Ayrshire Legatees, The Steam-Boat, The Gathering of the West

Mark Parker is Professor of English Literature at James Madison University. He is the author of Literary Magazines and British Romanticism (Cambridge, 2000) and editor of Volumes 3 & 4 of Blackwood’s Magazine, 1817-1825 (Pickering & Chatto, 2006), which present Noctes Ambrosianae from 1822 to 1825.

• Preface to The Works of John GaltAcknowledgementsChronology of John GaltIntroductionOriginsLiterary Contexts 1: Scott and Historical FictionLiterary Contexts 2: The Blackwood Circle and the MiscellanyHistorical ContextsFormal Contexts: From Magazine to BookA Note on the TextsThe Ayrshire LegateesThe Steam-BoatThe Gathering of the WestEmendationsEnd-of-line HyphensAppendix: Textual VariationsExplanatory NotesGlossary

The reciprocal "relation between serial and magazine" has rarely been so well understood or editorially marked as it is in Parker’s splendid edition of these pivotal works in the career of John Galt. Long focused on serialisation’s effect on the forms of fiction, scholars have slighted the reciprocal effect that fiction – and it should be added, poetry – forced upon topical and eclectic discursive forms of the nineteenth-century and beyond. Calling attention to how "the dynamism and experimentational force of [Galt’s] serial versions" exploit magazinist bibliography, Parker’s edition, modest in its address, has serious implications for literary history and critical method.