Austin Harrison and the English Review (review)

Martha S. Vogeler's insightful and compelling Austin Harrison and the English Review is a dual biography of Austin Harrison and the periodical he dedicated himself to after becoming its editor in 1910. Noting that Harrison's contributions to late-Victorian and early-twentieth-century periodicals, particularly the English Review, have been neglected or dismissed by scholars, Vogeler manages to skillfully acknowledge Harrison's successes without neglecting his mistakes. Thus readers will admire Austin Harrison as an editor when he takes risks on new writers and is consequently the first to publish poetry by D. H. Lawrence, and readers will cringe as Harrison turns down work from Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein—to whom he writes, "Madame, I really cannot publish these curious studies" (269).

Throughout the biography, Vogeler carefully charts the progress of Harrison's career in periodicals. She unflinchingly describes his awkward beginnings as an assistant to George Saunders at the Times in Berlin, and she observes Harrison's level of dedication to journalism increasing after his intensive work as a book reviewer for the Observer. Vogeler's depiction of the competitive, yet nepotistic world of late-Victorian journalism reveals how Harrison's positions at Reuters and the Daily Mail were secured by his father, Frederick Harrison. As a biographer of Frederick Harrison (Frederick Harrison: The Vocations of a Positivist), Vogeler is keenly aware of the elder Harrison's influence in attaining employment for his son. However, Austin Harrison finally gains autonomy through his role as editor of the English Review, securing a place for himself in the world of periodicals outside of his father's looming shadow. Ironically, "maturity" becomes his stated goal for the Review, which he dubs "The Great Adult Review" (2). According to Vogeler, Harrison expressed dismay at the "the average Englishman's refusal to grow up and take an adult view of things," and so he felt the need to offer a "mature" alternative to more fantastical or juvenileminded periodicals (52).

After Alfred Mond purchased the English Review from Ford Madox Hueffer (Ford), he gave Harrison the position of editor. The transition from Ford to Harrison was not smooth. Harrison was determined to make a profit with the periodical, and so he increased the number of advertisements, requested writers shorten their work, and lowered the cost from two shillings to one (a price he would later have to increase during WWI). He also deviated from Ford in his desire to include more political content in the Review, which Ford had intended to be "chiefly about literature" (107). Harrison frequently contributed his own political opinions to the Review, usually under pseudonyms, advocating self-government for Ireland and opposing militancy in women's suffrage campaigns. Regarding the growing military strength of Germany, Harrison proved prophetic, publishing articles on the rising threat of the Kaiser and declaring Britain's need for military conscription.

Vogeler devotes a chapter to the ways in which Harrison kept the English Review afloat during WWI, despite serious financial difficulties. Providing the text with vital historical context, Vogeler simultaneously illuminates the more human aspects of WWI, highlighting poems written by soldier-poets and published in the Review. One poignant example is E. A. Macintosh's "In No Man's Land," where the poet hears the enemy sneeze and thinks "he really could not shoot a man with a cold" (200). In addition, Vogeler reveals that the most valuable eyewitness accounts of the war appearing in the English Review came from women, such as F. Tennyson Jesse and Mary Borden, who served as correspondents in France and ran mobile field hospitals.

Readers of VPR will find Vogeler's examination of the complex and oftentimes contentious relationship between editors and writers particularly engaging. Although Harrison had a reputation for giving writers a freehand and was willing to publish diverse and controversial material, he often insisted that writers shorten their work and was slow to make payments. The latter defect caused D. H. Lawrence and...