Literature and Revolution: British Responses to the Paris Commune of 1871 (Reinventions of the Paris Commune)

Edmund Gosse suggests that some of his contemporaries mourned the passing not only of an esteemed poet laureate but of an entire epoch in En glish lit er a ture. In doing so, Gosse allows himself a revealing reference to (relatively) recent history when he writes: "What I dread, what I have long dreaded, is the eruption of a sort of Commune in lit er a ture. At no period could the danger of such an outbreak of rebellion against tradition be so great as during the reaction which must follow the death of our most illustrious writer." 1 Brief though Gosse's reference to the Paris Commune of 1871 is, it suggests the way in which this acute and localized episode of class strug gle, which triggered a much broader crisis of bourgeois confidence across most of Eu rope, continued to haunt his ruminations on the literary landscape of late-Victorian Britain two de cades after the event itself. In imagining the potential crisis of cultural authority following Tennyson's death, Gosse's mind, it seems, turned instinctively to the Commune. Yet even as Gosse declaratively announces the termination of an entire literary epoch, he also unknowingly preempts the opening of another in his anticipation of a later current of conservative modernism. 2 While the anticommunism of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound would fasten on the specter of the Bolshevik Revolution, Gosse's tilt toward reaction was more muted in being less shaken by the turn of world-historical events. In Gosse's attempt to summarize the cultural zeitgeist surrounding Tennyson's death, he suggests that some people might think "we have no poet left so venerable, or so perfect in ripeness of the long-drawn years of craftsmanship," and, straining toward the superlative, he adds that some might even imagine "poetry is dead amongst us." Such a view, he quickly qualifies, "is scarcely generous and not a little ridicu lous." 3 In listing some living poets whom Tennyson favored with correspondence, Gosse includes Rudyard Kipling and William "Between March and May 1871, the Parisian Communards fought for a revolutionary alternative to the status quo grounded in a vision of internationalism, radical democracy and economic justice for the working masses that cut across national borders. The eventual defeat and bloody suppression of the Commune resonated far beyond Paris. In Britain, the Commune provoked widespread and fierce condemnation, while its defenders constituted a small, but vocal, minority. The Commune evoked long-standing fears about the continental 'spectre' of revolution, not least because the Communards' seizure of power represented an embryonic alternative to the bourgeois social order. This book examines how a heterogeneous group of authors in Britain responded to the Commune. In doing so, it provides the first full-length critical study of the reception and representation of the Commune in Britain during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, showing how discussions of the Commune functioned as a screen to project hope and fear, serving as a warning for some and an example to others. Writers considered in the book include John Ruskin, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Eliza Lynn Linton, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Margaret Oliphant, George Gissing, Henry James, William Morris, Alfred Austin and H.G. Wells. As the book shows, many, but not all, of these writers responded to the Commune with literary strategies that sought to stabilise bourgeois subjectivity in the wake of the traumatic shock of a revolutionary event. The book extends critical understanding of the Commune's cultural afterlives and explores the relationship between literature and revolution"-- Provided by publisher Between March and May 1871, the Parisian Communards fought for a revolutionary alternative to the status quo grounded in a vision of internationalism, radical democracy and economic justice for the working masses that cut across national borders. The eventual defeat and bloody suppression of the Commune resonated far beyond Paris. In Britain, the Commune provoked widespread and fierce condemnation, while its defenders constituted a small, but vocal, minority. The Commune evoked long-standing fears about the continental ‘spectre’ of revolution, not least because the Communards’ seizure of power represented an embryonic alternative to the bourgeois social order. This book examines how a heterogeneous group of authors in Britain responded to the Commune. In doing so, it provides the first full-length critical study of the reception and representation of the Commune in Britain during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, showing how discussions of the Commune functioned as a screen to project hope and fear, serving as a warning for some and an example to others. Writers considered in the book include John Ruskin, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Eliza Lynn Linton, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Margaret Oliphant, George Gissing, Henry James, William Morris, Alfred Austin and H.G. Wells. As the book shows, many, but not all, of these writers responded to the Commune with literary strategies that sought to stabilize bourgeois subjectivity in the wake of the traumatic shock of a revolutionary event. The book extends critical understanding of the Commune’s cultural afterlives and explores the relationship between literature and revolution. Contents Preface 1. Introduction: A Commune in Literature 2. Refugees, Renegades, and Misrepresentation: Edward Bulwer Lytton and Eliza Lynn Linton 3. Dangerous Sympathies: Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, and Margaret Oliphant 4. “Dreams of the Coming Revolution”: George Gissing’s Workers in the Dawn 5. Revolution and Ressentiment: Henry James’s The Princess Casamassima 6. The Uses of Tragedy: Alfred Austin’s The Human Tragedy and William Morris’s The Pilgrims of Hope 7. “It Had to Come Back”: H. G. Wells’s When the Sleeper Wakes 8. Conclusion: Looking without Seeing Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index About the Author The Parisian Communards fought for a vision of internationalism, radical democracy and economic justice for the working masses that cut across national borders. Its eventual defeat resonated far beyond Paris. Literature and Revolution examines how authors in Britain projected their hopes and fears in literary representations of the Commune.