Blackwood's Magazine

History

Publisher William Blackwood of Edinburgh launched Blackwood's in 1817 as a Tory literary journal to rival the Whig-supporting Edinburgh Review. Nicknamed Maga, it was more conservative and controversial than The Quarterly Review of London. The first issue was April 1817, edited by Thomas Pringle and James Gleghorn. In September, Blackwood took over editorship and hired John Gibson Lockhart and William Maginn to serve as assistant editors. For all its conservative credentials the magazine published the works of radicals of British romanticism such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as early feminist essays by American John Neal. Through John Wilson the magazine was a keen supporter of William Wordsworth, parodied the Byronmania common in Europe and angered John Keats, Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt by referring to their works as the "Cockney School of Poetry". The controversial style of the magazine got it into trouble when, in 1821, John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, fought a duel with Jonathan Henry Christie over libellous statements in the magazine. Scott was shot and killed.

In 1824, Blackwood's became the first British literary journal to publish work by an American with an essay by John Neal that got reprinted across Europe. Over the following year and a half the magazine published Neal's American Writers series, which is the first written history of American literature. Blackwood's relationship with Neal eroded after publishing Neal's novel Brother Jonathan at a great financial loss in 1825. Around this time, the magazine began publishing horror fiction to increase its audience.

Literature scholar William B. Cairns considered Blackwood's the most important British literary periodical between 1815 and 1833. The editors of a six-volume 2016 academic collection of Blackwood's articles called it "the most brilliant, troubling, acerbic and imaginative periodical of the post-Napoleonic age". Literature scholar Fritz Fleischmann described the magazine as subscribing to an "aesthetic belief in original thoughts expressed in bold and forceful language". The editor of a 1959 academic Blackwood's collection used the words "riotous" and "blackguardly". Literature scholar Jonathan Elmer described it as "a journal that took pleasure in self-conscious play with pseudonym, puffery, and scurrilous critique." Despite publishing Neal, Maga became famous for attacking American culture.

Important contributors included: George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, John Buchan, George Tomkyns Chesney, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Felicia Hemans, James Hogg, Charles Neaves, Thomas de Quincey, Elizabeth Clementine Stedman, William Mudford, Margaret Oliphant, Hugh Clifford, Mary Margaret Busk and Frank Swettenham. Robert Macnish contributed under the epithet, Modern Pythagorean. It was an open secret that Charles Whibley contributed anonymously his Musings without Methods to the Magazine for over twenty-five years. T. S. Eliot described them as "the best sustained piece of literary journalism that I know of in recent times".

World War II is considered Magas turning point. The magazine was subject to paper rationing, the allotment being based on the company's worst year, 1939. After the war, Blackwood's competed poorly with new magazines and suffered from reduced interest in literary magazines. By the early 1970s, the magazine gained a reputation for being dated and was largely rejected by younger authors and readers. Subscriptions declined over that decade.

Editorship remained exclusively in the hands of Blackwood family members through Douglas Blackwood, great-great-gandson of William Blackwood, who served in that role from 1948 through 1976. Douglas Blackwood's successor was James Hogg, who remained in the role through the final issue in December 1980.

Cultural references

Edgar Allan Poe published a short story entitled "How to Write a Blackwood Article" in November 1838 as a companion piece to "A Predicament". The story satirizes Blackwood's by ironically employing the magazine's famously controversial tone.

Notes

References

1. Cairns, William B.. (1922). "British Criticisms of American Writings 1815–1833: A Contribution to the Study of Anglo-American Literary Relationships". University of Wisconsin.
2. Fonseca, Gonçalo L.. (). "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine". [[Institute for New Economic Thinking]].
3. Kurowski, Travis. (2008). "Some Notes on the History of the Literary Magazine". Mississippi Review.
4. Sears, Donald A.. (1978). "John Neal". Twayne Publishers.
5. "Newspapers and publishers at dawn of 19th century".
6. Sears, Donald A.. (1978). "John Neal". Twayne Publishers.
7. Pattee, Fred Lewis. (1937). "[[American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (1824–1825)]]". Duke University Press.
8. Sears, Donald A.. (1978). "John Neal". Twayne Publishers.
9. Lease, Benjamin. (1972). "That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution". University of Chicago Press.
10. (2016). "Blackwood's Magazine, 1817–25". Routledge.
11. Fleischmann, Fritz. (1983). "A Right View of the Subject: Feminism in the Works of Charles Brockden Brown and John Neal". Verlag Palm & Enke Erlangen.
12. Lease, Benjamin. (1972). "That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution". University of Chicago Press.
13. Elmer, Jonathan. (2012). "John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture". Bucknell University Press.
14. Seelye, John D.. (1964). "Rachel Dyer: A North American Story". Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints.
15. H. C. G. Matthew, ‘[[Whibley, Charles]] (1859–1930)’, ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', [[Oxford University Press]], September 2004
16. Royle, Trevor. (6 March 1997). "Obituary: Wing Cdr Douglas Blackwood". The Independent.
17. Sova, Dawn B.. (2001). "Edgar Allan Poe A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work". Checkmark Books.
18. Reis, Maria Filipa Palma dos. (2010). "A Reading of 'How to Write a Blackwood Article' as an Exercise in Irony, Authorial Self-Consciousness and Tuition for Creative Writers". The Edgar Allan Poe Review.