This chapter outlines the development of the theory of natural selection and the events surrounding the publication and reviewing of Darwin’s Origin of Species, especially in non-specialist publications. The different responses in Britain and the United States are noted. The role of supporters such as T. H. Huxley in reaching a popular audience is explored, although their reservations about the adequacy of the theory are also taken into account. Conservative efforts to present evolution as the unfolding of a divine plan provided a very different way of understanding the general idea of evolution. Many popular accounts failed to understand the difference between Darwin’s ‘tree of life’ model and older ideas of a linear ascent toward humanity, especially when dealing with the issue of human origins. In this area, popular interest in the gorilla as a potential ancestral form distracted attention from some aspects of Darwin’s model, as shown in more detail in Chapter 3. The early evolutionism of Herbert Spencer is introduced and his relationship to Darwinism explained.

The review essay emerged in the seventeenth century and entered the publishing mainstream in the middle of the eighteenth, when Ralph Griffiths founded his Monthly Review, the first journal devoted entirely to book reviewing. But it was The Edinburgh Review that electrified the publishing world and put the review essay at the centre of British cultural and political life. Established in 1802, and edited by Francis Jeffrey, the Edinburgh exuded confidence, bristled with vitriol, celebrated Whiggism, and condemned injustice. Seven years later, Tories fought back with the founding of The Quarterly Review, edited by William Gifford, which set itself in opposition to the Edinburgh on all the major issues of the day. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was a more agile and belligerent Tory alternative to the Quarterly, but it gradually grew more moderate and in the 1830s was eclipsed by its most raucous imitator, Fraser’s Magazine.

The business of novels in the long eighteenth century was an international affair. This chapter argues that literary histories giving accounts of the ‘rise’ of the novel should look again at influential nineteenth and twentieth century national histories, and challenge them: the European novel can be seen to develop as a cross-channel product in the period. Taking a book-historical perspective, and giving evidence of reception of French Fiction in Britain via that most English of authors, Jane Austen herself, I document the presence of the French novel on British bookshelves. Via readings of the ways in which fiction crossed the channel, it becomes apparent that British anxieties about French fiction have their roots in the eighteenth century and – I argue – with the establishment of formal reviewing and periodical culture. Anglo-French exchanges in the novel in the long eighteenth century look very different if we look beyond the canonical texts and authors of the period. Now neglected eighteenth-century women writers – often translated, and themselves translators – adopted a feminised cosmopolitanism in their novels. I conclude that taking a cross-channel approach is the most appropriate way to write our histories of the novel in the eighteenth century.

Sometimes employee performance will be below that established or expected by the organisation in the first stages of the performance management process. In this chapter we examine how to diagnose the causes of underperformance. Having identified the primary causes of performance deficits, we then investigate the mechanism through which an employee is given feedback about their performance (the formal performance ‘review’). We focus on the provision of negative performance feedback: why it is problematic for supervisors and employees as well as tactics for the effective delivery of negative feedback. The chapter concludes with a discussion of performance development strategies and practices. We examine mentoring and coaching and their impact on employees and organisations.