John Blackwood was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 publisher, younger brother of William Blackwood

William Blackwood

William Blackwood was a Scottish publisher who founded the firm of William Blackwood & Sons.Blackwood was born of humble parents in Edinburgh. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a firm of booksellers in Edinburgh, and he followed his calling also in Glasgow and London for several years...

. John succeeded his brother as head of the business in 1834, on William's death; four years later he was joined by Major William Blackwood, who continued in the firm until his death in 1861. In 1862 the major's elder son, William Blackwood (born 1836), was taken into partnership. John Blackwood was a man of strong personality and great business discernment; it was in the pages of his magazine that George Eliot

George Eliot

Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...

's first stories, Scenes of Clerical Life, appeared. He also inaugurated the "Ancient Classics for English readers" series, to which William Lucas Collins

William Lucas Collins

Rev William Lucas Collins was a Church of England clergyman and author.-Life and career:Collins was born in Oxwich, Glamorgan, Wales, and educated at Rugby School and Jesus College, Oxford...

contributed.

The Blackwood family still live to this day in Ayrshire , Scotland around the Doon Valley Area and Other parts of Ayrshire.