This periodical contains various short literary pieces.In the first issue, an article entitled "Present State of English Literature" declares, "Look at the state of English Literature on the 1st of January, 1801,- and on the 1st of January, 1826,- and the contrast will be the most forcible.... Periodical writing has, undoubtedly, within that period assumed a tone and importance, of which the former works of that kind give so little idea as scarcely to seem of the same nature.

In this course, the effect of which upon the English mind can scarcely be calculated, the Edinburgh Review led the way. Its influence was, at one time, greater than that posessed by any periodical publication which ever existed.... The review itself was for seven years without any competitor. It gave a new tone to critical writing- a hitherto unknown importance to periodical compositions. It not only directed literary tastes and thought- but it created a vast body of them which, without it, would never have existed. That in the hey-day of success it was guilty of some very unwise, and some very unfair, things, it would be absurd to deny- but it would be still less just, and therefore more absurd, to doubt that English Literature owes to the Edinburgh Review a vast debt of obligation- both for what it has done directly, and for what it has been the remote means of calling forth"