Independent Reviewers

Abstract

Both Lytton Strachey and E. M. Forster thought October 1903 marked the start of a new age. For Strachey, the publication of Principia Ethica heralded ‘the beginning of the Age of Reason’ (MH/LS, p. 207), and for Forster it was the appearance of first number of the Independent Review. Like G. E. Moore’s book, the review was a product of the Cambridge that shaped Bloomsbury. The Independent Review was controlled by Cambridge Apostles. G. M. Trevelyan, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, and Nathaniel Wedd made up a majority of its editorial committee, which also included C. F. G. Masterman. Trevelyan and his brother Robert helped finance the review, Roger Fry designed a cover of Greek columns and a frieze, and Strachey bought shares in the journal and published his first essay in the first issue. In the second issue, Forster made his first appearance as an essayist outside of student magazines, and his essay was accompanied by the earliest of Desmond MacCarthy’s important reviews of George Bernard Shaw’s plays. The fourth issue of January 1904 carried a review by ‘L. S. Woolf’, the first he had published. By the time it ceased publication five years later under the title the Albany Review, the journal had printed eleven stories, essays, and reviews by Forster, another eleven reviews and essays by Strachey, nineteen reviews by MacCarthy, an essay by Fry, and the review by Woolf.