This book was originally published in 1978. The London Magazine is briefly told in the accomplisments and failures of its four editors, and during the fourteen months of his editorship, 1820-21, John Scott succeeded in establishing the London as one of the finest literary periodicals of the nineteenth century. John Taylor, the second editor, maintained the high quality of the magazine by securing many excellent writers. But by the end of 1825, the first year of Henry Southern's editorship, the magazine had lost most of its distinguished writers. When Charles night began editing the London in 1828, its great period was already a memory. This book presents a brief history of the magazine alongside the index.

The inherent 'metropolitanism' of writing for a Romantic-era periodical is here explored through the Elia articles that Charles Lamb wrote for the London Magazine.