Writing against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790–1832 (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 69)

Conservative culture in the Romantic period should not be understood merely as an effort to preserve the old regime in Britain against the threat of revolution. Instead, conservative thinkers and writers aimed to transform British culture and society to achieve a stable future in contrast to the destructive upheavals taking place in France. Kevin Gilmartin explores the literary forms of counterrevolutionary expression in Britain, showing that while conservative movements were often inclined to treat print culture as a dangerously unstable and even subversive field, a whole range of print forms - ballads, tales, dialogues, novels, critical reviews - became central tools in the counterrevolutionary campaign. Beginning with the pamphlet campaigns of the loyalist Association movement and the Cheap Repository in the 1790s, Gilmartin analyses the role of periodical reviews and anti-Jacobin fiction in the campaign against revolution, and closes with a fresh account of the conservative careers of Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Cover 1 Half-title 3 Series-title 4 Title 5 Copyright 6 Dedication 7 Contents 9 Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 11 List of Abbreviations 13 Introduction: Reconsidering counterrevolutionary expression 15 Chapter 1 In the theater of counterrevolution: Loyalist association and vernacular address 33 Managing the Spectacle of Revolutionary Envy 39 "Associate to Counteract": Organizing Conservative Opinion 50 The Archive of Counterrevolutionary Association 58 Chapter 2 "Study to be quiet": Hannah More and counterrevolutionary moral reform 69 The Politics of Counterrevolutionary Enterprise 77 Circulation, Mediation, and Social Order 83 Literary Authority and the Media of Moral Reform 91 Village Politics and National Enterprise 104 Chapter 3 Reviewing subversion: The function of criticism at the present crisis 110 Measures of Critical Surveillance 117 Periodical Varieties of Anti-Jacobinism 131 Imagined Sociability 151 Chapter 4 Subverting fictions: The counterrevolutionary form of the novel 164 Adventures in the Counterrevolutionary Picaresque 175 Loyal Conversation 189 Charitable Enterprise and the Repair of Fiction 210 Chapter 5 Southey, Coleridge, and the end of anti-Jacobinism in Britain 221 Policy in writing 226 Reforming the Constitution: History, Church, Education 246 Notes 267 Introduction: Reconsidering counterrevolutionary expression 267 In the theater of counterrevolution: Loyalist association and vernacular address 271 "Study to be quiet": Hannah More and counterrevolutionary moral reform 278 Reviewing subversion: The function of criticism at the present crisis 287 Subverting fictions: The counterrevolutionary form of the novel 294 Southey, Coleridge, and the end of anti-Jacobinism in Britain 299 Bibliography 309 Index 325