accepting and publishing in his magazine the first instalment of her earliest fiction the 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' which had been sent to him without the name of the author, for whom thus early he predicted a great career as a novelist. This commencement of a business connection was soon followed by a personal acquaintance between author and publisher, which ripened into intimacy. In her husband's biography of George Eliot there are many indications of her readiness to accept Blackwood's friendly criticisms and suggestions, and of her grateful regard for him. On hearing of the probably fatal termination of his last illness she wrote: 'He will be a heavy loss to me. He has been bound up with what I most cared for in my life for more than twenty years, and his good qualities have made many things easy to me that without him would often have been difficult.' All her books, after the 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' were, with one exception, first published by his firm. Although Blackwood was a staunch conservative and the conductor of the chief monthly organ of conservatism, he always welcomed, whether as editor or publisher, what he considered to be literary ability, without regard to the political or religious opinions of its possessors. A genial and convivial host and companion, he delighted to dispense, at his house in Edinburgh, and his country house, Strathtyrum, near St. Andrews, a liberal hospitality to authors with whom he had formed a business connection. To his magazine he contributed directly only occasional obituary notices of prominent contributors. A fragmentary paper of his, entitled 'Sutherlandia,' described as 'racy,' was published in Mr. Clark's work on 'Golf,' a game to which he was devoted. He died at Strathtyrum on 29 Oct. 1879.
[A selection from the Obituary Notices late John Blackwood, editor of Blackwood's Magazine, printed for private circulation, Edinburgh, 1880; George Eliot's Life, as related in her Letters and Journals, arranged and edited by her husband, J. W. Cross, 1885.]
BLACKWOOD, WILLIAM (1770–1834), publisher, founder of 'Blackwood's Magazine,' was born at Edinburgh in November 1776. The circumstances of his parents were very moderate, but he received a sound education. Intelligent and fond of reading, he was apprenticed at fourteen to a bookselling firm in Edinburgh, and while in their service was a diligent student of the historical and archæological literature of Scotland. At the early age of twenty he was thought worthy by an Edinburgh publishing firm of some eminence to be entrusted with the management of a branch of their business which they were establishing in Glasgow. There he remained a year, and then resumed for another year his connection with his first employers. Entering afterwards into partnership with an Edinburgh bookseller and auctioneer, he found this conjunction of vocations distasteful, and migrating to London he completed his bibliographical education in the antiquarian department of a bookseller noted for his catalogues of old publications. Having acquired through industry and frugality some capital, he returned to Edinburgh in 1804 and began business on his own account, dealing chiefly in old books. He soon became the head of that branch of the trade in Scotland, and his catalogue of old books, published in 1812, is said to have been the first in which classification was attempted, and to have long remained a standard authority. Meanwhile he had begun to exhibit some enterprise and judgment as a publisher. In or about 1810 he took a principal part in founding the elaborate and costly 'Edinburgh Encyclopædia,' edited by Mr. (afterwards Sir) David Brewster. In 1811 he published what remains the standard biography of John Knox by Dr. McCrie, and it was, it is said, at Blackwood's instance that the university of Edinburgh conferred on its author, though not a minister of the Scottish establishment, the degree of D.D. Having become the Edinburgh agent of the first John Murray of Albemarle Street, Blackwood published, in conjunction with him, the first series of Sir Walter Scott's 'Tales of my Landlord.' In this transaction he showed his reliance on his own literary judgment by suggesting an alteration in the finale of the 'Black Dwarf.' Scott indignantly rejected the suggestion, in making which, it must be added, Blackwood had been fortified by the opinion of Murray's chief literary adviser, William Gifford.
In 1816 Blackwood took what was considered the bold step of removing his business from the old town of Edinburgh to Prince's Street, at that time a fashionable thoroughfare of the new town. Soon afterwards he resolved to establish a monthly periodical which would combat the influence, in politics and literature, of the 'Edinburgh Review,' then still published in the city from which it derived its name. On 1 April 1817 he issued No. 1 of the 'Edinburgh Monthly Magazine.' But, probably through precipitancy in his selection of its two editors [see Cleghorn, William; Pringle, Thomas], the tone and tenor of the new periodical were calculated to strengthen instead of to counteract the influence of the 'Edinburgh Review.' The June number accordingly contained an intimation that in
