‘The Suicide’: Textual Contagion and Communities of Readers in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine

Sarah Sharp
University of Edinburgh

In an 1824 issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, William Maginn
published ‘The Suicide’ a satirical discussion of gentlemanly
suicide. The sketch functioned as a response to increasing concern
within contemporary society that romantic depictions of suicide were
fuelling an epidemic of self-harm. This paper will use Maginn’s
sketch to think about ideas of readership and community in
contemporary discourse. I will argue that Maginn’s participation in
the culture of textual game-playing at the heart of the Blackwood’s
aesthetic in this sketch is designed to differentiate the
Blackwood’s reader from the wider mass readership of early
nineteenth century Britain. In Maginn’s text Blackwood’s readers
are cast as members of a discerning and highly sophisticated readerly
community, capable of resisting the dangerous influence of mass media.

Newspapers and Periodicals in Britain and Ireland from 1800 to 1900