Romanticism and Blackwood's Magazine:'An Unprecedented Phenomenon'

Romanticism and Blackwood's Magazine is inspired by the ongoing critical fascination with Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and the burgeoning recognition of its centrality to the Romantic age. Though the magazine itself was published continuously for well over a century and a half, this volume concentrates specifically on those years when William Blackwood was at the helm, beginning with his founding of the magazine in 1817 and closing with his death in 1834. These were the years when, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it in 1832, Blackwood's reigned as 'an unprecedented Phenomenon in the world of letters.' The magazine placed itself at the centre of the emerging mass media, commented decisively on all the major political and cultural issues that shaped the Romantic movement, and published some of the leading writers of the day, including Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, John Galt, Felicia Hemans, James Hogg, Walter Scott, and Mary Shelley. <br/> <br/>'This much-needed volume reminds us not only why Blackwood's was the most influential periodical publication of the time, but also how its writers, writings, and critical agendas continue to shape so many of the scholarly concerns of Romantic studies in the twenty-first century.' - Charles Mahoney, Associate Professor, University of Connecticut, USA <br/> <br/>List of Illustrations <br/>Acknowledgements <br/>Abbreviations <br/>Notes on Contributors <br/>'A character so various, and yet so indisputably its own': A Passage to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; R.Morrison & D.S.Roberts <br/>PART I: BLACKWOOD'S AND THE PERIODICAL PRESS <br/>Beginning Blackwood's: The Right Mix of Dulce and Ùtile; P.Flynn <br/>John Gibson Lockhart and Blackwood's: Shaping the Romantic Periodical Press; T.Richardson <br/>From Gluttony to Justified Sinning: Confessional Writing in Blackwood's and the London Magazine; D.Higgins <br/>Camaraderie and Conflict: De Quincey and Wilson on Enemy Lines; R.Morrison <br/>Selling Blackwood's Magazine, 1817-1834; D.Finkelstein <br/>PART II: BLACKWOOD'S CULTURE AND CRITICISM <br/>Blackwood's 'Personalities'; T.Mole <br/>Communal Reception, Mary Shelley, and the 'Blackwood's School' of Criticism; N.Mason <br/>Blackwoodian Allusion and the Culture of Miscellaneity; D.Stewart <br/>Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in the Scientific Culture of Early Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh; W.Christie <br/>The Art and Science of Politics in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, c. 1817-1841; D.Kelly <br/>Prosing Poetry: Blackwood's and Generic Transposition, 1820-1840; J.Camlot <br/>PART III: BLACKWOOD'S FICTIONS <br/>Blackwood's and the Boundaries of the Short Story; T.Killick <br/>The Edinburgh of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and James Hogg's Fiction; G.Hughes <br/>'The Taste for Violence in Blackwood's Magazine'; M.Schoenfield <br/>PART IV: BLACKWOOD'S AT HOME <br/>John Wilson and Regency Authorship; R.Cronin <br/>John Wilson and Sport; J.Strachan <br/>William Maginn and the Blackwood's 'Preface' of 1826; D.E.Latané, Jr. <br/>All Work and All Play: Felicia Hemans's Edinburgh Noctes; N.Sweet <br/>PART V: BLACKWOOD'S ABROAD <br/>Imagining India in Early Blackwood's; D.S.Roberts <br/>Tales of the Colonies: Blackwood's, Provincialism, and British Interests Abroad; A.Jarrells <br/>Selected Bibliography <br/>Index <br/> <br/>ROBERT MORRISON is Queen's National Scholar at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His book, The English Opium-Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey was a finalist for the James Tait Black Prize. He has edited writings by Jane Austen, Leigh Hunt, Thomas De Quincey, and John Polidori. <br/>DANIEL SANJIV ROBERTS is Reader in English at Queen's University Belfast, UK. His publications include a monograph, Revisionary Gleam: De Quincey, Coleridge, and the High Romantic Argument (2000), and major critical editions of Thomas De Quincey's Autobiographic Sketches and Robert Southey's The Curse of Kehama; the latter was cited as a Distinguished Scholarly Edition by the MLA. He is currently working on an edition of Charles Johnstone's novel The History of Arsaces, Prince of Betlis for the Early Irish Fiction series. <br/>