ABSTRACT
La BELLE ASSEMBLÉE; or, Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine (1806-1832) was a highly successful venture of the publishing magnate John Bell (1745-1831) and established a pattern for a magazine directed at fashionable ladies, emphasizing fashion, social news, and reviews of drama and belle lettres. (In 1823 G. and W. B. Whittaker became the publishers.) The reviews — as might be expected in a magazine without intellectual pretensions — tend to be long on excerpts and plot summaries, short on literary theorizing and practical criticism.
