REVIEWING JOHN WESLEY AND GEORGE WHITEFIELD IN THE MONTHLY REVIEW AND THE CRITICAL REVIEW.

The prominent roles played by John Wesley and George Whitefield in the eighteenth-century British book trade has been widely observed by scholars. Scholars, however, have hardly glimpsed how the various works authored by Wesley and Whitefield were discussed and critiqued in the era's leading literary periodicals, the Monthly Review and the Critical Review. As self-appointed -- and publicly recognised -- arbiters of literary taste, the Monthly and the Critical wielded tremendous influence in the marketplace of books and ideas, informing not only what and how readers read, but shaping public perception of the various issues discussed in the print media of the day. These issues included the two Methodist leaders and the movement they founded, which created its share of controversy throughout the eighteenth century. Although both the Monthly and the Critical routinely registered their antipathy to the Methodist movement in their reviews, their opinions about the revival and its leaders proved more nuanced than most anti- Methodist writers, who usually castigated Wesley and Whitefield in unequivocal terms. The reviewers' objective -- to offer ostensibly unbiased reviews of newly published books based on objective standards -- meant that they did not permit authors, whether pro- or anti-Methodist, to rail without reason or make assertions without backing. The reviewers thus found themselves navigating between their own anti-Methodist sentiment and their critical principles. This process resulted in a relatively balanced strain of anti-Methodist discourse while exposing how politicised the entire project of popular review criticism became when grappling with a complex and controversial topic like Methodism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]