Founded and published by William Blackwood, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine appeared monthly between April 1817 and December 1905. Edited in the beginning by James Pringle and Thomas Cleghorn, it was titled Blackwood’s Edinburgh Monthly for its first six issues. Blackwood assumed all editing duties himself between October 1817 and 1834, after which his relatives and descendants took over. William Blackwood III would publish the final issue, the magazine’s 1,022nd.

William Blackwood, known as patron to men of wit and amateurs of letters, targeted young Scotch Tories as readers when he founded his magazine to compete with the rival Whig Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review. Through the privilege of anonymity, writers engaged in scandalous attacks on Whig institutions in essays and critiques, as well as against the “Cockney School” of writers that included Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and John Keats. Blackwood often claimed he was not the editor, declaring that an “unknown editor” had had his way with notorious articles.

J. G. Lockhart, son-in-law to, and later biographer of, Sir Walter Scott, lampooned the Edinburgh Review in pieces in early editions of Blackwood’s. Blackwood’s team of seven writers, designated the Noctes Ambrosianae, adopted pseudonyms in discussing literature and politics. Among them Blackwood was known as Ebony, Thomas De Quincey as The Opium Eater, and James Hogg as The Ettrick Shepherd.

By 1830, much of the magazine’s savagery disappeared, but through the media of poetry, humor, and fiction, the championing of the Scotch Tory way of life continued. The articles upheld the privileged, landowning class, while the duties and responsibilities of such were acknowledged. Aimed at a conservative audience, it supported rural interests and espoused a romantic ideal of the rugged, independent farmer who worked the land.

One of its innovations was the publishing of foreign literature, particularly translations from German. Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit (Life and Works) appeared in 1839. The journal remained influential and consistent in its mission; an acceptance of work for publication brought considerable prestige to contributors. Its editors also used the journal to comment on the novel genre in general. One example from the September 1847 issue noted the increase in acceptability of the novel to the reader with refined tastes: “Novels are not objected to as they were; now that every sect in politics and religion have found their efficacy as a means, the form is adopted by all.”

Additional essayists, including Scott, along with several short story writers such as Oscar Wilde, published their work in Blackwood’s. Scott contributed several book reviews, including an April 1818 review of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. George Eliot first published three stories in Blackwood’s in 1857: “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,” “Mr. Gilfil’s Love-Story,” and “Janet’s Repentance,” which would be collected into Scenes of Clerical Life (1858).

Several novelists also published their work as serials in Blackwood’s before releasing the book versions. Anthony Trollope’s Linda Tressel appeared in eight installments between October 1867 and May 1868; his John Caldigate ran in fifteen installments from April 1878 through June 1879; and his Dr. Wortle’s School ran in seven parts between May and November 1880. Joseph Conrad contributed Heart of Darkness in three parts between February and April of 1899, and Lord Jim ran between October 1899 and November 1900.

Bibliography

Beach, Joseph Warren. English Literature of the Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Centuries. New York: Collier Books, 1950.

Houghton, Walter E., Esther Rhoads Houghton, and Jean Slingerland, eds. “Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.” The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824–1900. Vol. I. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989, 321–415.

Tillotson, Kathleen. Novels of the Eighteen-Forties. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954.

Categories: British Literature, Literature

Tags: 19th century fiction, 19th century literary magazines, Anthony Trollope, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, British magazine history, Cockney School, conservative literary culture, early magazine publishing, Edinburgh Review rivalry, English literary history, George Eliot, Goethe translations, Gothic Literature, Heart of Darkness serial, historical literary journals, J.G. Lockhart, James Hogg, John Keats, Joseph Conrad, Leigh Hunt, literary satire, Mary Shelley Frankenstein review, Noctes Ambrosianae, Romantic literature, Scottish Toryism, serialized fiction, Thomas De Quincey, Tory political commentary, Victorian Literature, Victorian Periodicals, William Blackwood