John Blackwood

LW had many friends among literary people and those who moved in literary circles. She discussed the books of her childhood with Reginald Palgrave, who shared many of her early reading experiences, and Wilkie Collins

It was John Blackwood who thought of the eventual title, after candidates including The Tullivers, St. Oggs on the Floss, Sister Maggie, and The House of Tulliver; or, Life on the Floss...

On the whole reviewers were enthusiastic (E. S. Dallas began his notice in the Times, George Eliot is as great as ever), but the ending of The Mill on the Floss...

John Blackwood reproved MO for over-using favourite words in this book: he noticed specifically perplexed,troubled,little, and poor.

John Blackwood complained of a certain hardness of tone in Miss Marjoribanks. MO responded, I have a weakness for Lucilla, and to bring a sudden change upon her character and break her down...

John Blackwood, who knew her work well, once wrote that he considered biography her greatest forte.

John Blackwood, though he published it, disliked this story as too negative. It apparently appealed to French artist H. É. Blanchon, however, whose painting La transfusion du sang, based on the tale's...

Middlemarch's mode of publication meant that responses were coming in long before the book was complete, including formal reviews. R. H. Hutton for instance, wrote no less than 6 reviews for the Spectator...

John Blackwood was in general delighted with the manuscript of Amos Barton. Thackeray, too, read it and was impressed. Blackwood's few criticisms (particularly of the ending, which he found comparatively feeble) appalled...

Again early criticism from John Blackwood upset GE. But Blackwood's response when she suggested ending her series of tales reassured her how much he valued them.

GE was already at work on her next novel when Adam Bede was published. For the first time, this novel set her at the centre of a kind of bidding war in the book trade....

A family friend, Dr David Macbeth Moir, introduced MO to William Blackwood. She submitted this story trembling . . . scarcely expecting to be admitted to the honours of the Magazine...

At one point John Blackwood objected that an instalment was too short: Oliphant did not insist on her own preference, but agreed to break the narrative in a different place. The novel appeared in...

This departure from her usual publisher, Blackwood, was precipitated by a princely offer from George Smith of the Cornhill of £10,000 (the largest offer ever, although they eventually settled on £7,000 for copyright over...

She began work on it by 6 September 1864, but within a few months (in February 1865) she was so bogged down and anxious that Lewes confiscated her manuscript. She took it up again in...