Abstract
This chapter looks at a series of cheap but influential radical periodicals from the 1790s, particularly those associated with Daniel Isaac Eaton, Thomas Spence, John Thelwall, and others involved in the London Corresponding Society after 1792. Using Christina Lupton’s recent theoretical work on print and temporality, the chapter considers the conditions that interrupted and shaped their circulation, and, particularly, examines the way their dissemination relates to ideas of the periodical as a ‘punctual medium’, when faced with legal and other impediments to circulation. In the process, it discusses the emergence of differing ideas, even within the same radical groups, as to what properly constituted political discourse in the period, from the ‘leisure’ and ‘reflection’ mandated by anti-populist thinkers like William Godwin to the ‘affective spark’ of performative speech in political lectures like those of John Thelwall.
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