What is significant about the review?

Moving away from newspapers, let’s now focus on magazines. Now the first magazine was a little periodical called the Review and it was started in London in 1704. It looked a lot like the newspapers of the time, but in terms of its contents it was much different. Newspapers were concerned mainly with news events but the Review focused on important domestic issues of the day, as well as the policies of the government. Now, in England at the time, people could still be thrown in jail for publishing articles that were critical of the king. And that is what happened to Daniel Defoe. He was the outspoken founder of the review. Defoe actually wrote the first issue of the Review from prison. You see, he had been arrested because of his writings that criticized the policies of the Church of England, which was headed by the king. After his release, Defoe continued to produce the Review and the magazine started to appear on a more frequent schedule, about three times a week. It didn’t take long for other magazines to start popping up. In 1709, a magazine called the Tattler began publication. This new magazine contained a mixture of news, poetry, political analysis and philosophical essays.