Transpennine Enlightenment: Literary and Philosophical Societies in the North of England, 1780-1800 Jennifer Wilkes PhD University of York English March 2017 Abstract This thesis is primarily concerned with the first two decades of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, founded in 1781. Well known to historians of science and medicine, the society has not been much studied by literary historians. This dissertation aims to rectify this situation by taking the word “literary” in the society’s title seriously, and looking at what it meant by providing readings of its publications and studying its activities. The question is complicated because both “science” and “literature” were terms that were in the process of emerging as separate disciplines. The founders of the MLPS were clear in 1781, however, that “physics and the belles lettres” were jointly involved in a process of “improvement.” The first three chapters take the MLPS from its inception up to 1800, investigating, especially, the pressures put on its associational structure by the French Revolution and the reaction against Joseph Priestley’s influential model of improvement via voluntary association and unlimited discussion. The MLPS had a particularly close relationship with groups associated with William Roscoe and James Currie in Liverpool, both of whom were honorary members. The Literary and Philosophical Society founded at Newcastle in 1793 was the direct result of the friendship between Thomas Percival and William Turner (both of whom had been graduates of the Warrington Academy). My final two chapters concentrate on Liverpool and Newcastle respectively, looking at what their development up to around 1800 can tell us about the ethos at Manchester and the broader spirit of the “literary” culture of these societies in their early decades. ii Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Author’s declaration v Introduction 1 1. The foundation of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society 18 2. Manchester’s literary physicians 51 3. Manchester and the politics of protest 81 4. The literary societies of Liverpool 107 5. The Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society 132 Conclusion 161 Abbreviations 163 Bibliography 164 iii Acknowledgements I am indebted to a great number of people who have supported me throughout this PhD. Above all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Jon Mee, for his expertise, encouragement, guidance, and unwavering patience. This thesis came about as part of the Leverhulme-funded project Networks of Improvement: Literary Clubs and Societies c.1760-c.1840, and I thank my fellow team members Georgina Green and Cassie Ulph for making it such an interesting and exciting project to be involved in. Thanks also to my examiners, Felicity James and Emma Major, for their thoughtful questions and insights. I am grateful to have been part of the research community at the University of York’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. Thanks to my fellow students, particularly Lucy Hodgetts, Joanna Wharton, Alexander Hardie-Forsyth, Sophie Coulombeau, and Jessica Haldeman. Cathy Moore gave me the encouragement to keep going when I was ready to give up, for which I am eternally grateful. I would particularly like to thank both Susan Oliver and Sharon Ruston, my tutors at the University of Salford, whose enthusiasm for Romanticism and help with funding applications got me here in the first place. I was very kindly awarded a much-needed grant by Funds for Women Graduates which enabled me to complete my studies. A small grant by the Creative Communities project enabled me to attend the Regional and National Networks conference at Chawton House in 2014; thanks to David Higgins. Thanks to Mary Fairclough, who invited me to take part in the Anglo-Scottish Relations conference at the University of York in 2014, and who lent me a great deal of support as my co- supervisor and teaching mentor. I am grateful to the staff at the Liverpool Record Office and at Chetham’s Library, Manchester for helping with my research. The arrival of my son into the mix certainly complicated the process. I could not have juggled motherhood and my studies without the incredible emotional support I found in my community of local mums, who are too many to name. Words can’t express how grateful I am to have found my Village. Thanks, particularly, to Kate and Phoebe, for their much-needed help with childcare during those final frantic months. I could not have done this without the support of my family, especially Roy, Paula, and Emma. Thanks to my friends, who helped me through this with kind words iv over coffee or with nights out and laughter: Anna, Alex, Mijke, Jess, Hayley, Leona, Steff, Niki, Nikki, Jo, Beth, and Layla. Apologies to anyone I have missed out. Finally, I thank Arlo, the most beautiful, happy soul. I am truly blessed. v Author’s declaration I declare that this thesis is a presentation of original work and I am the sole author. The thesis draws on some of the research published in Jon Mee and Jennifer Wilkes, “Transpennine Enlightenment: The Literary and Philosophical Societies and Knowledge Networks in the North, 1781-1830” Journal for EigHteentH-Century Studies 38.4 (December 2015), pp.599-612. This work has not previously been presented for an award at this, or any other, University. All sources are acknowledged as references. vi Introduction Throughout the course of the eighteenth century, Britain witnessed an astonishing explosion of clubs and societies. From convivial London clubs to provincial learned societies, the associational world was diverse and expanding. As Peter Clark and others have observed, many of these societies emerged partly as a response to a growing interest in books and learning at a time when books were still prohibitively expensive.1 This clubbing together over books branched out into various different forms of association, including subscription and circulating libraries, but also debating societies and various literary coteries. Armed with the latest texts, people were able to gain access to the fashionable world of coffee-house culture even when they were excluded by distance and class from participating directly, the subject of much scholarly interest by Jürgen Habermas and others.2 Habermas describes the emergence, in the eighteenth century, of a public sphere based on “rational-critical debate,” in which the private people assembled in a public forum, and “readied themselves to compel public authority to legitimate itself before public opinion.”3 From its origins in the coffee-houses and the assembly rooms, the loose associational model of rational-critical debate developed into the more formally organised, nineteenth-century “age of societies,” a phenomenon Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall consider to be the expression of “middle-class men’s claims for new forms of manliness.”4 Interest in literary sociability marked the emergence of an associational world which became hugely popular from around mid-century: Clark gives an estimate of up to 25,000 clubs and societies, of over 130 different types, in the 1 Peter Clark, BritisH Clubs and Societies 1580-1800 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), p.2. See also William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2004). 2 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Trans. Thomas Burger. 1962 (Cambridge: Polity Press. 1993). 3 Habermas, ibid., pp.25-26. 4 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and women of tHe EnGlisH middle class, 1780-1850 (London: Hutchinson, 1987), p.416. 1 eighteenth century in the English-speaking world.5 Members of such clubs were, of course, not simply swapping books: even the sort of associations with minimal contact between members, such as the subscription libraries, held meetings and discussions between members about books, whether in the form of reading groups, or simply committees for the discussion of suitable purchases. Recent interest in the sociable world of books by various scholars rightly recognises that texts were consumed not merely individually as passive objects, but circulated around networks.6 Books played an important role in giving shape to those networks, not least when it came to practical questions of where to store them. A decision to create a library could determine the institutional form of any club or society, not least because of the question of costs.7 Rather than viewing a book as a straightforward conduit of knowledge connecting text and reader, their role in these communicative networks needs to be acknowledged. When people grouped together to discuss books, there was often far more going on than may at first seem to be the case. This thesis will explore these questions in relation to the literary and philosophical societies of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. Literary studies have nearly entirely neglected these institutions, despite the fact they have been of longstanding interest, for instance, to historians of science. This thesis aims to think seriously about their “literary” activities, but also, in the process, note the way that they self-consciously proliferated into networks. Long associated with the new manufacturing towns of the Industrial Revolution, I wish to argue that these societies played a key role in the emergence of an Enlightenment that developed away from centres of traditional power. They promoted a culture of knowledge production particularly influenced by English dissent and the Scottish Enlightenment. They differed in their membership, makeup, and subjects of interest according to their locale, but they were strikingly similar and explicitly sought to “emulate” each other. 5 Clark, op.cit., p.2. 6 David Allan, A Nation of Readers: tHe LendinG Library in GeorGian EnGland (London: British Library, 2008). See also Christy Ford, “’An Honour to the Place’: Reading Associations and Improvement,” and Mark Towsey, “’Store their Minds with Much Valuable Knowledge’: Agricultural Improvement at the Selkirk Subscription Library, 1799-1814,” both in Journal for EiGHteentH-Century Studies 38.4 (December 2015).