Edinburgh Is A Talking Town

Abstract

Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, the Scottish middle class assiduously cultivated the ability to engage in “polite conversation”: conversation distinguished by reciprocity rather than self-display, deference rather than competition. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, Scots, especially the younger ones, began to idealize boldness and eloquence in conversation. This transformation is reflected prominently in the periodical-writing of the period. From the founding of the Edinburgh Review in 1802, periodical-writing began to assume a deliberately eloquent and assertive style. There is evidence, in fact, that many of the reviews and essays written by the “Scotch reviewers” of this era had begun as conversations – that is, actual conversations in coffeehouses and clubs – and had been transferred to paper. The notion of reviews and essays as displays of eloquence became so common, indeed, that Blackwood's Magazine, begun in 1817, deliberately defined itself against the Edinburgh as a printed manifestation of the new competitive Scottish conversation.