Johnson and Christie's prospectus describes its reviewers as "the HISTORIANS of the Republic of Letters" in original. Literary scholar Paul Keen has described the Republic of Letters as a vision of society in which "all rational individuals could have their say, and in which an increasingly enlightened reading public would be able to judge the merit of different arguments for themselves". The practical goal of the "Analytical Review" was to facilitate this society by summarizing serious new and foreign publications in great depth so that intelligent readers might form their own opinions. This aim was embodied in its initial title: "The Analytical Review; or, History of Literature, domestic and foreign, on an enlarged plan. Containing Scientific Abstracts of important and interesting Works, published in English; a general account of such as are of less consequence, with short characters; Notices, or Reviews of valuable foreign Books; Criticism on New pieces of Music and Works of Art; and the Literary Intelligence of Europe, etc." The periodical sought to avoid ephemeral works and to review only "standard works which add to the stock of human knowledge and will live beyond a day". Johnson and Christie also intended to eschew editorializing and to avoid shaping the tastes of the public. Scrupulous attention to this point was meant to bring the "reviewed work" into the foreground and not the "reviewer" (a goal shared by many eighteenth-century journals). An early review, for example, criticized historian Edward Gibbon for "so frequently and unnecessarily obtruding his particular prejudices on the eye of his readers". All editors signed their reviews with initials (sometimes not their own) rather than with their names. This practice was meant to prevent the appearance of collusion between the reviewers and the authors reviewed, although this did not succeed in practice. It was also intended to prevent any unethical puffing, or false advertising, of friends' or one's own books; nevertheless, both Henry Fuseli and Mary Wollstonecraft reviewed their own books for the journal.