The first number of the refashioned Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine opens with a review of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria which is still regarded as one of the most virulent ‘attacks’ in the history of periodical reviewing. What could have motivated John Wilson to disparage Coleridge so personally and at such length? One factor may have been the treatment of Francis Jeffrey in the Biographia. Jeffrey's presence in both the Biographia and Wilson's review reveals a complicated debate regarding reviewing practices in the 1810s at the same time as it illuminates the boisterous, unpredictable tone of the new magazine.
