Malcolm Reviews

— The Corvey Poets Project at the University of Nebraska —

British Poetry of the later Eighteenth and Earlier Nineteenth Centuries

Bibliographical and Contextual Apparatus

Malcolm, John

Scenes of War, and Other Poems. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1828. Pp. xi + 191.

Contemporary Reviews of this Volume

I have been unable to find any reviews of Scenes of War, and Other Poems. Even after enlisting the help of three reference librarians at three different universities-Kathy Johnson, UNL; Johanna McClay, Bismarck State College; and Fran Fisher at North Dakota State University, I have little to show for it except a debt of gratitude for their efforts.

The real problem is that Scenes was published a few years two late for the most helpful indexes to include. The only mention of the work in any index was found at NDSU. In Allibone's A Critical Dictionary, under John Malcolm, Scenes of War and other Poems is listed with a quote saying that "John Malcolm always wrote with taste and grace." That observation is attributed to David Macbeth Moir from his book Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the Past Half-century in Six Lectures (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1851: 291), which I have not had an opportunity to see first hand. And that is the closest thing to a review I have come upon.

I found nine reviews of Malcolm's first book, The Buccaneer, but that is cold comfort since they do me little good here and simply scratch at the scab of suspicion that somewhere there must exist reviews for Scenes. A few quotes from The Buccaneer reviews have been integrated into the biography of John Malcolm that appears elsewhere on this site.

As a side note, it is noty surprising that reviews are scarce, considering the relative rarity of Malcolm's works. A quick look at WorldCat provides the following tentative census of extant copies:
1 copy of Scenes in libraries world wide,
5 copies of The Buccaneer,
6 copies of Tales of Field and Flood,
1 microform of Constable's Miscellany with "Memorials,"
3 copies of Trotman's Mackinnon and Malcolm.

When one considers how few copies of Malcolm's works exist in libraries, it is quite astounding to have access to all three of his books of poetry in the Corvey collection.