Tales of Terror from Blackwood's Magazine

Book excerpt: The tales of terror and hysteria published in the heyday (1817-32) of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine became a literary legend in the nineteenth century. Blackwood's was the most important and influential literary-political journal of its time, and a major institution not just in Scottish letters but in the development of British and American Romanticism. Intemperate in political polemic and feared for its literary assassinations, the magazinebecame just as notorious for the shocking power of its fictional offerings. These set a new standard of concentrated dread and precisely calculated alarm, and were to establish themselves as a landmark in the development of the short magazine story. The influence of Blackwood's quickly reached manymajor authors, including Dickens, Emily Bronte, Robert Browning, and Edgar Allan Poe. This edition selects some of the best and most representative tales from the magazine's first fifteen years, including work by Walter Scott, James Hogg, and John Galt, alongside talented but now almost forgotten figures like William Mudford, William Godwin (son of the philosopher), and SamuelWarren.