ABSTRACT
The CHRISTIAN OBSERVER (1802–1874) was a monthly magazine founded by members of the Eclectic Society, who were liberal members of the Church of England committed to cooperation with the middle-class nonconformists. It soon became an organ of Evangelicals of the “Clapham Sect” including William Wilberforce and his colleagues, who were committed to the abolition of slavery in Britain’s colonies, while supporting British imperialism. Among the contributors to the journal that Francis E. Mineka calls the “most influential of the Church periodicals” were Josiah Pratt, its editor for the first three months, Zachary Macaulay (editor to 1816), Thomas Babington, Lord Teignmouth, and Hannah More, as well as a few non-Evangelicals. The Christian Observer, strong on Puritan moralism (including support of the Bowdlerized Shakespeare), seldom reviewed dramas or novels. The publisher of the Christian Observer was John Hatchard, who also published the quarterly British Review (q.v.).
