SOURCE: Hayden, John O. “Attitudes, Policies, and Practices.” In The Romantic Reviewers 1802-1824, pp. 243-60. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

In the following excerpt, Hayden discusses the common features, editorial policies, and critical assumptions shared by the various literary reviews of the Romantic period.

Not even in the most expansive moments of generalizing would anyone familiar with the Romantic Reviews imagine that in attempting to ascertain and set forth common policies and practices of the reviewers he was speaking about all the Reviews, much less all the reviewers. The difficulties inherent in such a misconception are only too obvious. There are too many Reviews of too many different kinds; and there are too many different reviewers involved, each writing for periodicals which, as individual entities, are often inconsistent in policy and practice. Yet there are patterns of critical thought, policy, and practice that allow for generalizations, mostly in...