The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.
§ 3. The Cambridge Review
The credit of having been the first lasting university organ belongs to The Cambridge Review, which was started in 1879, and has been published weekly in term time ever since. The first number expresses the idea that university men are too busy to have much time for journalism; but the purpose of the Review—to give a representation of the life and thought of the university—has been well maintained. It has a semi-official claim, too, on serious readers, in publishing weekly the university sermon. Perpetual discussions of university topics which, to the outsider, seem of small moment is characteristic of all universities; learned and sedentary persons are prone to controversy; and, perhaps, for this reason, the Review has not paid so much attention to belles lettres as some of its light-hearted predecessors. It has, however, had its humours, as the selections in The Book of the Cambridge Review (1898) show, and, for many years, it has excelled every February in valentines, ingenious quotations and perversions of quotations, addressed to men of note both in and outside Cambridge.