The Rise and Fall of the House of Blackwood's Magazine 

In Edgar Allan Poe's tale "The Fall of the House of Usher", the narrator visits a boyhood friend and recounts his family history. His friend comes from a well known family, through which has passed down a grand but now sadly crumbling mansion. The narrator notes, 

It was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher" - an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.[1]

Blackwood's Magazine

But the firm's literary legacy survived, for when people talk of the great authors of the English language in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, names that spring to mind include Walter Scott, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope and Joseph Conrad. Likewise, literary histories of Scottish literature inevitably include the likes of James Hogg, Thomas de Quincey, Susan Ferrier, Margaret Oliphant, and Hugh MacDiarmid. All of these authors had one thing in common: at one point or other in their literary careers, they were published by the Edinburgh based publishers William Blackwood & Sons. And many of these made their literary debuts in the world famous, monthly Blackwood's Magazine. Started in 1817, it became the flagship of the firm, a source of pride and at the same time a sampler of authors and ideas the editors believed were of importance to the reading public.

This consistency was highlighted in a 1917 retrospective article in Blackwood's Magazine, written to commemorate its hundredth anniversary. "Ever since 1817, when it came into being," wrote the author, "it has held aloft the twin banners of sound criticism and Tory politics."[2] While the latter cannot be disputed, the former was a bone of contention among many who felt the disapproving lash of the journal's critical reviews. In its earlier years the magazine was labelled by John Scott "The Mohock Magazine", perhaps because of the bloody critical scalpings it gave such people as Coleridge, Keats & Wordsworth. It was its avowedly strong, personalised attacks which most bothered Gerard Manley Hopkins, who wrote to a friend in 1863 about Blackwood's Magazine, "Remember that no one is more disgusted than I am at bad criticism," concluding "How I have longed for their utter extinction!". [3] 

William Blackwood (1776-1834) established himself as a bookseller and publisher in 1804 at 64 South Bridge, in front of the University's Old College. In 1816 he was one of the first commercial concerns to move to the recently built New Town, occupying property on Princes Street. After a slow start, Blackwood began making a reputation for himself as a successful publisher of travel works and biographies, and developed strong ties with the London trade by becoming the Scottish agent for John Murray. In 1816 Walter Scott using James Ballantyne as his agent, took Tales of My Landlord to Blackwood & Murray's to publish. This proved to be a troubled collaboration. William Blackwood's attempts to suggest a different conclusion to The Black Dwarf, based on advice given by William Gifford, first editor of Murray's Quarterly Review, drew harsh exclamations from Scott. "God damn his soul!" Scott is said to have thundered to James Ballantyne, "Tell him and his coadjutor that I belong to the Death-Head Hussars of Literature who neither take nor give criticism."[4] Scott subsequently turned to the less critical atmosphere of Constable's publishing house. Blackwood's relations with other emerging Scottish writers proved more fruitful, and he published works by some of the finest contemporary writers of the period, including Susan Ferriers Marriage and The Inheritance, John Galt's Annals of the Parish, and James Hogg's The Private Memoirs of a Justified Sinner.

Sir Walter Scott

 

The Old Saloon	William Blackwood in many ways sought to revitalise the older Edinburgh tradition of the publishing house as a literary gathering place, and from the beginning encouraged emerging writers to make his place of business a centre of literary society, a sort of literary club where men of letters might find a meeting place. One outcome was the building of The 'Old Saloon' when the firm moved to new premises in 45 George Street in 1829, an oval room where literary portraits stared down upon an oval table, and confirmed Blackwoodians gathered to continue the tradition of literary conversation begun in the early days. Another outcome of Blackwood's early literary gatherings was the development of a new magazine in 1817. Blackwood had originally envisaged publishing a monthly magazine which would be a Tory alternative, 'more nimble, more frequent, more familiar' than the stodgy Whig orientated quarterly The Edinburgh Review. But he fired his first editors James Cleghorn and Thomas Pringle after 6 issues for failing in this task, and in October 1817 relaunched Blackwood's Magazine, with new contributors gathered from his literary coterie. These included John Gibson Lockhart (later Scott's son-in-law and biographer), John Wilson ("Christopher North"), and James Hogg.	45 George Street

 

The first issue, which included a new blend of literary and political articles and fiction, and a ferociously satirical attack on Edinburgh society, the Chaldee manuscript, set the city readers frothing in delight and indignation. Blackwood is said to have taken home the first number of his new magazine, and presented it to his wife with the words, "there's ma Magazine".[5] In affectionate parody, the journal thereafter became known as 'Maga' to all of Blackwood's associates and contributors. Yet the magazine's critical attacks on William Wordsworth, John Keats, William Hazlitt, the Cockney School of Poetry and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, brought notoriety and the threat of libel suits. The controversy proved so heated that at one point, both Lockhart and Wilson fled Edinburgh for the safety of Windermere in the Lake District, leaving William Blackwood to weather the storm. As tempers cooled, 'Maga' retained its readers and Blackwood consolidated his initial good fortunes by attracting a core of excellent writers to work for him, including the Irishmen William Maginn and Samuel Ferguson, and the debtridden Thomas de Quincey. Poe mocked the emotionally charged, personal style which became a feature of Maga's articles in "How to Write a Blackwood article". The narrator, a hopeful Blackwoodian author, wonderfully named Signora Psyche Zenobia, goes to visit Mr. Blackwood dressed like a "butterfly" in a crimson satin dress, with a sky blue Arabian mantelet, and 7 flounces of orange-colored auriculas". Blackwood advises her on the ideal Blackwoodian writing style, citing the following authors and articles published in journal as models of study:			James Hogg

 

There was 'The Dead Alive,' a capital thing! - the record of a gentleman's sensations when entombed before the breath was out of his body - full of taste, terror, sentiment, metahpysics, and erudition. You would have sworn that the writer had been born and brought up in a coffin. Then we had the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater' - fine, very fine! - glorious imagination - deep philosophy - acute speculation - plenty of fire and fury, and good spicing of the decidedly unintelligible. That was a nice bit of flummery, and went down the throats of the people delightfully. They would have it that Coleridge wrote the paper - but not so. It was composed by my pet baboon, Juniper, over a rummer of Hollands and water, 'hot, without sugar'.

Thomas de Quincey

The esteemed editor goes on to counsel Miss Zenobia that the ideal Blackwood paper is one that focuses on sensations. "Sensations are the great things after all," he expostulates. "Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations - they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet." Poe satirises the emotionally charged manner with which Blackwoodian stalwarts such as Thomas de Quincey rushed at their material. But de Quincey, while a major contributor to the magazine throughout its early years, was not an easy writer to deal with. William Blackwood, although a great admirer of De Quincey's writing style and literary genius, was frequently irritated by his erratic writing habits and his repeated requests for money. At one point, defending himself against Blackwood's charges of laziness, De Quincey arrogantly suggested, "If Wilson and Lockhart do not put themselves forward for the Magazine, I foresee that the entire weight of supporting it must rest on my shoulders. I see clearly that I must be its Atlas... I am hard at work, being determined to save the Magazine from the fate which its stupidity merits."[6] Blackwood's answer was devastatingly unequivocal.

Sir, I can only excuse your letter, which I received today, by supposing that you were hardly awake when you wrote it. When I apply to you to be the Atlas of my Magazine it will be time enough for you to undertake the burden. And in the meantime I must beg leave to say that if you cannot send me anything better than the 'English Lakes', it will be quite unnecessary for you to give yourself any further trouble about the Magazine.[7] 

Inevitably, competition to Blackwood's Magazine emerged from London in the shape of The London Magazine, published from 1820-29. Its editor John Scott, ironically a native of Aberdeen, specifically proclaimed it a rival to journals emanating from 'secondary towns of the Kingdom', i.e. Blackwood's Magazine in Edinburgh. The hostility with which both sides attacked each other culminated in 1821, when John Gibson Lockhart challenged John Scott to a duel. In what may be considered the most extreme conclusion to a literary quarrel the nineteenth century has ever noted, Lockhart's second, G.H. Christie faced Scott instead, and mortally wounded him with his second shot. Future 'Blackwoodian' contributors confined themselves to verbal attacks on established authors. Maga's victims no doubt would have agreed with Thomas Hardy, himself attacked by Maga in 1896 for writing Jude the Obscure, who noted bitterly in 1907, "Ever since the days of John Keats, to be bludgeoned by Blackwood has been the hallmark of an author of ideas."[9] 

But those authors who found favour with the Blackwoods were inevitably made to feel part of a larger family of writers. This was especially true under the editorship of John Blackwood 1845-1879. Blackwood's forth-right dealings often inspired an equally high degree of loyalty. He was able to entice such authors as R.D. Blackmore, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anthony Trollope, Charles Lever and Edward Bulwer Lytton to write for Maga's pages. He was also one of the first to recognise the talents, but not the gender of Mary Ann Evans, or George Eliot, whose first fictional work "The Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton" was serialised in Maga in 1857, and all of whose novels, except for Romola were published by the firm.

John Blackwood

 

George Eliot			Under its fifth editor, William Blackwood III, who edited Maga from 1879-1912, Maga became strongly identified as an essential part of the British colonial social life, found in every colonial backwater club and station, the type of magazine George Orwell in the early 1940s characterised as being read by "the 'service' middle class", military service members and colonial civil servants.[10]  How Blackwood's Magazine acquired this reputation can be seen in the many articles and stories it published during what has been characterised as the height of British Imperial dominance, from the end of the Afghan war in 1880 to the beginning of the Boer War in 1899. Invariably, the Empire, as seen in these pieces was part of a disordered universe being put right by British skill, technology and moral superiority. Its political articles argued consistently for an expansionist foreign policy, suggesting that only strong, forceful occupation of places like Afghanistan [in the early 1880's], Egypt in 1882 and African colonies in the 1890s, would allow good sound government to prevail. More importantly, these articles suggested, it would allow Britain to achieve and keep its rightful place as a European power.

 

At the same time, Maga's pages were full of stories of exotic locations as places to play in, places where British men did battle with wild animals, and inevitably came out the winner. After a while such feats were taken in a rather blase manner, as seen in an 1887 piece on Bison Stalking in India by John Cecil Russell. He describes the thrill of the chase, and the inevitable moment of satisfaction when, after dropping the quarry in its tracks, his guide rushed "at the mighty fallen, sprang upon the heaving side, and seizing a horn, plunged the knife in his throat. What a moment of satisfaction!" After satisfying this blood lust, and measuring the beast, Russell nonchalantly notes sitting down to a spot of tiffin, as if this was merely a country stroll through the park: "So much exertion deserved refreshment, which I took in biscuits and cold tea, just tempered from my pocket flask... "[11] 

Maga's contents in many ways reflected William Blackwood and his editorial staff's personal tastes and views. The Blackwood family had a strong personal interest in the workings of the Empire: William Blackwood's father and uncle had been Major and Colonel respectively in the East India Company; and 2 of William's brothers served and died in India, one of them fighting in the Afghan war in 1880. Likewise, Blackwood surrounded himself with literary advisers and an editorial staff who were staunchly Conservative and had connections with British overseas colonies. Alexander Allardyce, chief assistant editor between 1879-96, was an ex-Indian journalist and newspaper editor, who espoused strong interventionist policies in India and wrote over 60 articles for Maga during his tenure. Other literary advisers included Sir Edward Hamley, best known for his command of the British interventionist campaign in Egypt in 1882, and a Conservative M.P. for Birkenhead from 1886-92, Alexander Innes Shand, a Scottish lawyer and journalist, and Charles Whibley, another staunch conservative and prolific contributor to Maga until his death in 1930. Their views, and indeed even their leisure interests (William Blackwood was a keen horse rider, fisher and hunter, while A. Innes Shand was similarly described in the DNB as a "fine rider, shot & angler"], contributed to the development of Maga as an outlet for 'hunting, shooting, fishing' stories and colonial fiction and travel pieces set on the frontiers of Empire. Its authors were drawn from the ranks of the military services, the colonial civil services, conservative politicians and professional writers, and included such names as Sir Henry Brackenbury, Sir Edward Braddon [premier of Tasmania and brother of M.E. Braddon, 19th century sensation novelist], G.W. Steevens [journalist], Joseph Conrad, Henry Newbolt [empire poet] and James Grant [explorer of the Nile with John Hanning Speke]. 

Maga's writers were very conscious of the fact that its readership was drawn from military and civil service ranks. In 1911, for example, reminiscing about his connection with Maga, Conrad wrote to his agent that "one was in decent company there and had a good sort of public. There isn't a single club and messroom and man-of-war in the British Seas and Dominions which hasn't its copy of Maga."[12] That Conrad felt this way is interesting to note, considering that his novel "Heart of Darkness", first serialised in Maga in early 1899, has often been taken as anti-imperialist in tone. Its readers, however, finding it alongside pieces on Mountain Exploration in the Canadian Rockies, the struggle between France & Great Britain for control of Nigeria, and a narrative of a Malaysian woman caring for her leprous husband, would not have seen it as anything less than the standard 'Blackwoodian' imperial adventure anecdote. 

Another writer used the colonial readership connection, and his own experience of finding Maga displayed and read in South African colonial clubs, to try to convince the firm to publish unchanged his piece on the Portuguese in East Africa in 1888. "The early portion of the article", J.E.C. Bodley wrote breathlessly, "is not only of importance to the British public, but will be read with the greatest interest throughout South Africa. The time-honoured cover of Maga was a very welcome sight to me not only on the tables of the Clubs at Capetown, Kimberley, Pretoria, but frequently also in remote stations & solitary Magistrates' residences, and great would be the disappointment of your Colonial readers if they found that I treated the Portuguese Question simply as a traveller up the East Coast."[13] William Blackwood was very conscious of this colonial and military interest, and often took steps to avoid alienating this loyal public. In 1881, for example, we find him in a letter warning a writer to tone down the wording of a contemplated piece on military reforms in India, for

William Blackwood III

 

The Magazine in India is very popular & carries considerable weight with the members of the old Indian armies whose claims Maga has always stood up for & I should not like to take any steps that might be prejudicial to them & destroy the influence of the "old ship" out there without very careful consideration.[14]

Buchan's work fitted in with the type of material Maga's editors kept a lookout for in years following. It was material that proved remarkably successful during wartime years, with sales of the magazine during the first world War jumping from an average of 9200 a month in 1914 to a wartime high of 26,000 in 1916. Likewise, the second world war saw an equivalent jump from 9600 a month in 1939 to a post war high of 30,000 in 1946. But by the 1950s the Magazine was in decline, due in part to changes in British society, tastes, and readership abroad. The death of the British Empire also signalled the slow death of Blackwood's Magazine, which had become identified so much with the activities of those who had once run British territories. As British colonies became independent, journalists, readers and contributors to the magazine could now only reminisce nostalgically about Britain's vanished empire, and of Maga's place in it. On the independence of Malta in 1964, a Daily Mail article noted the legacies which the British had left behind to decay: 

In tea plantations and hill stations, from the West Indies to India, across Africa and Burma, mildew and jungle has overtaken the bound volumes of Punch and Blackwood's Magazine, the cricket pitches and the billiard tables. [15]

Notes 

• 1. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, (Harmondsworth 1984), p. 232

2. Charles Whibley, 'A Retrospect', Blackwood's Magazine, 201 (April 1917), p. 433 
3. Claude Colleer Abbott, ed., Further Letters of Gerard Manly Hopkins, (London 1956), p. 57 
4. F. D. Tredrey, The House of Blackwood, 1804-1954, (Edinburgh 1954), p. 18 
5. Tredrey, p. 51 
6. Tredrey, p. 45 
7. Ibid 
8. Tredrey, p. 47 
9. Richard L. Purdy & Michael Millgate, eds., The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, Vol. 3 1902-1908, (Oxford 1982), p. 256 
10. George Orwell, eds., 'Rudyard Kipling', in A Collection of Essays, (New York 1954), p. 128 
11. John Cecil Russell, 'Bison Stalking in India', Blackwood's Magazine, 141 (June 1887), p. 804 
12. Frederick R. Karl & Laurence Davies, eds., The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, Vol. 4 1908-1911, (Cambridge 1990), p. 130 
13. National Library of Scotland (NLS), MS. 4511, ff. 241-242 
14. National Library of Scotland (NLS), MS. 30368, p. 540 
15. Kenneth Allsop, The Daily Mail, 22 September 1964.