 Title page to volume XXV, January–June 1829 | |
| Categories | Miscellany |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Founder | William Blackwood |
| Founded | 1817 |
| Final issue | 1980 (1980) |
| Company | Blackwood |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Based in | Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Language | English |
| ISSN | 0006-436X |
Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine andmiscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by publisherWilliam Blackwood and originally called theEdinburgh Monthly Magazine, but quickly relaunched asBlackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. NicknamedMaga, it was affiliated withTory politics and a controversial tone described by scholars as "brilliant, troubling, acerbic"; "bold and forceful"; "riotous ... blackguardly"; and full of "puffery, and scurrilous critique". Having published a host of significant authors, literature scholar William B. Cairns judged it the best British literary journal between 1815 and 1833. In 1838, it was the inspiration for the short story "How to Write a Blackwood Article" byEdgar Allan Poe. The magazine went into decline followingWorld War II and saw its final issue in December 1980.
PublisherWilliam Blackwood ofEdinburgh launchedBlackwood's in 1817 as aTory literary journal to rival theWhig-supportingEdinburgh Review.[1][2] NicknamedMaga, it was more conservative and controversial thanThe Quarterly Review of London. The first issue was April 1817, edited byThomas Pringle and James Gleghorn. In September, Blackwood took over editorship and hiredJohn Gibson Lockhart andWilliam Maginn to serve as assistant editors.[2] For all its conservative credentials the magazine published the works of radicals of Britishromanticism such asPercy Bysshe Shelley andSamuel Taylor Coleridge,[2][3] as well as early feminist essays by AmericanJohn Neal.[4] ThroughJohn Wilson the magazine was a keen supporter ofWilliam Wordsworth, parodied theByronmania common inEurope and angeredJohn Keats,Leigh Hunt andWilliam 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 theLondon Magazine, fought a duel with Jonathan Henry Christie overlibellous statements in the magazine. Scott was shot and killed.[5]
In 1824,Blackwood's became the first British literary journal to publish work by an American with an essay byJohn Neal that got reprinted across Europe.[6] Over the following year and a half the magazine published Neal'sAmerican Writers series, which is the first written history of American literature.[7] Blackwood's relationship with Neal eroded after publishing Neal's novelBrother Jonathan at a great financial loss in 1825.[8][9] Around this time, the magazine began publishinghorror fiction to increase its audience.[10]
Literature scholar William B. Cairns consideredBlackwood's the most important British literary periodical between 1815 and 1833.[1] The editors of a six-volume 2016 academic collection ofBlackwood's articles called it "the most brilliant, troubling, acerbic and imaginative periodical of the post-Napoleonic age".[11] Literature scholar Fritz Fleischmann described the magazine as subscribing to an "aesthetic belief in original thoughts expressed in bold and forceful language".[12] The editor of a 1959 academicBlackwood's collection used the words "riotous" and "blackguardly".[13] Literature scholar Jonathan Elmer described it as "a journal that took pleasure in self-conscious play with pseudonym, puffery, and scurrilous critique."[14] Despite publishing Neal,Maga became famous for attacking American culture.[15]
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 andFrank Swettenham.Robert Macnish contributed under the epithet, Modern Pythagorean. It was anopen secret thatCharles Whibley contributed anonymously hisMusings 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".[16]
World War II is consideredMaga's 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.[17]
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.[17] Douglas Blackwood's successor was James Hogg, who remained in the role through the final issue in December 1980.[17][3]
Edgar Allan Poe published a short story entitled "How to Write a Blackwood Article" in November 1838 as a companion piece to "A Predicament".[18] The story satirizesBlackwood's by ironically employing the magazine's famously controversial tone.[10]
