William Maginn

Who was William Maginn?

William Maginn, journalist and miscellaneous writer, born at Cork, became a contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, and after moving to London in 1824 became for a few months in 1826 the Paris correspondent to The Representative, a paper started by John Murray, the publisher. When its short career was run, he helped to found in 1827 the ultra Tory Standard, a newspaper that he edited along with a fellow graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Stanley Lees Giffard; he also wrote for the more scandalous Sunday paper, The Age. In 1830 he instigated and became one of the leading supporters of Fraser's Magazine. His Homeric Ballads, much praised by contemporary critics, were published in Fraser's between 1839 and 1842. In 1837, Bentley's Miscellany was launched, with Charles Dickens as editor, and Maginn wrote the prologue and contributed over the next several years a series of "Shakespeare Papers" that examined characters in counter-intuitive fashion. From "The Man in the Bell" through "Welch Rabbits" he was an occasional though skillful writer of short fiction and tales.