Introduction

IN NOVEMBER 1886, MARGARET OLIPHANT (1828–97) wrote to William Black-wood, the editor of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1817–1980), with an idea for a new, regular feature. Oliphant, who had by that time been a mainstay at the magazine since the 1850s, proposed to write a ‘standing article upon literature, a review of all the books of the month worth reviewing, with admixture of speculation and general comment, as would be natural’ (1899: 338). The pitch, Oliphant made clear, was not for ‘an occasional paper’ but ‘a regular one, for which people would look’ (338). As the letter reveals, the series had been a long time in gestation; it was, she explains, ‘a plan which has been long in my mind, and which, if I had ever had a magazine in my own hands, as I once thought I should, I should certainly have adopted’ (338). Oliphant’s plan was to assume life in the shape of ‘The Old Saloon,’ a recurring, if irregular, feature which ran in ...