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Blackwood

About This Item

  • Title: Blackwood
  • Date: 26 October 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01209
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 26 October 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Thara Michaelis Jamie DeRousse Jason Stacy Karie Cobb Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Blackwood." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01209.xml (TEI)
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BLACKWOOD.1—

We have received from the publishers, Leonard Scott & Co.,2 the October number of “Old Ebony.” It is full of interesting matter, as usual, but seems to have dropped politics for this month, and comes to us minus the usual elaborate, statesmanlike disquisition on current events. To the mass of readers, however, this will prove rather a recommendation than otherwise, when the space is filled up by such light and entertaining matter as Bulwer’s3 last novel and other pleasant reading. “New Sea-Side Studies,” are continued; “Modern Light Literature” displays a richly cultivated taste and a keen appreciation on the part of the writer; “Our Hagiography” is a learned dissertation on the Saints; and the remaining prose contents are sufficiently interesting. Blackwood publishes little verse, but that little is very sure to be good. A highly imaginative poem called “The Haunting Face” is contained in the present number. It will bear re-reading and meditation.

Notes:

1. Blackwood's Magazine, or Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, was a monthly magazine created by William Blackwood in 1817. Though it was published in Scotland it quickly attracted a wide readership in Great Britain and the U.S., especially for its fiction offerings. For more information, see David Finkelstein, The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Age? (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). [back]

2. Leonard Scott & Co. was a New York publishing company created by Leonard Scott (1810–1895) that focused on reprinting British magazines. [back]

3. Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873), was an English writer and politician. His novel The Caxtons: A Family Picture (1849) was a breakout hit at the time. Whitman once accused Lytton of plagiarizing a book titled Zicci, stating it was the exact same as the novel Zanoni. Both novels, however, were written by Lytton. Whitman described the controversy in a number of Aurora editorials. See "The Great Bamboozle!—A Plot Discovered!" (March 28, 1842), and "More Humbug" (April 4, 1842). [back]

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