Literature, Journalism, and the Vocabularies of Liberalism: Politics and Letters, 1886–1916

Abstract

The shift in liberalism at the end of the nineteenth century has hitherto been approached primarily from a political perspective. Identified with the ‘new’ liberalism, it has been associated with the abandonment of laissez-faire in favour of greater state intervention. However, as Jock Macleod's rich and nuanced study shows, the new liberalism was merely one expression of a wider ‘advanced’ or ‘progressive’ liberalism, grounded in an ethic of democracy and reform that was shared by political radicals of various stripes. He argues that this was forged within a vibrant literary culture that found its main outlet in journalism. With the blurring of the lines between writers, reviewers, and educators – helpfully conceived here in terms of Pierre Bourdieu's self-reflexive ‘literary field’ – literature became a communal possession. He charts the fortunes of progressive liberalism between two key moments in Liberal Party history: 1886, when Gladstone was defeated over Home Rule, and 1916, when Asquith was ousted by Lloyd George. This sheds new light not only on the changing contours of liberalism but also its complex relation to modernity and modernism, a movement to which it eventually lost ground.