EARLY HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE
BY
ALICE MARY DOANE
A. B. Earlham College, 1914
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
IN ENGLISH
IN
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
1917

Contents

EARLY HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE

I
Introduction2

People love to be shocked! That explains the present circulation of Life. It explains, too, the clamor with which Edinburgh received the October number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1817. For the first time in periodical history, the reading public was actually thrilled and completely shocked! Edinburgh held up its hands in horror, looked pious, wagged its head—and bought up every number! It is a strange parallel, perhaps, Life and Blackwood’s,—yet not so strange. It is hard at first glance to understand how those yellow, musty old pages could have been so shocking which now seem to have lost all savor for the man in the street. But before we can appreciate just how shocking Blackwood’s Magazine was, or why, it will be necessary first to remember the Edinburgh of those days, and the men who thought and fought in those pages, and the then state of periodical literature.

When we call Blackwood’s the first real magazine it is by virtue of worth, not fact. There were numerous periodicals preceding and contemporary with it. Most of them have never been heard of by the average citizen, and no doubt oblivion is the kindest shroud to fold them in. The Monthly Review, founded in 1749, was the oldest. It ran till 1845 and is remembered chiefly for the fact that it had decided Whiggish leanings with a touch of the Nonconformist. The Critical Review, a Tory organ, ran from 1756 to 1817, the natal year of “Maga”, as Blackwood’s was fondly dubbed. The British Critic, 1793-1843, was a mouthpiece for High Church opinion; and The Christian Observer, 1802-1857, served the same purpose for the evangelicals. The Anti-Jacobin, 1797-98, was almost the only journal of the time where talent or wit appeared often enough not to be accidental, and it ran only eight months. The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731-1868, has come in for a small share of immortality, but could never aspire to be considered a “moulder of opinion”. It published good prose and verse, and articles of antiquarian and literary tone; its scholarship was fair. When this is said, all is said.

The Edinburgh Review and The Quarterly are the only two besides Blackwood’s which come down to the Twentieth Century with any degree of lasting fame. In 1755 had appeared the first Edinburgh Review “to be published every six months”. It survived only two numbers, being too radical and self-sufficient in certain philosophical and religious views for that day of orthodoxy. In October 1802 the first number of the Edinburgh Review and Critical Journal, a quarterly, appeared, which according to the advertisement in the first number was to be “distinguished for the selection rather than for the number of its articles”.3 Its aim was to enlighten and guide the public mind in the paths of literature, art, science, politics,—with perhaps a bit of emphasis on the words guide and politics.