Newcastle University e-prints Date deposited: 11 January 2010 Version of file: Published, final Peer Review Status: Peer reviewed Citation for published item: Michael Rossington. 'The destinies of the world': Shelley's reception and transmission of European news in 1820-21 . Romanticism 2007, 13 3 233-243. Further information on publisher website: http://www.euppublishing.com/journal/rom Publishers copyright statement: The definitive version of this article, published by Edinburgh University Press, available at the citation below: The destinies of the world’: Shelley's reception and transmission of European news in 1820–21 Michael Rossington Citation Information. Volume 13, Page 233-243 DOI 10.3366/rom.2007.13.3.233, ISSN 1354-991x, Available Online October 2007. 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Tel. 0191 222 6000 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 233 Michael Rossington ‘The destinies of the world’: Shelley’s reception and transmission of European news in 1820–21 1 Between March 1820 and April 1821 Percy received it, and some examples of his earlier Bysshe Shelley, then residing in Tuscany, writings prompted by widely-reported political awakened to the idea that he might assume events. agency as the mediator of anxious expectation A significant amount of Shelley’s poetry at a time of political crisis in Europe. This essay and prose was occasioned by news reports and examines one of his sources of news during this intended for immediate public consumption. period, Galignani’s Messenger , an English- The Mask of Anarchy , written in September language daily newspaper published in Paris 1819 in Livorno and sent to Leigh Hunt later and distributed on the continent. It also that month for publication in his London considers Shelley’s use of the London-based weekly newspaper, the Examiner but not Morning Chronicle as a vehicle for publishing published until 1832, is only the most a poem and letter that raised awareness of celebrated example. This poem and some of the contemporary political events in Naples and prose pamphlets he published while living in Greece. Finally, it suggests that in early 1821 England testify to his ability to identify and re- he may have had in mind the publication of present events that encapsulated civic division a poem and a prose-piece in Italian in a with the aim of instilling debate and shifting Florentine newspaper or monthly review to the public opinion. This opportunistic bent may be same end. As well as seeking to avail himself of seen as evidence of an early political instinct the fastest possible means of publishing that in a letter of June 1822, one of his last, he responses to breaking news, daily newspapers both acknowledged but was glad to have kept in enabled him to secure audiences denied by abeyance: ‘I once thought to study these affairs the poor sales of volumes of his poetry. & write or act in them – I am glad that my Furthermore he could circumvent the editors good genius said refrain .’ 2 Earlier cases in point with whom he had placed much of his work are A Letter to Lord Ellenborough (1812), since autumn 1816, Leigh Hunt and Charles ‘occasioned’, its title-page states, by the Ollier, both of whom from autumn 1819 had imprisonment of Daniel Isaac Eaton on a charge been hesitant about publishing some of the of publishing a blasphemous libel attributed to works he had sent them. Before examining Thomas Paine entitled The Age of Reason: Part instances of this newspaper-genre of his the Third , and An Address to the People on the oeuvre, an outline is offered of why news Death of the Princess Charlotte (1817), was important to Shelley between March 1820 prompted by the ‘news … nearly at the same and April 1821, the channels through which he time’ as the death of the Regent’s daughter in 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 234 234 R omanticism November 1817, of the hanging of three the aftermath of Peterloo, he was acutely aware Nottinghamshire men, Jeremiah Brandreth, of his remoteness from, and anxious to be Isaac Ludlam, and William Turner for high nourished by, the latest reports from England, treason. In these instances, widely-circulated as his plea to Thomas Love Peacock in London national news provided the pretext for Shelley makes clear: ‘Pray let me have the earliest to instruct an already-educated audience political news which you consider of philosophically and historically in the importance at this crisis’ ( Letters , ii. 119). extendedly discursive manner appropriate to From Livorno in June 1818 Shelley had the pamphlet form. Milton must have been a requested the Examiner regularly ( Letters , ii. prominent role-model in this regard along with 18), a commission undertaken over the next William Godwin. As recent editors have noted, three years by Peacock who also sent other accounts Shelley read in ‘American papers’ periodicals including Cobbett’s Political (Letters , i. 272) – that is, presumably, reports Register and the Quarterly Review .4 An from American sources reproduced in the opportunity to compensate for his feeling of British press – inspired an early poem, ‘To the dependency on reports from England evident in Republicans of North America’ (written in 1812 the autumn of 1819, presented itself between but not published until 1890), addressed to September 1820 and April 1821 when he tried Mexican rebels against Spanish colonial rule. 3 to take on the role of foreign correspondent, a But what of his writings published in transmitter to England and, it seems, within newspapers before his removal to Italy in Tuscany, of the breaking news of revolutions March 1818? On returning from Switzerland in southern Italy and of the Greek uprising in autumn 1816 he submitted ‘Hymn to against the Ottoman Empire. Such a role was Intellectual Beauty’ to Hunt for publication in complicated during this period – when he was the Examiner (where it appeared on 19 January living in, or near, Pisa – by a tranquillity in his 1817), that paper also publishing his review of places of residence that amounted to isolation, Godwin’s novel Mandeville (28 December partly a consequence, he noted, of Tuscany’s 1817) and what has come to be his best-known enlightened government relative to the rest of sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ (11 January 1818). But the Italian states ( Letters , ii. 177). To get news such publications owe as much to Hunt’s there he had to go out and seek it. method of patronizing young poets as to The two-and-a-quarter-year period from Shelley actively seeking a newspaper outlet for January 1819 until April 1821 was one of hope writings that were, anyway, hardly ‘occasioned’. for liberals such as Byron and Shelley whose The obvious point that daily newspapers hardly publications had been critical of the principles feature as conduits of his writings during his of the Restoration of 1814–15. It marked a time in England because there is little evidence phase when the fabric of the political order that he sought to publish in them has some established after Napoleon’s defeat seemed, to weight. But another reason that even the some contemporary observers, on the verge of possibility of this channel was closed to him crumbling. Between the uprising in Cadiz on was his inability, in marked contrast with 1 January 1820 and 8 April 1821 when the Byron, to command a profile early in his career Piedmontese revolutionaries were defeated by such as to make him sought after by influential Austrian troops at Novara, widely-reported editors and publishers of newspapers and rebellions took place in Naples, Sicily, Portugal periodicals. and Modena. Some were instigated by Residence in Italy from April 1818 altered disaffected military leaders and carbonari and his relationship to news. In September 1819, in resulted in monarchs being forced to accept 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 235 ‘The destinies of the world’ 235 constitutionalist principles, amongst them – that their copies of the Messenger were and significant, in light of the topic of this essay collected from the Post Office in Pisa or the – freedom of the press. The constitutionalists’ bookseller in Livorno as advertised: ‘English cause which Shelley so publicly supported was Travellers in Tuscany are respectfully informed, republican in spirit yet tolerated a monarchy that subscriptions to GALIGNANI’s with limited powers, and, as suited his MESSENGER are received at Pisa, by preference, was not revolutionary but reformist M. Averani, Director of the Post-Office; at (Letters , ii. 223). However, these constitutional Leghorn, by M.G. Masi, bookseller; and at governments were regarded as seriously Florence, by M.G. Piatti, bookseller’ ( G, threatening by the ‘Holy Alliance’, as evidenced 12 October 1819, 4). Between August and by Metternich’s use of the Austrian army to October 1820, while at Bagni San Giuliano, terminate them. It was from a wish to hear that their reading must have been more sporadic the efforts of the Austrians and of monarchist since they had to fetch it, or have it collected elements in Spain to destroy constitutionalism by others.