The ‘Chaldee Manuscript’, William Hone, and Late Georgian Religious Parody

This article analyses Blackwood's notorious ‘Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript’ (1817), contextualising the satire in the light of religious parody, ancient and modern – but in particular the latter – and arguing that there were specific reasons why a post-Napoleonic magazine might have used this particular form at this particular moment. It examines the publication, publicity, and purposes of the ‘Chaldee’, a key part of William Blackwood's reboot of his failing magazine in October 1817, and the contemporary religious parody of the radical pressman William Hone, which led, three times, to his prosecution and acquittal, and which directly informed that most famous part of Blackwood's succès de scandale.