Menu Close

EVERGREEN REVIEWS

Periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic regularly reviewed aesthetic magazines in the 1890s and early years of the twentieth century. Some reviews would be fairly lengthy essays; others might only be a sentence or two in length; occasionally, the critic would compare one magazine to another. As was typical of the period, most reviews were published unsigned. This digital repository of historical reviews offers insight into the critical reception of Y90s magazines at the time of their production. Users can read Y90s Reviews online and also, if interested, examine the xml markup used to encode them.


From The Athenæum: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 1

Unattributed
We have received from “Patrick Geddes & Colleagues,” of Edinburgh (London, Fisher Unwin), the first number of the Evergreen, so called after the well-known miscellany of Allan Ramsay.
HTML     XML     PDF

From the Magazine of Art: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 1

Unattributed
Professor Geddes is to be congratulated upon a charming idea, prettily carried out. True, “The Evergreen, a Northern Seasonal” (1895, published in the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh by Patrick Geddes and colleagues, and in London by T. Fisher Unwin), is a trifle affected, and the writers and artists are all a shade too clever, but the ensemble is delightful.
HTML     XML     PDF

From Nature “Bio-optimism”: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 1

H. G. Wells
IT is not often that a reviewer is called upon to write art criticism in the columns of NATURE. But the circumstances of the “Evergreen” are peculiar it is published with a certain scientific sanction as the expression of a coming scientific Renascence of Art, and it is impossible to avoid glancing at its aesthetic merits.
HTML     XML     PDF

From The Review of Reviews: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 1

Unattributed
A new quarterly has made its appearance this month. It is entitled the Evergreen. It is quaintly got up, and has its distinctive character stamped legibly upon every page.Its authors see against the background of the Decadence the vaguely growing lines of a picture of New Birth.
HTML     XML     PDF

From The Bookman: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 1 and The Yellow Book, Vol. 5

Unattributed
It is impossible to keep from grouping these two “seasonals” together, and yet green is not nearly so unlike yellow as these northern and southern cousins are unlike each other. The “Yellow Book” was never so yellow as its reputation; how its particular reputation rose is difficult to see; perhaps from rumors of unfulfilled intentions.
HTML     XML     PDF

From Cosmopolis Literary Advertiser: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 1 and 2

Unattributed
Three Representative Press Opinions from Birmingham Post, Black and White, and London.
HTML     XML     PDF

From Pall Mall Magazine: “Without Prejudice,” Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 1-2

I. Zangwill
Till I went to Edinburgh I did not know what the “Evergreen” was. Newspaper criticisms had given me vague misrepresentations of a Scottish “Yellow Book” calling itself a “Northern Seasonal.” But even had I seen a copy myself I doubt if I should have understood it without going to Edinburgh…
HTML    XML     PDF

From The Literary World: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 1-4

Unattributed
A new movement has sprung up in Scotland. Its promoters, as is well for a renascence, are young men and women, mostly artists and students, who are wide awake to the deep, uncontrollable tides of life, and have not yet met and been conquered by the ignorance and brutality of the world.
HTML     XML

From The International Studio: “Mural Decoration in Scotland. Part I,” Vol. 1-4

Margaret Armour
The march of intellect has wavered much in the world’s history, but the march of art has wavered more. That a nation like ours, posing as the world’s mental pioneer, can endure placidly the chaotic ugliness of its manufacturing towns, and the sordidness of its manufacturing towns, and the sordidness of its average street everywhere, is a striking proof of the fluctuating advance of aesthetics.
HTML     XML     PDF

From The Bookman “Old Edinburgh and the Evergreen”: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 2

V. Branford
EDINBURGH, according to Mr. Ruskin, shares with Rome the honour of being the dirtiest city in Europe. Relying on the accuracy of Mr. Ruskin’s observation, one may say that the slums of the Edinburgh Lawnmarket (now rapidly disappearing) have achieved the highest distinction in their own line of business.
HTML     XML

From Bow Bells: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 2

Unattributed
We have received The Evergreen; or, the Book of Autumn, a Northern Seasonal (published by Messrs. Patrick Geddes and Colleagues of the Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, and by Mr T. Fisher Unwin, of Paternoster Square, E.C.). The work is tastefully got up, being bound in embossed leather, and superbly printed on fine paper, with rough sides, while the illustrations are of a remarkably bold and unconventional character.
HTML     XML

From the Magazine of Art: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 2

Unattributed
The second volume—”The Book of Autumn”—of the “Northern Seasonal” called “The Evergreen,” has been issued by Messrs. Patrick Geddes and colleagues, and in London by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. That the work of Professor Geddes and his friends will really tend, as they hope, towards a Celtic Rensascence we very much doubt, even though it takes its way “through Decadence.”
HTML     XML

From the Saturday Review: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 2

Unattributed
The autumn “Evergreen” (“a Northern Seasonal”) is not striking where it is peculiarly Scotch or peculiarly seasonable. The philosophy is high-toned but unreadable and a little sloppy, the verse is very very middling, and the Scotch painters are not at their best without colour.
HTML     XML     PDF

From the Scottish Review: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 2

Unattributed
Quaint and not without considerable attractiveness in its outward appearance, the autumn number of The Evergreen, written by Mr. P. Geddes and his colleagues, and published by them at the Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, is full of life and spirit and refined feeling.
HTML     XML

From The Spectator: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 2

Unattributed
For the good intentions and some of the ideas of the producers of The Evergreen we have sympathy; but they appear to us to confuse the ardent desire for the presence of art with the power to produce it.
HTML     XML

From the Spectator “‘The Pageant,’ And Two Other Miscellanies”: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 2, and The Pageant, Vol. 1

Unattributed
The Pageant is a rightly conceived mixture of literature and graphic art. Instead of illustrations furnished by some indifferent hack to story or essay, and wordy description written round pictures, we have here drawings, verses, prose, appealing each on their own merits. The exceptions are of the kind that justify themselves.
HTML     XML

From The Saturday Review: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 3

Unattributed
“The Evergreen” is as nerveless a piece of pretentiousness as you can meet in a three months’ journey along the path of periodical literature.
HTML     XML     PDF

From the International Studio: Review of the Evergreen, Vol. 4

Unattributed
The Evergreen Winter Book. (Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes and Colleagues.) This, the fourth volume which has appeared of this very original periodical, ends, we are told, its “first season-cycle”.
HTML     XML     PDF