Tait's Edinburgh Magazine in the 1830s: Dialogues on Gender, Class, and Reform

Abstract

Tait's Edinburgh Magazine was founded in 1832, just one month before the passage of the first Reform Bill. In his 1832 prospectus for the magazine, William Tait writes, "on the eve of great events, it has appeared to us not only desirable, but necessary, to provide an organ or vehicle through which the voice of a renovated people may be heard" (qtd. in Houghton 2:476). Tait emphasized that his magazine represented "no party but that of the country" and as such spoke for the "good of THE PEOPLE" (476). By claiming to speak for "the people," Tait's Edinburgh Magazine was attempting to market its reformist philosophy to a brad base of middle-class and artisan-calss readers with diverse regionial affiliations. With this marketing strategy, Tait's also aimed to promote a sense of national unity at a time when class interests were becoming increasingly divided. p 263.