Blackwood's was the most important and influential literary-political journal of its time, and a major institution not just in Scottish letters, but in the development of British and American Romanticism. Intemperate in political polemic and feared for its literary assassinations, the magazine became just as notorious for the shocking power of its fictional offerings. These set a new standard of concentrated dread and precisely calculated alarm, and were to establish themselves as a landmark in the development of the short magazine story. The influence of Blackwood's quickly reached many major authors, including Dickens, Emily Bronte, Robert Browning, and Edgar Allan Poe.