SOURCE: Gordon, Ian A. “Galt's The Ayrshire Legatees: Genesis and Development.” Scottish Literary Journal 16, no. 1 (May 1989): 35-42.

In the following essay, Gordon comments on Galt's popular novel The Ayrshire Legatees and the revisions it underwent in the transition from periodical publication to novel form.

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John Galt's first published Scottish novel made its initial appearance in monthly instalments from June 1820 to February 1821 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. The editor, ‘Christopher North’, announced in the magazine the following year that the series (‘the very best that ever had been in any periodical work’) had ‘increased our sale prodigiously’. For both publisher and author the appearance of The Ayrshire Legatees was a turning point. It consolidated the position of Blackwood's Magazine as the leading Scottish literary journal; and it launched John Galt on his career as a novelist.

Galt had to wait for years before he attained such popular esteem. He had...