ABSTRACT
The SCOTS MAGAZINE (founded 1739) was a standard non-reviewing monthly in the tradition of the Gentleman’s Magazine when it was purchased in 1801 by Archibald Constable, the publishing magnate who founded the Edinburgh Review in 1802. Constable was a staunch Whig – a roaring liberal by Scottish standards – of great personal magnetism who dominated Edinburgh publishing from the time he founded his Review. When in 1817 William Blackwood attempted to challenge Constable with a Tory journal called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, Constable won over the editors – Pringle and Cleghorn – to abandon Blackwood and combine their new journal with the Scots Magazine to form the Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany (1817-1826), which was subtitled and numbered as a new series of the Scots. The Scots / Edinburgh Magazine, unlike the revitalized Blackwood’s or the Edinburgh and Quarterly reviews, depended on unsolicited contributions by correspondents for many of its articles and reviews. Among these contributors were London intellectuals like Hazlitt, Godwin, and John Payne Collier.
