazine (q.v.) had solicited the review instead. Had that positive review appeared in the Quarterly, with Shelley as the supposed author, Gifford might have been forced (on grounds of consistency) to have toned down later attacks on Shelley – and thus changed literary history.
