Joseph Johnson's Analytical Review, from May, 1788, to tual independence and enquiry amongst readers. Johnson, December, 1798, offered a radical contribution to journalism Christie, and the Analytical's reviewers' participation in a that for a decade confounded the British government's at-cosmopolitan movement that undermined national bou tempts to restrict the freedom of the liberal press. The Ana-ries of legal and political authority is an important aspec lytical ceased publication shortly before Johnson went to jail their promotion of active critical reading, because their p tor six months in February, 1799, for selling a" seditious" tice endorsed the idea that governments and monarchies are pamphlet in his bookshop. However, I argue that the unu-answerable to the public within a wider, world view of polit sual nature of the Analytical's editorial policy was the underly-and society. The texts reviewed in the Analytical, its noti ing reason for the Crown prosecution that silenced the of foreign intelligence and imported publications, and J proprietor and his journal. son's own transadantic correspondence with Joseph Priestley and other business associates in the United States, show that In the context of my enquiry," radical contribution" re-that cosmopolitanism derived joindy from European fers to editorial strategy more than to the content of the re-North American sources already known to hav views in the Analytical Johnson and Thomas Christie, the co-connections, founder, encouraged a multiple-editor approach that gave a legitimate public voice to the work of leading anti-govem-The Analytical was a collaborative project, with ment activists including Mary Wollstonecraft, William God-perceived as leader. Even the anti-Jacobin establ win, Joseph Priesdey, Thomas Paine, Joel Barlow and Gilbert desire to identify a leader where there did not appe Wakefield. I will look at the consequences of the initiatives reveals conservative anxiety over the success of a taken by Johnson, as proprietor, and Christie in their rejec-formist venture. The question arises as to what a lib tion of a standard, autocratic editorial model of critical jour-odical that did not have a clearly defined leader mig nalism. Johnson and Christie's alternative democratic form politically and culturally, in terms of undermining th of editorship, in which a group of selected reviewers commis-ished protocols and readers' expectations of the per sioned and collated articles, raises questions that are material press? A group of anonymous writers promulgating to enquiries into why the British establishment took moves in ideas and sharing some of the" identifying" signat 1798 to crush the Analytical Review. The British establish-they appended to their contributions, in place of ment's perception that a threat to civil order was embodied who could be named, blamed and prosecuted, con in the Analytical (considered later in this essay, in an account triumph for libertarians and generated anxiety for of Johnson's trial) owed as much to fear of a successful struc-ernment and its Church and King supporters. Ano tural model of printed" democracy" as it did to the content reviewers was not in itself radical, because that was t of individual critical essays. In other words, the processes procedure in late-eighteenth-century publishing for re leading to the publication of contributions by writers includ-of personal and professional decorum; rather, the r ing Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Priestley, Beddoes, Barlow, ment of a general editor by a collaboration of unide Fuseli, Cowper, Barbauld and Hays (amongst others) who or, at best semi-identifiable—editor-reviewers was what participated in a journalistic Republic of Letters, comprised tied …