ABSTRACT
Founded by the Scottish publisher William Blackwood in 1817, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was the most significant literary periodical to be established in the post-Napoleonic period. 1 Blackwood’s is a troubling, highly irresponsible and highly imaginative magazine, its best writing characterised by an acerbic but compelling humour. Ultra-Tory in politics, ‘Maga’, like The Anti-Jacobin before it, used stylish parody, most notably by the Irish poet William Maginn (1793–1842), to attack the pernicious forces of Whiggism and radicalism. Though such notable figures as De Quincey, Hogg and Scott contributed to Blackwood’s, the critical tone of the journal is best captured in the acidulous flair of its parodist-in-chief, Maginn, and that of its main reviewers, John Wilson 2 (‘Christopher North’) and John Gibson Lockhart (responsible, most notoriously, for coining that powerfully negative critical term ‘The Cockney School of Poetry’ 3 ).
