The first of his dramatic pieces, "The Prince of Tunis", was staged in Edinburgh in 1773 with some success, but others were failures. Mackenzie belonged to a literary club in Edinburgh, at whose meetings papers in the manner of "The Spectator" were read. This led to the establishment of a weekly periodical, the "Mirror" (23 January 1779 – 27 May 1780), of which Mackenzie was editor and chief contributor. It was followed in 1785 by a similar paper, the "Lounger", which ran for nearly two years and included one of the earliest tributes to the genius of Robert Burns.