Looking Abroad: Two Edinburgh Journals in the Early Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The nineteenth century was a time when British culture, although increasingly insular in many ways, was also increasingly aware of a wide spread of world literature. New “discoveries” included writing from Germany, Northern and Eastern Europe, medieval Spain and the countries of the East. An important part in this exploration was played by the thriving new periodical literature, which found space both for translations of foreign works and for long reviews that often contained substantial translated passages. This field has yet to be fully explored; the present article focuses on two very different Edinburgh periodicals which occupied a central position in British literary culture, the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. An analysis of the content of these journals over two five-year periods during the first half of the century brings out the different approaches of an established review and a newly founded magazine, showing among other things Blackwood's interest in a great variety of foreign writing, ancient and modern, (above all from Germany) and in the process of translation, while the Edinburgh Review tends to concentrate on recent French culture.