Kinship, Generation and Community: The Transmission of Political Ideology in Radical Plebeian Print Culture

Abstract

THIS ESSAY WILL ARGUE THAT PLEBEIAN RADICALISM TRANSPOSED ITSELF effortlessly across two generations usually associated with literary Romanticism. The principal vehicle of radicalism's was family. It will be shown that radical families can be identified and located even as, protean like, they re-grouped, re-formed, adapted, negotiated and struggled under successive political regimes intent on their surveillance and control. From start of French Revolution in 1789, English plebeian radicalism was already fully articulated within its emergent plebeian public sphere May Revolution generate Revolutions till Despotism is extinct was in printed List of Toasts, &c., picked up by tavern spy in Borough, London, during 1792 reformist meeting. (1) This essay will suggest that we take that toast at face value in order to see that 1790s revolutionary radicalism was pursued with equal vigor in 1800S and 1810S and that family was staple of its successful longevity. Like it or not, English literature was footnote to many contemporary radicals including, paradoxically, those most concerned with printed word. Richard Carlile in an 1822 issue of his Republican, literally trashed rare new edition of John Milton's political writings and rubbished Paradise Lost for good measure: Milton was Republican, and has left us something which are called political writings: but what are they when put forward for instruction of generation? They are trash when compared with writings of Thomas Paine, and are as contemptible as is subject of his [Milton's] best poem. A more useless publication could have appeared at moment than political writings of Milton. (2) If Carlile gives short shrift to so much held dear by major Romantic poets, it is because his energies were firmly focused on present generation at time when Old Jacks of 1790s were, literally, dying out and when, at this moment, scores of young shopmen and women were keeping his Republican going while he languished in Dorchester prison. Ultra-radicals with background in physical force reached similar conclusion. The first New York pirated edition of P. B. Shelley's Queen Mab (1821) betrayed another agenda in an advertisement by [epsilon], [pi], Erasmus Perkins pseudonym of radical impresario, activist and pressman George Cannon, who offered third part of Paine's much prosecuted Age of Reason in a pocket volume, for use of schools ... sold at very low price to those who circulate them for benefit of rising generation. (3) The politicization of children arose out of ideological polarizations back in 1790s when songs and ballads aimed at children were vehicles of radicals and loyalists alike, tendency unnerving to those not in an elevated sphere of life, as one complainant to Home Secretary Dundas put it, feeling acutely the inability of middling Class to educate their children ... [and] consequences to Society. (4) There is fascinating prospect of bifurcation of radical writing here which might be characterized as: Mab fairy tales for grown-ups, Painite rationalism for children. In order to understand how artisan radicalism transposed itself across two generations, while liberal radicalism of canonical literary Romantic writers needed to reinvent itself after one, it is necessary to realize that plebeian radicalism functioned in manner ideologically cohesive even under extreme circumstances of social behavior. In middle of afternoon one day in April 1812 in Brightside district of Sheffield, near Star public house and adjacent to garrisoned military store, there was riot. (5) A regular soldier testified in court to seeing a great number of people appear ... in Lane: the Door was forced open by Mob who threatened to murder witness if he made any resistance. …