“The dark sketches of a revolution”: Gillray, the Anti-Jacobin Review, and the Aesthetics of Conspiracy in the 1790s

Abstract

The aim of this article is to re-contextualize the passing of the 1799 Secret Societies Act by focussing on the collaboration between the Anti-Jacobin Review and James Gillray. By choosing to hire Gillray's talents, this leading loyalist periodical took a considerable risk: Gillray may have been the creator of devastatingly vivid depictions of Jacobin violence, but he was also a persistent critic of despotic State power. Through a close analysis of several lesser known caricatures, this article argues that Gillray undermined the conspiratorial rhetoric of the counter-revolutionary campaign from within its own ranks – in effect, he used the same terrorist tactics of his supposed enemies. Beginning with a detailed look at the ways in which the loyalist press authenticated its fantasy of Jacobin insurrectionary plotting, the author goes on to show that Gillray hoisted this narrative with its own Burkean petard, exposing the loyalist vendetta as a spectacular display of sublime terror rather than a justified suspension of democratic freedoms.