''The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art'' was a
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
weekly newspaper established by A. J. B. Beresford Hope in 1855.
The first editor was the ''
Morning Chronicle
''The Morning Chronicle'' was a newspaper founded in 1769 in London. It was notable for having been the first steady employer of essayist William Hazlitt as a political reporter and the first steady employer of Charles Dickens as a journalist. It ...
''s ex-editor
John Douglas Cook
John Douglas Cook (1808?–1868) was a Scottish journalist, known as the founding editor of the '' Saturday Review''.
Life
He was born at Banchory-Ternan in Aberdeenshire, probably in 1808. At an early age he obtained an appointment in India, qu ...
(1808?–1868), and many of the earlier contributors had worked on the ''Chronicle''. Cook was a Scotsman who had lived in India: he had a house in
Tintagel
Tintagel () or Trevena ( kw, Tre war Venydh, meaning ''Village on a Mountain'') is a civil parish and village situated on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, England. The village and nearby Tintagel Castle are associated with the legends surroundin ...
,
Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
, and is buried there. A stained-glass window in the parish church commemorates him. The political stance of the ''Saturday Review'' was Peelite liberal Conservatism. The paper, benefiting from the recent repeal of the Stamp Act, aimed to combat the political influence of ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
''. The first issue appeared on 3 November 1855.
Frank Harris
Frank Harris (14 February 1855 – 26 August 1931) was an Irish-American editor, novelist, short story writer, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day.
Born in Ireland, he emigrated to the United State ...
was editor from 1894 to 1898.
Contributors included
Dorothy Richardson
Dorothy Miller Richardson (17 May 1873 – 17 June 1957) was a British author and journalist. Author of ''Pilgrimage'', a sequence of 13 semi-autobiographical novels published between 1915 and 1967—though Richardson saw them as chapters of o ...
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope (; 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the '' Chronicles of Barsetshire'', which revolves ar ...
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
,
Eneas Sweetland Dallas
Eneas Sweetland Dallas (E. S. Dallas) (1828–1879) was a Scottish journalist and author.
Biography
E.S. Dallas was the elder son of John Dallas of Jamaica, a planter of Scottish parentage, and his wife Elizabeth ( née Baillie), the daughte ...
,
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic for the '' Saturday ...
,
Walter Bagehot
Walter Bagehot ( ; 3 February 1826 – 24 March 1877) was an English journalist, businessman, and essayist, who wrote extensively about government, economics, literature and race. He is known for co-founding the ''National Review'' in 1855 ...
,
James Fitzjames Stephen
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, 1st Baronet, KCSI (3 March 1829 – 11 March 1894) was an English lawyer, judge, writer, and philosopher. One of the most famous critics of John Stuart Mill, Stephen achieved prominence as a philosopher, law ...
Max Müller
Friedrich Max Müller (; 6 December 1823 – 28 October 1900) was a German-born philologist and Orientalist, who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life. He was one of the founders of the western academic disciplines of Indian ...
,
Guy Thorne
Guy Thorne was the pen name of Cyril Arthur Edward Ranger Gull (1875 – 9 January 1923), a prolific English journalist and novelist best known for his novel '' When It Was Dark: The Story of A Great Conspiracy'' (1903). He also wrote under the na ...
,
George Birkbeck Hill
George Birkbeck Norman Hill (7 June 1835 – 24 February 1903) was an English editor and author.
Life
He was the son of Arthur Hill, headmaster of Bruce Castle School, and was born at Bruce Castle, Tottenham, Middlesex. He dropped his third nam ...
,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhoo ...
,
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
and future Prime Minister
Lord Salisbury
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (; 3 February 183022 August 1903) was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen y ...
.
Germania est delenda
In the 1890s, the magazine published several articles that expressed an
anti-German sentiment
Anti-German sentiment (also known as Anti-Germanism, Germanophobia or Teutophobia) is opposition to or fear of Germany, its inhabitants, its culture, or its language. Its opposite is Germanophilia.
Anti-German sentiment largely began wit ...
, summed up in the quote ''Germania est delenda (Germany needs to be destroyed)'' which was modeled after Cato's "
Carthago delenda est
("Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed"), often abbreviated to ("Carthage must be destroyed"), is a Latin oratorical phrase pronounced by Cato the Censor, a politician of the Roman Republic. The phrase originates from deb ...
" (Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam).
Later years
Gerald Barry became editor in 1924. He resigned in 1930, refusing an order from the board of directors to support the
United Empire Party
The Empire Free Trade Crusade was a political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Lord Beaverbrook in July 1929 to press for the British Empire to become a free trade bloc.
The group was founded to oppose both the Labour minority ...
; his last issue roundly condemned the new party, while the first after his departure wholly endorsed it. Barry and much of the staff set up the rival ''Week-End Review'', which later merged with the ''
New Statesman
The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members ...
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
''
By the 1930s the ''Saturday Review'' was in decline and in 1933 was purchased by the eccentric
Lucy, Lady Houston
Dame Fanny Lucy Houston, Lady Houston, Baroness Byron ( Radmall; 8 April 1857 – 29 December 1936) was a British philanthropist, political activist and suffragist.
Beginning in 1933, she published the '' Saturday Review'', which was best kn ...
, with the intention of using it to promote her strongly nationalistic views on Britain and the Empire. Lady Houston was a hands-on proprietor who soon took over the editorship herself, despite the fact that she was in her late seventies. Running the paper from her home in Hampstead, or from her luxury yacht, the ''Liberty'', she attacked the politicians whom she thought responsible for the country's weakness – mainly Ramsay MacDonald,
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 186714 December 1947) was a British Conservative Party politician who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars, serving as prime minister on three occasions, ...
, and
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 until his resignation in 1957.
Achieving rapid promo ...
. She also took a strong line against the Soviet Union, believing Bolshevik influence to be responsible for many of the ills of the country and British Empire. When Lady Houston died in December 1936 the paper was continued for some months by a group of people who had worked for her. The ''Saturday Review'' closed in 1938.
References
*Bevington, M. M. (1941) ''The Saturday Review, 1855–1868: Representative Educated Opinion in Victorian England''. New York: Columbia University Press
*{{cite news
, title=Lady & Lion
, date=1933-11-27
, work=
Time Magazine
''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Mar ...