ROBERT Louis Stevenson wasn’t good enough to write for it, and everyone wanted to read it.
Now the publishing smash that sent up and scandalised Victorian society is starring in a dedicated exhibition at the National Library of Scotland (NLS).
Founded in the capital 200 years ago, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was owned by the family that lent their name to it until closing in 1980.
Famous fans included pacifist Vera Brittain, and during its run it both cost and saved lives.
A First World War soldier credited the title with preventing his death in 1918, when a copy absorbed the impact of a bullet.
And a pistol duel which arose over an 1821 criticism of the “Cockney school” of poetry led to the death of John Scott, then-editor of the London Magazine.
First published on April 1, 1817, the title was designed as a combative Tory counterblast to the existing Whig-supporting Edinburgh Review.
When the first edition failed to cause the impact he was looking for, publisher William Blackwood fired the editors and started again with John Gibson Lockhart and John Wilson, who used controversy to whip up sales in satire, reviews and criticism.
Notable public figures, including the magazine’s original editors, were lampooned.
The daring reads scandalised society, as did the scathing reviews awarded to prominent members of the London literati. It also published new fiction, with classics including Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, George Eliot’s Middlemarch and John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps making their first print appearance in the magazine.
Other contributors included Margaret Oliphant, James Hogg and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. However, not everyone was fit to have their work included – Edinburgh’s own Stevenson had his efforts rejected, as did Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Blackwood archive at NLS includes the life-saving 1918 magazine, which went on show yesterday along with other highlights from the collection.
The free exhibition, titled Laws Were Made to be Broken, will run at the NLS premises on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh until July 2.
Manuscripts curator Dr Ralph McLean said: “From its humble beginnings in Edinburgh 200 years ago, Blackwood’s has left behind a rich legacy as one of the most original and influential periodicals to have been published in Britain.
“It may have been built on controversy but it came to provide a platform for some of the finest writing in the English language.”
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