Beginning Blackwood’s: The Right Mix of Dulce and Ùtile

Abstract

These iambic pentameter quatrains were part of the ‘Notices to Contributors’ that opened the March 1818 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Their tone is cocky, the tone of a publication that finally had found its several voices. It had not been easy. Eight months before, William Blackwood had written to Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, London publishers of his Edinburgh Monthly Magazine (April-September 1817), to warn them of their joint venture’s imminent demise: ‘I am sorry to inform you that I have been obliged to resolve upon stopping the Magazine with No. 6. I have been much disappointed in my editors who have done little in the way of writing or procuring Contributions. Ever since the work began I have had myself almost the whole burden of procuring contributions which by great exertions I got from my own friends, while at the same time I had it not in my power to pay for them, as by our agreement the Editors were to furnish me with the whole of the materials for which and their Editorial labours they were to receive half of the profits of the work’.¹