This essay offers a historical and generic account of the inter-cultural British and Irish nexus of imitation surrounding Thomas Moore’s first published volume of verse, his remarkably successful Odes of Anacreon, Translated into English Verse, with Notes (1800). I situate Moore’s volume, imitative of the sixth-century BC poet Anacreon’s lyrics of wine, women and song, within the dual Irish and British contexts of Anacreontic verse published in Ireland in the eighteenth century, in the contemporary cultural milieu of glee clubs, bodies such as the Hibernian Catch Club, the Beefsteak Club, the Humbug Club and the tellingly named Anacreontic Society, whose members frequently performed Anacreontic sentimental and drinking songs, and in the Cockney School Romanticism of Leigh Hunt and John Keats. In doing so, the paper repositions Moore, in his role of Anacreontic versifier as a formative presence at the genesis of British Romanticism as the turn of the nineteenth century, in ways that allow a deeper understanding of the culturally complex formation of Four Nations Romanticism. Continue reading →
Following an extended delay after migrating to a new platform, Issue 21 of Romantic Textualities offers the first of two special issues dealing with ‘Romantic Visual Cultures’, which will continue into Issue 22. These twin … Continue reading →
The House of John Murray was well known as one of the principal British publishers in the field of travel and exploratory literature throughout much of the nineteenth century. The titles that were published under the proprietorship of John Murray II (1778–1843) and John Murray III (1808–92) read like a who’s who of nineteenth-century travel writing. The John Murray Archive offers one of the richest archival sources for publishing history, providing unequalled insight into the way that a prominent London publisher dealt with its authors in the age of colonial expansion. This article examines the processes through which Murray’s works came to make their way from manuscript to publication over several decades. It will conclude with a discussion of authorial self-presentation, examining ways in which some of Murray’s travel writers fashioned themselves, through various discursive strategies, in accordance with their position within this new literary economy. Continue reading →
by Katie Garner On Saturday 7 December, members of the Eighteenth-Century Literature Research Network in Ireland gathered at St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra, just north of Dublin city centre, for the network’s 11th annual symposium. … Continue reading →
By Jo Taylor Let me set the scene. Chawton, Hampshire, sometime in the 1810s. A modest, well-kept house in the centre of the village, lavender outside the window waving in the breeze. Someone playing the … Continue reading →
In this report, I want to float what I consider to be a distinct possibility: that Ann Radcliffe did not cease publication after The Italian (1797), but published two anonymous novels for the circulating library … Continue reading →
With the recent publication of the RCUK revised guidelines on Open Access publication of publicly funded research, set amidst the broader (and often polemical) debates surrounding open access in general, I thought it would be … Continue reading →
The essay looks at the masculine sporting culture that flourished in the 1820s, revolving in particular around the boxing world dubbed ‘The Fancy’. Focusing on the 1821 prizefight between Tom Hickman and Bill Neate, Snowdon examines the ways in which the event was depicted by the pens of William Hazlitt, Pierce Egan, and John Badcock. An extended discussion of the popular Boxiana series, which was first written by Egan, and then taken up by Badcock, before legal proceedings allowed Egan to publish once again under the Boxiana imprint. Continue reading →
Did Ireland experience Romanticism? Certainly not in the uncomplicated way that scholarship assumes England, Germany and other countries did. In Romanticism in National Context (1988), Tom Dunne’s contribution eschews the standard chapter title form—‘Romanticism in … Continue reading →
If Romantic women poets, as Paula Feldman says, have ‘appeared in literary history at best as footnotes’, Maria Pickersgill has been a footnote to a footnote, and undeservedly so. [1] Her husband, Henry William Pickersgill, … Continue reading →
Following an unexpected and protracted delay, the current issue of Romantic Textualities brings into focus further interactions between Romantic literature and contemporary print culture. The two articles and one report offer illuminating explorations into the … Continue reading →
Circulating-Library Catalogues, 1800–1829: Checklist Entries employ the following conventions. Entries are grouped by year, and then by a reference number which corresponds to that given in The English Novel, 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose … Continue reading →
The fiction of the early nineteenth century is well known as a minefield for author attribution. According to data compiled for a new Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles, in two … Continue reading →
I James Henderson’s article ‘The Gothic Novel in Wales (1790–1820)’ provides a useful starting point for a study of Wales-related fiction of the romantic period. [1] Examining the extent to which Wales was used as … Continue reading →
I This paper seeks to consider the influence of Ann Radcliffe’s fiction on the literary scene at the end of the eighteenth century. It will examine two very different responses to the Radcliffean paradigm, through … Continue reading →
Scott’s strategy from the commencement of the Waverley Novels, it might be argued, was to create a ‘superior’ kind of fiction, pitched in such a way as to draw back a male book-buying audience as … Continue reading →
This paper examines the turn of the eighteenth century, when the dichotomy between books as products and books as artistic outputs emerged and deals with three different components: novels, circulating libraries, and readers. The aim of the paper is to draw attention to some of the underlying factors that conditioned that split between high and low which came about at this time and also to pinpoint some of the actors that were involved in this process, focused in particular on the works of August Lafontaine and the translation of his works into Swedish. Continue reading →
I ‘An acknowledged novel-writer is, perhaps, one of the most difficult names to support with credit and reputation’. -ELIZABETH SARAH VILLA-REAL GOOCH, Preface to Sherwood Forest (1804). The early nineteenth century saw a ‘sharply rising … Continue reading →
This essay provides an overview of patterns of reception and production of Irish fiction published between 1800 and 1829, with particular discussion of the fiction of Maria Edgeworth and Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan). The essay is followed by a bibliographical checklist of 114 works of fiction published during the survey period. Continue reading →
I ‘Few poetic careers can have been more thoroughly devoted to the construction of national identity than was that of Felicia Hemans’s, writes Tricia Lootens, in her contribution to Angela Leighton’s Victorian Women Poets: A … Continue reading →
The second stage of our Database of Fiction 1800-29 project is focused towards the acquisition of contemporary materials which will provide a more comprehensive context for the primary bibliographical data already available. Since her appointment … Continue reading →
Eaton Stannard Barrett’s The Heroine has traditionally been read as a reactionary text. In problematizing this received status, however, we are not simply aiming to recuperate Barrett’s novel into a more politically correct framework by … Continue reading →
Attention has repeatedly been drawn to literary anticipations of a change in taste which was to mark English garden design in the eighteenth century. One of the earliest voices to give expression to their dissatisfaction … Continue reading →
This project report relates to The English Novel, 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey Published in the British Isles, edd. Peter Garside, James Raven, and Rainer Schöwerling, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 2000). In particular, it offers fresh … Continue reading →
This project report is a summary of data collected from various anecdotal sources for inclusion in our Database of British Fiction, 1800-29. The material provided below was gathered between February 2000 and May 2001, from … Continue reading →
Part way through Frances Burney’s massive third novel, Camilla, the heroine’s father laments the difficulties he has encountered in educating his daughters. ‘[T]he proper education of a female’, he proclaims miserably, ‘either for use or … Continue reading →
A woman who is unhappy-and truly unhappy-cries and doesn’t move you at all: it’s worse, it’s that any slight feature that disfigures her makes you laugh: it’s that an accent which is ordinary for her … Continue reading →
Published annually to cover the years 1801–09, The Flowers of Literature consisted primarily of extracts from what were perceived to be the year’s most popular publications. The extracts were drawn from a range of genres, … Continue reading →
The years 1760-1820 mark a turning point in the history of historiography. Methods for studying the past changed rapidly during this period, as did the forms in which historical knowledge was displayed. Hume famously called … Continue reading →
The two volumes of The English Novel 1770-1829 document the large number of men and women involved in the production of fiction in the Romantic period. [1] Of this number, biographical data are presently available … Continue reading →
The interlude between the decline of Jacobin leadership at the end of the eighteenth century, and emergence of Chartism in the 1830s occupies an interesting place in the history of the English working classes. It … Continue reading →
This project report relates to The English Novel, 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles, general editors Peter Garside, James Raven, and Rainer Schöwerling, 2 vols (Oxford: OUP, 2000). In … Continue reading →
The records presented here comprise a listing of novels that were advertised in The Star, a London evening daily newspaper, during 1815 through 1824. These records represent only a relatively short and edited section of … Continue reading →
Amy E. Weldon discusses the emerging animal rights movement of the long eighteenth century and the benefits of didacticism in the emerging genre of children’s literature. Examining the moral tenor of Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ‘The Mouse’s Petition’ and ‘The Caterpillar’ with respect to writing on children and morality by her contemporaries, Mary Wollstonecraft and Alexander Pope, the article charts the dissenting underpinnings of both the anti-slavery and anti-animal cruelty movements. It argues that both the language of sensibility and Christian moral education (which calls for love and mercy) could be effected through literature and taught through the presence of animal characters in Barbauld’s writing. Barbauld’s construction of clemency in the domestic war against animals, whether mice or caterpillars, speaks to the empathy possible on an international scale where widespread clemency could lead to the reconfiguration of existing political orders. Signposting the real problem of animal cruelty in eighteenth-century Britain in entertainments such as horse and bull-baiting, Barbauld’s writing can be seen as a point of intersection between Christian ideology and middle-class moral education. Ultimately, this article argues that the Dissenters’ moral and philosophical beliefs harmonise with the animal rights movement. Continue reading →
Our modern conception of authorship founded on the Romantic ideal of individualism finds purchase and root in the figure of William Wordsworth. Using Wordsworth as a case study, Jacqueline Rhodes draws attention to ‘the critical abnormality’ of Wordsworth’s ‘Preface’ to his two-volume Poems by William Wordsworth (1815). Rhodes explains how ‘the culmination of the century-long development of the radical textual individual: the professional writer’ sees a change in the cultural meaning, and legal definition, of authorship in the eighteenth century, with the move towards author-centric rather than publisher-centric copyright laws. Rhodes demonstrates how authorship and copyright came to be applicable and how ideas of individual creativity, original genius and the solitary author in the context of the European Enlightenment sees plagiarism demonised and individuality valorised. Discussing the emergence of professional writers, and their payment as concurrently respectable, Rhodes charts how authorship is constructed and how the move towards a 42-year copyright period (1842) was based not only on ‘[t]he increased industrialisation of products in the eighteenth century [that] led to an increased commodification of culture, including textual culture’ but the ‘Romantic idea of ‘inspiration’’ which Rhodes argues contributes directly ‘to the idea of textual ownership’ and ‘text-as-capital and author-as-owner’. Continue reading →
The Publishing Context ‘I have thus my dear friend brought to bear what I conceive is a very important business for both of us. If these people had sooner seen their true interest we should … Continue reading →
In his work on Percy’s Reliques, Nick Groom identifies an all-important link between eighteenth-century ideas of the ancient poets and poems and the Romantic ideal of poetic genius. Both are perceived as ‘natural’ while, at … Continue reading →
Peut-être devirons-nous analyser ici ces Romans nouveaux, dont le sortilège et la fantasmagorie composent à-peu-près tout le mérite, en placant à leur tête le Moine, supérieur, sous tous les rapports, aux bisarres élans de la … Continue reading →
This project report relates to The English Novel, 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction published in the British Isles, general editors Peter Garside, James Raven, and Rainer Schöwerling, 2 vols (Oxford: OUP, 2000). In … Continue reading →
The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties (1814), Frances Burney’s last novel, opens with the flight of a nameless heroine in search of her ‘loved, long lost, and fearfully recovered native land’. [1] Born in Wales and … Continue reading →
The economic and social welfare of a country is often directly related to its literary output. The periodical, the Dublin Magazine, captured this well in its issue of February of 1820, when it stated that: … Continue reading →
This essay is about two authors, Jane Loudon and Mary Shelley, and the ways in which the one reflects upon the other. [1] Mary Shelley’s first novel Frankenstein, as is well known, was first published … Continue reading →
In 1803, a curious account was appended to a short Gothic tale that appeared in the Tell-Tale Magazine; it was published anonymously and narrated the distressing and dismal ‘Life of an Authoress , Written by … Continue reading →
The familiar story of the rise of the modern novel has been told often enough that I need only briefly summarise it here. Most narratives credit the printer Samuel Richardson with initiating the discourse of … Continue reading →
This project report relates to The English Novel, 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles, general editors Peter Garside, James Raven, and Rainer Schöwerling, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 2000). In … Continue reading →
‘Wolcot left behind many boxes of unpublished manuscripts of his own writings for which, it was said, the booksellers offered a thousand pounds, but for which the executor demanded double and which when he, too, … Continue reading →
In the preface to his dramatic fragment The Deformed Transformed (1822), Byron acknowledges it to be partly based on The Three Brothers (1803), a Gothic romance by Joshua Pickersgill. [1] Most studies on The Deformed … Continue reading →
I The booksellers of Hookham and Carpenter (hereafter referred to only as ‘Hookham’) were located on New Bond Street in London, and their records span the most politically turbulent decade of the eighteenth-century—the 1790s. Clients … Continue reading →
I In 1826, Mary Shelley recalled the Summer of 1814 as ‘incarnate romance’, when ‘a new generation’ of youthful travellers with ‘time and money at command’, yet heedless of ‘dirty packets and wretched inns’, ‘poured, … Continue reading →
This project report relates to The English Novel, 1770–1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction published in the British Isles, general editors Peter Garside, James Raven, and Rainer Schöwerling, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 2000). In … Continue reading →
