Ayrshire Legatees, The Steam-Boat, The Gathering of the West
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The Ayrshire Legatees, The Steam-Boat and The Gathering of the West first appeared as serials in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine during the magazine’s most innovative phase. Introducing a colourful cast of narrators and characters who present idiosyncratic perspectives on current events as they travel between London, Edinburgh, and the rural west of Scotland, Galt’s texts experiment with observation, dialogue, storytelling, and genre.
Bringing these three interrelated texts together in one volume for the first time, this edition includes extensive explanatory notes that identify Galt’s allusions, references to historical events and social and cultural practices of the period in which they are set. An appendix details the textual changes between the Blackwood’s serials and the book versions. The editor’s introduction explores the origins of Galt’s texts in the pages of Blackwood’s Magazine and their reliance on the magazine’s unique dialogism, cross-talk among contributions and inside jokes, along with the influential context of the historical novel.
John Galt was a Scottish novelist, entrepreneur, and political and social commentator. Mark Parker is Professor of English Literature at James Madison University. He is the author of Literary Magazines and British Romanticism (Cambridge, 2000) and editor of Volumes 3 & 4 of Blackwood’s Magazine, 1817-1825 (Pickering & Chatto, 2006), which present Noctes Ambrosianae from 1822 to 1825.