ABSTRACT
William Maginn first met Richard Bentley in the 1820s, when Bentley was the junior partner in a printing firm with his brother Samuel. Richard was ambitious to enter publishing and in September 1829 joined Henry Colburn as a partner. Landon wrote Bentley that "Maginn's preface is like a shower of rockets thrown up" to herald the Miscellany's beginnings. Many of the Bentley's stories have a surprise at the end, but rather than a twist of the plot they take metafictional turns and approximate "stories without a tail". In Bentley's, Maginn's sentence on Falstaff mirrors his own self-condemnation: "Conscious of powers and talents far surpassing those of the ordinary run of men, he finds himself outstripped in the race. Maginn, one of the most personal and political writers of the age, announced the policy. For Maginn, the character of Romeo is not about love or being crossed in love, but about luck.
