Knowledge‐Production in a Provincial Network of the 1790s: The Educational Work of Thomas Beddoes, Thomas Wedgwood, Maria Edgeworth, and S. T. Coleridge

Abstract

AbstractI delineate in this article the knowledge‐production of a male/female provincial network that did not perpetuate traditional gender roles. Centred on Clifton, Bristol, it involved sociable conversation, correspondence, circulation of manuscript and privately printed material, publication, and practical pedagogy. Committed to social and political reform, it was an expression of middle‐class liberal dissent, the more radical successor to the Midlands Enlightenment. By 1808, it had made contributions to educational theory and practice. It is worth studying for this reason and because it reveals the development of Midlands Enlightenment projects by the next generation, updating our picture of knowledge‐production and network operation among liberal dissenters in the 1790s. Moreover, the educational schemes of two of its central figures, Thomas Beddoes and Thomas Wedgwood, have been relatively neglected by scholars owing to their inaccessibility. I revalue Beddoes's and Wedgwood's schemes based on my intensive study of their manuscript letters and notes. In the process, I recontextualize the educational publications of other network members who have hitherto mostly been considered separately, Maria Edgeworth and S. T. Coleridge.