House of Blackwood

David Finkelstein is Dean of the School of Humanities at the University of Dundee. He is editor of An Index to "Blackwood's Magazine," 1901–1980 (1995) and coeditor of four recent books, including The Book History Reader (2001) and Nineteenth-Century Media and the Construction of Identities (2000). He has spent the last few years investigating the Blackwood papers for the National Library of Scotland, which has enabled him to exploit business documents ignored by or unknown to previous researchers.

• ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. Setting the Scene 2. Finding Success: Blackwood’s, 1860–1879 3. Africa Rewritten: The Case of John Hanning Speke 4. Reade Revised: A Woman Hater and the Women’s Medical Movement 5. Shifting Ground: Blackwood’s, 1880–1912 6. Creating House Identities: Nineteenth-Century PublishingMemoirs and the Annals of a Publishing House 7. “A Grocer’s Business”: William Blackwood IIIand the Literary Agents Conclusion Appendices 1-3: Introduction Appendix 1. Blackwood & Sons Publishing Statistics, 1860–1910 Appendix 2. Blackwood’s Magazine Sales, 1856–1915 Appendix 3. Margaret Oliphant Sales, 1860–1897 Notes Bibliography Index

“The House of Blackwood is one of the best studies of a publishing house to be produced since book history was reinvented a couple of decades ago. Perceptively applying theory to archives, Finkelstein’s study illuminates the publisher’s relations to authors, and much more—it shows how successive generations of Blackwoods responded to familial, economic, trade, workshop, and political pressures, the changing demographics of readers, and the altered conditions of publishing in Edwardian Britain. It is a pleasure to read and a model for future work in the field.”—Robert L. Patten, Rice University