The Annual Register (1758-present day) was the final, and most successful, periodical venture of the entrepreneurial bookseller Robert Dodsley (1703-64), following on from The Public Register (1741), The Museum (1746-47), The World (1753-56), and The London Chronicle (1757). The first, five-hundred-page volume of The Annual Register, or A View of the History, Politics and Literature for the Year 1758, to give it its full title, with the twenty-nine-year-old Edmund Burke (1730-97) as its anonymous editor, was published on 15 May 1759. This was a periodical on a far grander scale than anything Robert Dodsley had previously ventured. Dodsley had by this time gone into partnership with his younger brother, James. Their aim was to publish annually a compendium of the main historical, political and literary events of the preceding year and to present the whole...

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Citation: Gordon, Ian. "The Annual Register". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 July 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=5532, accessed 09 June 2026.]