The Transmission and Reception of P. B. Shelley in Owenite and Chartist Newspapers and Periodicals Jen Morgan A thesis submitted to the University of Salford for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Arts and Media 2014 i Contents List of Illustrations iv Acknowledgements v List of Abbreviations vi A Note on the Texts Used vii Abstract viii Introduction 1 Was Shelley’s Queen Mab the Gospel of the Owenites and the Bible of 3 the Chartists? Feeling and futurity 7 Raymond Williams’s ‘structure of feeling’ 9 Periodical studies and print culture 18 Research methodology in print and digital archives 23 The differences between Owenite and Chartist ‘Shelleys’ 26 Owenism and Chartism 29 Shelley 32 Overview of the chapters 34 Section One: Shelley and Owenism, 1828–1845 Chapter One: Shelley in the American Owenite periodical the Free Enquirer Introduction 39 The publication history of Shelley’s poetry for Owenism and Chartism 40 The first American edition of Queen Mab 49 Robert Dale Owen’s use of Shelley in the Free Enquirer 53 Robert Dale Owen, property, and class 61 Shelley in the Free Enquirer under subsequent editors 67 Conclusion 73 Chapter Two: Truth without Mystery, Agitation without Violence in the Crisis Introduction 75 ii Truth without mystery, agitation without violence 76 The problem with language in general 82 The problem with poetry in particular 85 Shelley in the Crisis 94 The origins of A Fable for the Times 95 ‘Commerce’ in Queen Mab 97 A Fable for the Times in the Crisis 101 Co-operation, Owenite socialism, and radicalism 104 Fable 1 and Fable 2 in this context 106 Shelley’s multifaceted ‘commerce’ fragmented 109 Conclusion 110 Chapter 3: ‘Woman as She is, and as She Ought to Be’ — Shelley and Owenite Feminism Introduction 112 Women’s moral mission: Concordia in the Crisis and Kate in the New 113 Moral World The backlash: women and the arts in Owenism 118 Owenite women and abstractions 126 ‘A Review of Modern Poets, and Illustrations of the Philosophy of 130 Modern Poetry’ in the New Moral World John Goodwyn Barmby on Shelley, drama, and Owenite sociability 135 Shelley and rival socialisms: ‘Inferiority of Fourier’s Classification of 140 Society’ Shelley and rival socialisms: Saint-Simonianism and the ‘Woman-Man- 142 Power’ Shelley in the Promethean; or, Communitarian Apostle 146 The return to rationalism 147 Conclusion 149 Section Two: Shelley and Chartism, 1837–1852 Chapter Four: Shelley and Chartism in 1839 Introduction 151 The publication history of Shelley’s poetry for Chartism 152 iii Shelley in William James Linton’s the National: a Library for the 158 People Hope and optimism in the New Year 164 Shelley and the General Strike of 1839 167 Shelley in the Western Vindicator: before the Newport Uprising 172 Shelley in the Western Vindicator: after the Newport Uprising 176 Conclusion 179 Chapter Five: Rising like Lions after Slumber Introduction 181 Leigh Hunt’s Preface to Mask (1832) 182 Chartism and violence 188 The origins of the ‘Lion of Freedom’ in 1838 190 Rise like lions: Summer 1839 to the Newport Uprising 193 ‘The lion in his den’: May 1840 to August 1841 198 The Lion’s roar and Shelley’s Mask 201 The Lion’s roar, stifled 204 ‘Rousing the British Lion from his too-long continued slumbers’: 207 November 1843 to June 1850 Conclusion 217 Chapter 6: Shelley and Historical Consciousness in Thomas Martin Wheeler’s Sunshine and Shadow Introduction 219 Sunshine and Shadow and realism 220 Sunshine and Shadow as political allegory 223 Historical consciousness: shipwrecks and kaleidoscopes 235 Conclusion 244 Conclusion 245 Appendix 247 Bibliography 275 iv List of Illustrations 1. John Goodwyn Barmby, ‘The Past, Present, and Future of the 137 Stage.— Art. VI’, New Moral World, 13 March 1841, pp. 157–59 (p. 158). 2. John Goodwyn Barmby, ‘The Man-Power, the Woman-Power, 144 and the Woman-Man-Power’, New Moral World, 1 May 1841, pp. 268–69 (p. 269). v Acknowledgements I would like to thank the members of my supervisory team: Professor Sharon Ruston, Dr Mike Sanders, Dr Scott Thurston, and Lynette Cawthra of the Working Class Movement Library (WCML). They were most generous with their time, support, and advice. Professor Peter Buse, Dr Ben Harker, and Professor Brian Maidment, also offered invaluable feedback at various progression points during the Ph.D. I would also like to thank Sharon, Mike, and Ben for helping devise the Extended Collaborative Doctoral project ‘Culture, Journals and Working-Class Movements, 1820–1979’, of which mine was the first Ph.D. with the WCML. I cannot imagine formulating a doctoral project that would have suited me better than this one has. I will be eternally grateful for their work to secure funding, without which I would not have been able to write a thesis on any subject. The Arts and Humanities Research Council funded the Ph. D. and were also generous enough to fund a library fellowship at the Library of Congress (LoC) in Washington, D. C. This funding combined enabled me to work for extended periods at two world-class libraries. Thanks to staff and volunteers at the LoC and the WCML for making me feel so welcome. I was also a heavy user of archives and collections at the British Library, the People’s History Museum, and the John Rylands Library in Manchester; thanks to their staff. My postgraduate colleagues at the University of Salford and elsewhere were a truly invaluable source of support. Thanks, especially, to the Old Guard of Room 505: Dr Will Jackson, Dr Bob Jeffery, and Dr Waqas Tufail. I have tried to follow their example by being kind and helpful to new Ph.D. students. Jenny Cadwallender, a fellow Middletonian, is a true friend who has picked me up more times than I care to remember. I finished this thesis for us both. Thanks to Charlotte Ashworth and Emma O’Connor for living with me while I finished the thesis. Lastly, I thank my family for never failing to love and support me. Without their encouragement, and that of teachers early in my schooling, I would not have had the confidence to undertake postgraduate education. I dedicate this thesis to the memory of my Nana, Sybil Morgan (1924–2012). vi List of Abbreviations Poems P. B. Shelley, The Poems of Shelley, ed. by Geoffrey Matthews and others, 4 vols (London: Longman, 1989–). CP P. B. Shelley, The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. by Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat, and Nora Crook, 3 vols (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999—). Norton Shelley’s Poetry and Prose: Authoritative Texts, Criticism, ed. by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat (New York: Norton, 2002). Poetical Works P. B. Shelley, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. by Mrs Shelley, 4 vols (London: Edward Moxon, 1839). Posthumous Poems P. B. Shelley, Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. by Mary Shelley (London: John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824). Letters The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. F. L. Jones, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), II, 190–92. Mask The Mask of Anarchy Revolt The Revolt of Islam vii A Note on the Texts Used Where possible, references to Shelley’s poetry are from Poems. As I give references in the main text and appendix to lines but not to volumes from Poems, the following list gives the volume that poems referenced appeared in: Queen Mab in volume one; Laon and Cythna (The Revolt of Islam), Prometheus Unbound, Rosalind and Helen, Athanase, and Julian and Maddalo in volume two; Mask, ‘Song: To the Men of England’, ‘Liberty’, ‘The Sensitive-Plant’, and ‘To a Sky-Lark’ in volume three. At the time of writing, the edition’s fourth volume of a projected five has lately been published; I have been unable to consult this volume for Epipsychidion or Adonais. Hellas, given the edition’s editorial principle of arranging poems in chronological order of composition, would presumably appear in the as yet unpublished fifth volume. My source for those three poems and Shelley’s essay A Defence of Poetry, therefore, was Norton. I consulted CP for the publication history of editions of Shelley’s poetry, and for textual variants, since that edition offers more detail than Poems. Similarly, however, CP has yet to be published in its entirety, which meant that I could not consult it for the poems Shelley composed in 1819: Mask and ‘Song: To the Men of England’. My source for the publication history of those poems was Poems. viii Abstract This thesis examines the nature of the relationship between Shelley and the thought, politics, and discursive practices of Owenism and Chartism. Its objects of analysis are Owenite periodicals and Chartist newspapers, which I theorise as active in the process of transmission and reception. This thesis locates the reception and transmission of Shelley’s poetry and politics within the broader context of the movements’ political and social commitments. It makes an original contribution to knowledge by demonstrating that the movements used Shelley’s poetry critically and with discrimination. It also argues that Owenite and Chartist approaches to Shelley changed as the movements developed over time in response to historical pressures. I argue that a cultural materialist approach enables us to reconsider the nature of Shelley’s influence and popularity within these movements, something that has become a critical commonplace. It also allows us to distinguish between Owenite and Chartist ‘Shelleys’. I argue that the Owenite periodicals the Crisis and the New Moral World produced a qualitatively different Shelley from the one that emerged in Chartist newspapers such as the Northern Star.