University of Alberta Periodicals in Early Nineteenth-Century Lower Canada: A Study of Samuel Hull Wilcocke‘s the Scribbler in the Field of Cultural Production by Geordan Patterson A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Department of English and Film Studies Geordan Patterson Spring 2012 Edmonton, Alberta Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission. Abstract This dissertation takes as a case study Samuel Hull Wilcocke‘s periodical the Scribbler (1821-1827) to examine the field of cultural production in Lower Canada into which the Scribbler emerged and existed. I study the influence that the government and the merchant class had over print publication in this early period, the existence of British Romantic aesthetics in the periodicals of early Canada, and the ways in which a periodical can propose and perform an understandings of community and nationhood. In chapter One, I analyse the historical circumstances of the field of cultural production in Lower Canada from 1817-1828, especially in its relationship to the fields of power and economy. I investigate the growing persuasive power and symbolic capital that print accrued during the fur trade companies‘ pamphleteering war. I explain how both Lord Dalhousie and the merchants were involved in literary production to serve their own ends, and how Wilcocke positioned himself rhetorically against these two posits by first appropriating the pamphleteering style and then the language of diplomacy. In chapter Two, I describe the Scribbler‘s position-taking through its materiality and form. Specifically, I examine the influence of the Romantic construction of the editorial persona on the Scribbler and the Romantic magazines‘ particular method of maintaining variety while celebrating subjectivity. I posit that British Romanticism had a greater impression on Canadian literature than scholars have hitherto acknowledged. In chapter Three, I argue that Wilcocke cultivates a sense of belonging in the Scribbler‘s readership as well as promoting a proto-nationalist identity as part of an attempt to increase his cultural capital. The Scribbler performs the active participation of readers in order to inspire and solidify its centrality to the community. I examine the implications of the recognition of local writing and the attention paid in text to Canada as a place worthy of existence beyond its definition as an empirical outpost or a mercantile trading spot. I argue for periodicals as sites of political imaginings and the powerful ramifications that a periodical‘s attempt to position itself in the field of cultural production can have on the construction of collective identity. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for helping me complete this project. First, let me thank my supervisor, Sue Hamilton, for her encouraging words, immeasurable patience, and inspiration. Thank you also to my committee, Cecily Devereux, Peter Sinnema, and Mark Simpson for taking the time to read carefully through some very rough work with admirable persistence and for providing tough, useful criticism. Thank you also to my reading group, Leigh Dyrda, Charn Jagpal, and Jillian Richardson, whose work inspired me and whose help I could not have done without. Thank you to Margrit Talpalaru, Adrian Dabija, and Alex Duff, all of whom guided and supported me with kindness through the taxing emotional journey that is writing a dissertation. And thank you to Warren Baker, my fellow Wilcockean, for your help, your friendship, and your contagious love of early Canadian literary history. Finally, I wish to thank my partner, the indomitable Robin Wallace (and the now not so wee bump), who has suffered with me through every step of this process and who has unfailingly stood by my side no matter how much chaos I created: I dedicate this to you, my own Althea. Table of Contents Introduction............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 ―Scriblerian labours‖: The Scribbler‘s Disruption of the Field of Print Production in Early Nineteenth-Century Lower Canada..................34 Chapter 2 Mr. Scribbler and his ―Miscellaneous Warefare‖: The British Romantic Influence in Style and Form on the Scribbler...........................75 Chapter 3 Scribbler towards Belonging: Periodicals and Publics in British North America.........................................................................................106 Conclusion The Remains of an ancient Scribbler: Summation, Further Research, and the Legacy of the Scribbler..............................................149 Works Cited........................................................................................................166 Figures Figure 1: First Page of the Scribbler.....................................................................11 Figure 2: Dalhousie‘s Memorandum Respecting Newspapers published in Québec and Montréal.................................................................................65 Figure 3: The Front Page of the Montréal Herald 5 October 1823......................81 Patterson 1 Introduction The years 1817 to 1828 distinguish a period of exceptional growth in British North American print production. Numerous well-known texts arose in the period such as the first novel in English, Julia Catherine Beckwith Hart‘s St. Ursula‘s Convent (1824), and the first Byronic poem, George Longmore‘s Charivari (1824). Two volumes of poetry1 appeared, as did at least ten long poems, including Adam Hood Burwell‘s Talbot Road (1818), and Oliver Goldsmith‘s Rising Village (1825). Outside of these traditional literary genres, there existed even greater print activity. Indeed, pamphlets and periodicals dominated the literary scene, particularly in the Montréal area. The inhabitants of Lower Canada earnestly wrote, printed, circulated, and consumed pamphlets on local subjects such as the future of banking practices, the amalgamation of Lower and Upper Canada, and the progress of the Lachine canal. The greatest local print production by far, however, was in the periodical genre. In Lower Canada alone, over fifty periodicals circulated during this nine-year period (Dionne 287-88). Four English newspapers circulated simultaneously in Montréal in 1824 while the English speaking population was less than 5,000 (Talbot 78). Print had become an integral 1 These are Hours of Childhood (1820) attributed to Ariel Bowman and Margaret Blennerhassett‘s The Widow of the Rock and Other Poems (1824). Patterson 2 part of people‘s everyday lives. Newspaper editors, patrons, pamphleteers, printers, proprietors, and poets arose both to supply and help craft the desire for locally produced works. Though little studied today, people such as David Chisholme, A. J. Christie, Henry Driscoll, E. V. Sparhawk, Ariel Bowman, James Brown, Thomas Turner, Thomas Fisher, William Gray, Nahum Mower, James Lane, Jocelyn Waller, Thomas Cary, John Neilson, Augustin-Norbert Morin, Michel Bibaud, Chares-Bernard Pasteur, Ludger Duvernay, Mungo Kay, and Samuel Hull Wilcocke produced local writing in Lower Canada. A shift occurred during this period whereby locally printed materials became critical to colonists‘ attempt to define themselves. Montréal in particular contained a multitude of competing, inchoate understandings of collective identity—through ethnicity, country of origin, language, and political and religious beliefs—many of which colonists crafted, maintained, and struggled to legitimize through the medium of print. It was a time of literary innovation, in which particularly periodicals were launched in a struggle to define cultural legitimacy, a debate that seemed to remain stubbornly open in the colony. This dissertation takes as a case study Samuel Hull Wilcocke‘s periodical the Scribbler (1821-1827) to examine this rise in print production in Lower Canada. My work is informed by Pierre Bourdieu‘s conceptualisation of the field of cultural production. I examine the field of cultural production into which the Scribbler emerged and existed and the rhetorical, formal, and ideological position-taking made by the Scribbler in its struggle for dominance in the field. Looking at early Canadian literature through Bourdieu‘s theoretical lens not only Patterson 3 explains the composition of Scribbler by its literary, economic, and political surroundings and the dynamics of field, but it also brings into focus challenges to the established notions of the relationship between British and Canadian literature at the turn of the nineteenth century as well as the role that literature played in nation building. A study of the Scribbler forefronts the influence that the government and the merchant class had over print publication in this early period, the existence of British