ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Christian Isobel Johnstone's editorship of Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, especially her techniques for reviewing literary texts from a gender- and class-sensitive point of view. As editor, Johnstone instituted many changes to the magazine designed to make it more appealing to the working classes, she changed the format of the magazine to a larger, more popular size and reduced its price from half a crown to one shilling. An exploration of Johnstone's editorial projects illuminates the complex relationship between class and gender in her work and within the reformist periodical press more generally during 1830s and 40s. The chapter focuses on Johnstone's editorship of Edinburgh Tales, an anthology of short fiction published from 1845 to 1846. While Edinburgh Tales momentarily revealed Johnstone's concerns as a proto-feminist writer and exposed the devices she used to succeed in a male-dominated field, they did not otherwise provide a structuring narrative for her remarkable career as a fiction writer, journalist, and editor.
