Blackwood, William

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Blackwood, William (1776–1834). Born in Edinburgh, Blackwood established himself in the book trade and then went into publishing. In 1817 he launched a magazine to counter the Whig tendencies of the Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, but less ponderous than the Tory Quarterly Review (1809). After a faltering start, Blackwood's established itself, with Lockhart, John Galt, John Wilson, and James Hogg among its authors. During its first year, Blackwood's published a series of severe attacks on ‘the Cockney school of poetry’. Lockhart dismissed Keats's Endymion as ‘calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy’, and the comments on Hazlitt were so virulent that he was able to get damages from Blackwood. The magazine was continued by his son John Blackwood, and survived until 1980.

J. A. Cannon

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