Periodicals in Scotland: Genre Migration

Abstract

We have begun to see how periodical productions in small nations with uncertain audiences produce genre formations that become strained in the search for readership and in efforts to differentiate themselves. Scottish periodicals adopt familiar genre patterns. However, they appear to experience even more acute genre instability. There appears to be a chronic problem in maintaining a national readership that exceeds even the difficulties of the Northern Irish and Welsh magazines. Writers and readers are drawn inexorably into the orbit of England. Robert Crawford (1992, 7) observes that the whole concept of “English Literature” has reinforced an oppressive sense of centralizing power. Editors appear to lose confidence in the form in which they have chosen to work. Thus some little magazines start to take on the characteristics of radical periodicals, and ambitious and well-supported reviews falter early in their publishing history.