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Shelley in 1819: Poetry, Publishing and Radicalism

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Shelley in 1819: Poetry, Publishing and Radicalism Shelley in 1819: Poetry, Publishing and Radicalism Catherine Boyle Thesis presented for a Doctorate at Roehampton Institute June 1998 ProQuest Number: 11009910 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11009910 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT The thesis focuses on the question of why Percy Bysshe Shelley failed to publish The M ask o f Anarchy and a series of related poems in 1819. I argue that the attempt to answer this question has major relevance for a reading of Shelley's poems because it leads to a re-evaluation of Shelley's politics, which I regard as integral to the understanding of his poems. I argue in the introduction that tackling this subject leads to a contribution to the following areas of debate: Shelley's textual history and radicalism, publishing history and 'historicist' attempts to evaluate texts in the Romantic period. In Chapter One I re­ examine previous accounts of Shelley's attempts to publish in 1819, arguing that the accounts of those closest to Shelley, Leigh Hunt and Mary Shelley, have been too influential in portraying him as a victim of censorship, and that a new view of Shelley, as someone who was an informed participator in events, and not purely a victim, is needed. In Chapter Two I go on to explore the consequences of such an argument: I suggest that, if Shelley was indeed a major player in the fate of these poems, then the publishing options available to him at the time need to be explored. I examine the means open to Shelley: self-publishing, using literary pirates, appealing directly to radical publishers, and using Leigh Hunt as the publicist of his verse via his periodical the Examiner. I conclude in this chapter that Shelley was consistent in attempting to get his political works published, that although he used a variety of means, he showed a tendency to use publishers who formed part of a clandestine 'underworld': an understanding of his involvement with this 'underworld' differs from previous analyses of Shelley's radicalism which attributed it mainly to the mainstream Dissenting tradition of Thomas Paine and William Godwin. In Chapter Three I explore the consequences for Shelley's poetry of this re-evaluation of his position in relation to radical literary production, producing readings of the following poems, which were all in danger of transgressing the law, and thus could have lent themselves to publishing practices at the margin of legality: Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam , Oedipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant and The Mask o f Anarchy. I suggest that these poems, like the 'clandestine' radicals, tend to try to avoid being placed within any one political tradition. I argue that this does not suggest that Shelley's thinking was muddled in any way, but instead that his poetic practice mirrors his publishing practice: both show that Shelley was indebted to a form of radical literary production which cannot be found within the ideas and publishing practices of Paine and Godwin. Thus, I conclude that an examination of Shelley's poetry which focuses on a period in his life when he engaged most directly with contemporary history, and explores that period in terms of Shelley's publishing practice and his politics during the whole of his life has important implications for the way we view his work. I believe that this thesis helps to reconcile some of the difficulties which critics have found in reading Shelley's political poetry. I also argue that this work could be taken further, in that I have discovered that there is much work still to be done in uncovering the relationship between politics and publishing in the period. For these reasons, I believe that this thesis is a contribution to knowledge. Total number of words in the thesis (including footnotes, bibliography, appendices) = 89,989. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis was completed with the aid of a bursary from the English Department at Roehampton Institute. I would also like to thank the staff who taught me on the MA in Literature and Politics 1776-1832 at Roehampton Institute, and helped to kindle my interest in this subject. Also, more specifically, thanks are due to my Director of Studies, Susan Matthews, and my co-supervisors, Zachary Leader and Ian Haywood, whose patience in reading numerous drafts of this document, and invaluable advice, have been exemplary. I would also like to thank John Seed for bringing to my attention the work of Robert Damton, and David Woirall for letting me see his unpublished article on Queen Mab. My father, John Boyle, has been a source of help and support. Thanks are also due to the following libraries and research resources: the staff of the British Library, to whose collections this thesis is very much indebted; Senate House Library, University of London; Roehampton Institute Library; St Bride's Printing Library; Bromley Public Library; Kew Public Records Office. Any errors, of course, are entirely my own. CONTENTS Title Page Introduction 1 Chapter One - Shelley in 1819 24 Preamble - Mary Shelley, Leigh Hunt and their influence on critical tradition Shelley in 1819 30 Chapter Two - Shelley and Publishers 70 Shelley and Self-Publishing Shelley and Literary Piracy 93 Shelley and the Direct Appeal to Radical Publishers 115 Hunt and Shelley 131 Chapter Three - Readings of Shelley’s Political Poems in the light 141 of his Publishing History Queen Mab The Revolt o f Islam 157 Oedipus Tyrannus 168 The Mask of Anarchy 178 Conclusion 188 Appendices 192 Appendix A - The Times account of the Peterloo Massacre Appendix B - Contents of The Examiner , 22 August 1819 203 Appendix C - A comparison between Shelley's Irish pamphlets 205 and other contemporary works Appendix D - A List of Texts published by William Benbow 210 Appendix E - A List of Texts published by John Sudbury 216 Appendix F - A List of Texts with the involvement of George 218 Cannon Appendix G - Publications by James Johnston 221 Bibliography 231 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Quotations from Shelley's poems are taken from: Shelley's Poetry and Prose, edited by Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers, New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1977; and Shelley: Poetical Works, edited by Thomas Hutchinson, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. 1 Introduction This thesis claims to offer a new view of a sigificant portion of Percy Bysshe Shelley's work. I focus on an unresolved critical problem surrounding Shelley's poetry in the year 1819, namely his failure to publish The M ask o fAnarchy and a series of six associated political poems. I wish to focus mainly on The Mask o f Anarchy because it seems to show that there was an apparent division between Shelley's political views and his ability to translate those views into practice. Critics have concurred in having a high opinion of the poem, an example being Richard Holmes' comment: 'this is the greatest poem of political protest ever written in English. It also has claims to be considered as the most powerfully conceived, the most economically executed and the most perfectly sustained piece of poetry of his life.'1 I wish to provide a new perspective on the reasons why The Mask of Anarchy was not published, a topic which I argue has not been adequately addressed by previous critics. The thesis differs from previous studies because it discusses Shelley's radicalism and its relationship with his poetry in a manner which focuses attention upon the means by which Shelley's poetry was published. The role of publishers will be shown to be as significant a factor in the expression of Shelley's radicalism through his poetry as the political writings which influenced Shelley. This introduction will outline the ways in which my views differ from those of other writers in the following subject areas: accounts of Shelley's textual history and radicalism, accounts of publishing history and 'historicist' attempts to describe texts in the Romantic period. I will also endeavour in the course of this introduction to show that these subjects can be linked together, and form the basis for a sound interdisciplinary study of Shelley's poetry. I would argue that critics of Shelley have not utilized fully what I believe is an important factor in the writing and publication of Shelley's works, his relationship with his publishers. The thesis also differs from other textual approaches to Shelley in that it 1 Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (London, 1976, first published 1974), p. 532. 2 foregrounds the different choices which were open to Shelley when he published his poems: I explore the way that there were different modes of publishing open to the radical poet at this time - self-publishing, exploiting literary piracy, making an open stand against authority by allying himself with those radical publishers who challenged the status quo directly, and by approaching the apparently liberal publisher Leigh Hunt. The textual history of Shelley's poems is mentioned in passing by Shelley’s biographers and I have gleaned useful information from these works.2 However, few critics have written book-length studies which focus on this topic.
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