A History of Romantic Literature BLACKWELL HISTORIES OF LITERATURE General editor: Peter Brown, University of Kent, Canterbury The books in this series renew and redefine a familiar form by recognizing that to write literary history involves more than placing texts in chronological sequence. Thus the emphasis within each volume falls both on plotting the significant literary developments of a given period, and on the wider cultural contexts within which they occurred. ‘Cultural history’ is construed in broad terms and authors address such issues as politics, society, the arts, ideologies, varieties of literary production and consumption, and dominant genres and modes. The effect of each volume is to give the reader a sense of possessing a crucial sector of literary terrain, of understanding the forces that give a period its distinctive cast, and of seeing how writing of a given period impacts on, and is shaped by, its cultural circumstances. Published to date Seventeenth‐Century English Literature Thomas N. Corns Victorian Literature James Eli Adams Old English Literature, Second Edition R. D. Fulk and Christopher M. Cain Modernist Literature Andrzej Gąsiorek Eighteenth‐Century British Literature John Richetti Romantic Literature Frederick Burwick A HISTORY OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE Frederick Burwick This edition first published 2019 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. The right of Frederick Burwick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with law. 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Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Name: Burwick, Frederick, author. Title: A history of romantic literature / Frederick Burwick. Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley-Blackwell, 2019. | Series: Blackwell histories of literature | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019006655 (print) | LCCN 2019018043 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119044376 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781119044406 (ePub)| ISBN 9781119044352 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Romanticism–Europe–History. | European literature–18th century–History and criticism. | European literature–19th century–History and criticism. Classification: LCC PN751 (ebook) | LCC PN751 .B87 2019 (print) | DDC 809/.9145–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019006655 Cover Design: Wiley Cover Image: Conrad in Prison, ‘The Corsair’ (canto 2.ix.ll. 366–77). Pencil and watercolour by Mather Brown (1814). Private collection of Frederick Burwick Set in 10/12pt Galliard by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Illustrations viii Introduction 1 I Revolution (1789–1798) 22 The ‘Revolution Controversy’ 22 Newington Green Circle and Richard Price 25 Mary Wollstonecraft 26 Anna Laetitia Barbauld 29 Abolition Movement 30 Thomas Beddoes, Pneumatic Institution 38 Slave Trade, Opium Trade 41 Elizabeth Montagu and the Bluestockings 47 Helen Maria Williams 51 William Blake 54 Anna Seward 63 Dissenters 64 Historical Nodes 66 Corresponding Societies and Treason Trials 67 Erasmus Darwin 70 Charles Lloyd 72 John Thelwall 74 John Horne Tooke 75 Nonconformists 77 William Blake: Vision and Prophecy 78 George Crabbe 81 Thomas Holcroft 83 Gothic, Domestic Violence, Sadism 92 The Irish Rebellion 99 Coleridge at Cambridge 100 William Frend 101 John Tweddell and James Losh 103 Freedom of the Press 105 vi Contents Letters of Junius 107 George Dyer 115 Mary Hays 120 Elizabeth Hamilton 127 Mary Robinson 127 Coleridge and Wordsworth 128 Joanna Baillie 136 Maria Edgeworth 139 Charlotte Smith 139 II Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815) 158 The French Consulate and Great Britain 158 Coalitions 159 Toussaint L’Ouverture 168 Peace of Amiens 168 The ‘Dejection’ Dialogue 171 The Growth of The Prelude 177 Back to Nature 188 Coleridge: Conversation Poems 190 Continental Romanticism 205 Jane Porter 211 Thomas Bewick 213 Moral Causality 214 1805: Connections and Coincidences 215 The Periodical Press 219 Exaltation and Exploitation of the Child 226 The Lecture 229 Lord Byron: ‘Fools are my theme, let satire be my song’ 234 The Novel 237 Interconnections: Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, George Crabbe, Joanna Baillie, Charlotte Smith, Anna Laetitia Barbauld 239 III Riots (1815–1820) 297 Waterloo 297 Corn Laws: Cobbett, Bamford, Wroe, Elliott 309 Lord Byron: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Cantos III and IV 313 Lord Byron: Manfred 318 Percy Bysshe Shelley 328 Samuel Rogers 333 Coleridge: Principles of Genial Criticism and Biographia Literaria 334 Coleridge: ‘Kubla Khan’ and ‘Christabel’ 339 Keats: Networking 349 Keats: Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion 351 Keats: ‘Eve of St. Agnes’ and Lamia 353 Keats: The ‘Great Odes’ 358 Contents vii Belatedness 366 Wordsworth, Shelley, Reynolds: Peter Bell, First, Second, Third, and Fourth 367 Wordsworth: Benjamin the Waggoner 375 Cato Street Conspiracy 376 Leigh Hunt 381 March of the Blanketeers 383 Satire and the Gagging Acts 385 Shelley: Mask of Anarchy 388 Beau Brummell 388 Blake: Jerusalem 389 Shelley: Prometheus Unbound 393 IV Reform (1821–1832) 413 Trial of Queen Caroline 413 Shelley, Swellfoot the Tyrant 419 Shelley, Witch of Atlas 425 Byron, Don Juan 427 John Clare, The Village Minstrel 431 De Quincey, Confessions 433 Maria Edgeworth, Tomorrow 435 Charles Lamb: Essayist, Critic, Playwright 439 William Hazlitt, Spirit of the Age 447 Deaths: Keats, Napoleon, Shelley, Castlereagh, Byron, Radcliffe 451 Letitia Elizabeth Landon: Improvisatrice 453 Samuel Rogers: Italy 455 George Dyer 457 Mary Russell Mitford, Foscari 458 Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations 466 Panic of 1825 468 Felicia Hemans 470 Thomas Love Peacock, Misfortune of Elphin (1829) 472 Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Death’s Jest Book 475 Parliamentary Reform 478 Abolition 478 Deaths: Blake, Hazlitt, Scott, Goethe, Coleridge Crabbe, Lamb, Thelwall 479 Conclusion 489 Index 492 Illustrations Cover. Mather Brown, Conrad in Prison, The Corsair (1814) by Lord Byron. [Source: Pencil and water‐colour sketch in private collection of Frederick Burwick.] Part I. Revolution Fig. 1. James Gillray, Anti‐saccharites, – or – John Bull and his Family leaving off the use of Sugar (27 March 1792). [Source: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1851.] 34 Fig. 2. Thomas Rowlandson, ‘THE DEVONSHIRE, or Most Approved Method of Securing Votes’ (1784). [Source: 1783 – 1784: Political caricatures, in Rowlandson the Caricaturist: a Selection from his Works, 2 vols. Ed. Joseph Grego. London: Chatto and Windus, 1880.] 36 Fig. 3. James Gillray, The Loss of the Faro Bank; or – the Rook’s Pigeon’d. (2 February 1797). [Source: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1851.] 37 Fig. 4. James Gillray, Scientific Researches. New Discoveries in Pneumatics (23 May 1802). [Source: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1851.] 40 Fig. 5. William Blake, The Good Farmer (ca. 1780–85), [Source: Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.] 58 Fig. 6. František Severa, Claviceps purpurea [ergot]: 1 blighted rye; 2 sclerotia; 3 germinating sclerotium. [Source: A. Tschirch, Heilpflanzen. Leipzig, 1909.] 59 Illustrations ix Fig. 7. William Blake, Europe (1794). Plate 9. [Source: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.]