Jennie Batchelor: ‘The Lady᾿s Magazine’ (1770–1832) and the Making of Literary History. (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022.

• Stefanie Lethbridge

This is a book that brings delight to the heart of the print culture historian. Jennie Batchelor sets herself high stakes: she wants to “make it harder for future literary histories to dismiss the periodical” and in particular the “extraordinary contribution” of the long-running and very successful Lady’s Magazine (1770–1832) to women’s reading and writing during the Romantic period. Batchelor’s main conclusion that the Lady’s Magazine is “unRomantic” chimes in with ongoing critical trends in Romanticism studies, which have tried to dislodge the critical focus on the role of (male) authors, volume publication and exclusive notions of the literary.