The Critical Review was first edited by Tobias Smollett from 1756 to 1763, and was contributed to by Samuel Johnson, David Hume, John Hunter, and Oliver Goldsmith, until 1817.
The Edinburgh printer Archibald Hamilton started publishing The Critical Review in 1756 with Tobias Smollett as its first editor, and mainly contained book reviews. These reviews were often long and fulsome, and used copious quotations. Still, the Tory and High Church perspectives of its contributors mentioned above was felt immensely in a time of Whig supremacy.
Because of a libel against Admiral Sir Charles Knowles in The Critical Review, Tobias Smollett was sentenced to a fine of £100 and three months in King's Bench Prison. In 1763 Smollett retired from the Review, but left it as a newspaper with far more influence than other newspapers of its time, attracting the philosophers and thinkers Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith and the Scots David Hume and John Hunter.
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or review:
“Much of what contrives to create critical moments in parenting stems from a fundamental misunderstanding as to what the child is capable of at any given age. If a parent misjudges a child’s limitations as well as his own abilities, the potential exists for unreasonable expectations, frustration, disappointment and an unrealistic belief that what the child really needs is to be punished.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“Reading any collection of a man’s quotations is like eating the ingredients that go into a stew instead of cooking them together in the pot. You eat all the carrots, then all the potatoes, then the meat. You won’t go away hungry, but it’s not quite satisfying. Only a biography, or autobiography, gives you the hot meal.”
—Christopher Buckley, U.S. author. A review of three books of quotations from Newt Gingrich. “Newtie’s Greatest Hits,” The New York Times Book Review (March 12, 1995)