REVIEWING ROMANTICISM Also by Philip W. Martin BYRON: A POET BEFORE IDS PUBUC MAD WOMEN IN ROMANTIC WRITING Also by Robin Jarvis WORDSWORTH, MILTON AND THE THEORY OF POETIC RELATIONS RevieW"ing Romanticism Edited by Philip W. Martin Field Chair, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education and Robin Jarvis Lecturer in Literary Studies Bristol Polytechnic Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-21954-4 ISBN 978-1-349-21952-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21952-0 Editorial matter and selection © Philip W. Martin and Robin Jarvis 1992 Text © Macmillan Academic and Professional Ltd 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1992 ISBN 978-0-312-06801-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reviewing romanticism / edited by Philip W. Martin and Robin Jarvis. p. em. "Selection of papers given at a conference held at King Alfred's College, Winchester in Apri11989" -Pref. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-06801-1 1. English literature-19th century-History and criticism­ Congresses. 2. English literature-18th century-History and criticism-Congresses. 3. Romanticism-Great Britain-Congresses. I. Martin, Philip W. II. Jarvis, Robin, 1956- PR457.R455 1992 820.9'145-dc20 91-24828 CIP Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements viii Notes on the Contributors ix Introduction xii Philip W. Martin and Robin Jarvis 1 A Modern Electra: Matricide and the Writings of 1 Mary and Charles Lamb Jane Aaron 2 Editing the Waverley Novels 14 J. H. Alexander and Peter Garside 3 Reviewing Romanticism: The Sea and the Book 32 Bernard Beatty 4 Frankenstein and the Language of Monstrosity 51 Fred Botting 5 Mary Shelley: Immortality, Gender and the 60 Rosy Cross Marie Roberts 6 The Politics of the Gothic Heroine in the 1790s 69 E. J. Clery 7 Peter Wilkins: A Romantic Cult Book 86 Nora Crook 8 Literature and Feeling: New Directions in the 99 Theory of Romanticism Kelvin Everest v vi Contents 9 Opium and the Imperial Imagination 116 Josephine McDonagh 10 Romantic Subjects: Shaping the Self from 134 1789 to 1989 Vincent Newey 11 Pierce Egan and the Representation of London 154 Roger Sales 12 Preparations for Happiness: Mary Wollstonecraft 170 and Imagination John Whale Index 190 Preface The contents of this volume are a selection of papers given at a conference held at King Alfred's College, Winchester in April 1989. The conference was set up by the editors in the hope that it would be the first of a regular series of conferences for British scholars work­ ing in the field of Romanticism. It was also proposed that such a project would be well served by the establishment of an association acting as a network for individual scholars and for those extant societies devoted to the study of individual Romantic writers. Accordingly, the British Association for Romantic Studies was founded at the conference, and is now well-supported by a growing membership. The proceedings offered here are a representative sample of those given under the broad conference title, 'Reviewing Romanticism'. In multiple ways they demonstrate that the received idea of there being six major authors whose works constitute the body of English Romantic writing is barely credible. The current review of Roman­ ticism is being conducted largely in regions deemed non-canonical in the terms of the old orthodoxy. Romanticism's story about itself was essentially one about genius, frustrated or nurtured. Neces­ sarily, distinctions, whether of kind or of degree, operated to secure the exclusivity on which the concept of genius rested whenever this story was told. Such distinctions are now broken down, and Roman­ ticism is being recognised as a wider base of cultural activity un­ confined by genre, gender, class, rhetoric or style. vii Acknowledgements Thanks are due first to our contributors for their patience and re­ sponsiveness at the editing stage. We would also like to record our gratitude to those who contributed to the wider project to which these papers belong: to all those who came to the conference, and to those who helped in its organisation. Ms Marian Read gave tirelessly of her time and organisational skills. We would also like to thank the governing body of King Alfred's College, and the Vice-Principal, Dr Tim Drey, for his support, and the publishers' copy-editor for all his hard work. The publishers and editors are grateful to John Heath-Stubbs for permission to reproduce his translation of L'Infinito by Giancomo Leopardi. viii Notes on the Contributors Jane Aaron is a Lecturer in English at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where she teaches courses on Romanticism, women's writing and feminist theory. Her book, A Double Singleness: Gender and the Writings of Charles and Mary Lamb, is forthcoming. She is currently working on a more general study of gender and Romanticism. J. H. Alexander is a Senior Lecturer in English at Aberdeen Univer­ sity. His publications include Two Studies in Romantic Reviewing (1976), 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel': Three Essays (1978), The Reception of Scott's Poetry by his Correspondents: 1796-1817 (1979), 'Marmion': Studies in Interpretation and Composition (1981), and Reading Wordsworth (1987). He is editor of the Scott Newsletter and an executive editor of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, for which he has edited Kenilworth and will be editing Tales of My Landlord: Third Series. Bernard Beatty is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Liverpool University. He is the Academic Editor of The Byron Journal and Chairman of English Association Work. His publications include Byron's 'Don Juan' (1985), Byron's 'Don Juan' and other Poems and Byron and the Limits of Fiction (1988, as joint editor with Vincent Newey). He is now writing a book on Romanticism called Spilt Religion. Fred Botting is a Fellow at the School of English, University of Wales, Cardiff, where he completed a doctoral thesis on Frankenstein, criticism and theory. Emma Clery teaches part-time at the University of Sussex. She is currently completing a study of representations of the supernatural in eighteenth-century England. Nora Crook, Jamaican by birth and schooling, is a Senior Lecturer in English, Anglia Higher Education College at Cambridge. She is the author of Shelley's Venomed Melody (with Derek Guiton) and of ix x Notes on the Contributors Kipling's Myths of Love and Death (1990). She is currently editing one of Shelley's Bodleian notebooks. Kelvin Everest is author of Coleridge's Secret Ministry (1979) and editor of Shelley Revalued (1983). His recent publications include English Romantic Poetry (1990). He is currently editing the Complete Poems of Shelley: Volume 1 of this edition was published in 1989. He has taught at St David's University College, Lampeter, and the Uni­ versity of Leicester. He is now A. C. Bradley Professor of Modem Literature at the University of Liverpool. Peter Garside teaches at the University of Wales, Cardiff, and is an executive editor of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels. He is one of the editors of an Encyclopaedia of Literature and Criticism (1990) and is currently completing new editions of Scott's The Black Dwarf and Guy Mannering. Robin Jarvis is Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies at Bristol Poly­ technic. He is author of Wordsworth, Milton and the Theory of Poetic Relations (1991) and of numerous articles in scholarly journals. Philip W. Martin has taught English at the University of Exeter and King Alfred's College, Winchester. He is now Principal Lecturer in English at the Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Educa­ tion. He is author of Byron: A Poet before his Public (1982) and Mad Women in Romantic Writing (1987), and is currently working on a reader's guide to Romantic poetry. He is joint British editor of the journal Literature & History, and joint editor of the Bulletin of the British Association for Romantic Studies. Josephine McDonagh is a lecturer in the School of English and American Studies at Exeter University. She is the author of a forth­ coming book, De Quincey's Disciplines. Vincent Newey is Professor of English at the University of Leicester. His publications include Cowper's Poetry: a Critical Study and Re­ assessment (1982), Byron and the Limits of Fiction (1988, as joint editor with B. G. Beatty) and a range of articles on Romantic poetry. His other main research interests are in Puritan literature, the Victorian novel and metaphorics. He is one of the editors of The Byron Journal Notes on the Contributors xi and joint editor of The Bulletin of the British Association for Romantic Studies. Marie Roberts is the author of British Poets and Secret Societies (1986) and Gothic Immortals: the Fiction of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (1990), and editor of Explorations in Medicine (1987). She is currently an editor for Studies in Hermeticism: Cauda Pavonis, and she lectures in literary studies at Bristol Polytechnic. Roger Sales is a lecturer in English Studies at the University of East Anglia. His publications on Romanticism include English Literature in History, 1780-1830: Pastoral and Politics (1983) and articles on pas­ toral poetry. He has also written books on Marlowe, Shakespeare and Stoppard. He is currently writing a book called Topical Austen. John Whale is Lecturer in English at the University of Leeds. He is author of Thomas De Quincey's Reluctant Autobiography (1984) and a number of articles on De Quincey, Hazlitt, Paine and Burke. He is currently completing a study of the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the Romantic period entitled Imagination Under Pres­ sure, and is editing, with Stephen Copley, a collection of essays which reassesses the literature of the Romantic period.