With the exception of Pater's two novels, his writing was of lecture, article, review, or short-story length. It never took the form of a continuous academic monograph; its form was determined by the parameters of the commercial periodical press in which it usually appeared before being recycled into volumes. These collections of essays selected from periodical publications were a relatively new way of bookmaking which had developed in the wake of the outgrowth of the periodical press at the beginning of the century; Francis Jeffrey was among the first of that generation to collect his Edinburgh essays in volumes, and thus break cover from the anonymous conditions of original publication.

Pater's earliest published work appeared in one of the older quarterlies, the Westminster Review, which persisted with anonymity, even in 1866 when anonymity was on the decline in magazine journalism. Between 1866 and 1868 Pater's ‘Coleridge's Writings’, ‘Winckelmann’, and ‘Poems by William Morris’ were all included in its pages as unsigned reviews, for quarterlies normally consisted of essays framed as ‘reviews’ which were linked to the book trade and current publication lists. When in 1869 Pater transferred his work to a new monthly periodical, the Fortnightly Review, he was able to abandon anonymity and reviewing at once, for one of the platforms of the new Fortnightly in 1865 had been the policy of signature. Moreover, although it called itself a review, like the new market of the monthlies it had dispensed with reviews and published free-standing articles; it also quickly adopted the successful pattern of the monthlies’ rhythm, abandoning its titular fortnightly publication after eighteen months to join the monthlies on Magazine Day. The politics of the two journals differed as well, with John Chapman's Westminster retaining an element of radicalism with its anonymity, while John Morley's Fortnightly Review was more stolidly Liberal.

I would argue that Pater's writing for the two journals which was to form the basis of his first book was sensitive to these differences. Throughout his career, Pater's stints on different periodicals resulted in work expressive of those periodicals – their politics, the nature of their readership (men, or men and women; religious or free thinkers), and the conditions of authorship (signature or anonymity; length; pay).