Blackwood, WILLIAM, a distinguished Edinburgh publisher, the originator of Blackwood's Magazine, was born in Edinburgh, November 20, 1776. After serving his apprenticeship to the book-selling business in his native city, and prosecuting his calling in Glasgow and London, he settled in Edinburgh as a bookseller—principally of old books—in 1804. In 1817, having six years before become a publisher on his own account, he issued the first number of Blackwood's Magazine. The literary ability displayed in this periodical was so much in advance of the monthly magazines then existing, that from the first it was a great success. Its remarkable popularity was sustained by the papers of Wilson ('Christopher North'), Lockhart, Hogg, and other spirits, whom Blackwood had the liberality and tact to attract to his standard. Overwhelming its political and literary opponents, now with the most farcical humour, and now with the bitterest sarcasm—sometimes with reckless injustice—the magazine secured for itself a prodigious reputation, more particularly among the Tories, of whose political creed it has always been a resolute adherent. William Blackwood himself, who added literary tastes and acquirements to his profession of a bookseller, was the chief manager of his magazine, and conducted the whole of the correspondence connected with it until his death, which took place September 16, 1834. His place was filled, between 1834 and 1852, by his sons, Alexander and Robert, the early death of the former cutting short a career of great promise. Under John (1818-79), the third son, who was editor from 1852, Magazine not only sustained but increased its reputation. The publishing business has been greatly extended since the days of the founder of the house, 'George Eliot's' novels having all but one issued hence.
See Mrs Oliphant's Annals of a Publishing House (1897) and Sir George Douglas, The Blackwood Group (1897).