Early Nineteenth-century England Research Articles

Women's Reading in Britain : 1750-1835 : A Dangerous Recreation... by Jacquelyn Pearson (review)

Book Reviews273 Although I lack the competence to evaluate the importance of the scientific materials at hand, I can say that some of Renooz's ideas are appealing, such as the interconnectedness of what are routinely defined as separate disciplines . Allen's approach to these writers has a certain resonance with the ideas ofsuch thinkers as contemporary psychologist, Jean Baker Miller, with her theory ofthe self-in-relation, and the Franco-Antillian critic and novelist, Edouard Glissant, whose Poetics ofRelation looks for a synthesis-genesis of continued connection. Although there are some minor proofreading problems ("Renooz would broach no opposition" should be "Renooz would brook no opposition" 1 1 7), Allen's work shows a meticulous reading. He is clearly taken with his subjects and writes lovingly of their struggles to create an enduring discursive self-in-relation, entering into dialogue with each ofthem in relating their poignant stories. The book should provoke interest in nineteenth-century literary history or women's studies. Margot MillerHood College Pearson, Jacquelyn. Women's Reading in Britain :1750-1835 : A Dangerous Recreation... Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. ISBN: 0-521-58439-6. Pp. 300. In Women's Reading in Britain: 1750-1835, Jacqueline Pearson examines the symbolic nature ofthe reading woman during a period of increasing female literacy. Her analysis of both fictional and historical women readers seeks to ". . . clarif[y] our understanding of women's cultural position in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. . ." while at the same time allowing us to comprehend ". . . better the authors, male as well as female, who wrote with this audience in mind" (iv). As the book's subtitle, "A Dangerous Recreation ," reminds us, reading women were not always viewed favorably in contemporary novels, essays and conduct books or even in the testimonies of women readers themselves. Nevertheless, female literacy and the art of reading were often credited by these same sources as contributing to the creation of the "domestic woman" of the nineteenth century. This persistent ambivalence to the image ofthe reading woman serves as the book's primary focus and reflects cultural transformations in early nineteenth-century Britain which reach beyond the question ofgender and literacy. Through well-documented examples from a wide range of texts, Pearson aptly demonstrates that the contradictory attitudes in this debate resist classification either by gender or political perspective. Women writers may treat the subject of the reading woman with greater skepticism than do their male colleagues. Similarly , both liberal and conservative writers adopt ambiguous stances on the value ofreading novels. As Pearson's argument develops, however, it appears that the contested area is not the act of reading itself, but rather the choice of texts and the circumstances in which reading occurs. The conservative Hannah More's 274Women in French Studies ideal woman is "a reader, but a reader compliant to both domestic ideology and the authority ofthe author" (89). Thus, the ability to read is often associated with the qualities of a good wife and mother. Literacy may even be consider an asset for servants as documented in a 1773 manual where it is noted that a lady's maid should be able to "read well aloud" (186). Concerning the types ofreading appropriate for women, it is not surprising that the novel provokes the most contentious responses. Pearson lays out the parameters of this cultural debate convincingly in a chapter devoted to women and novel reading. By concentrating on four specific texts (Lennox's The Female Quixote, Barrett's The Heroine, Austen's Northanger Abbey, and Green's Scotch Novel Reading), she assists her readers in following the evolution ofthis debate over the almost 100 year time span under study. Similarly, chapters on where and how women should read or the "perils and pleasures" of reading as documented in the memoirs and correspondence of historical women readers offer fascinating insights into both the real and symbolic value of a woman engaged in the act of reading. For example, the "elision oftextuality and sexuality," (ix) a recurrent motifthroughout the book, takes on a new dimension when we discover that the prohibition against reading in bed relates not only to a metaphorical presumption ofsensuality but also to the risk offalling asleep while...

From "Lyrical Ballads" to "Lyrical Tales": Mary Robinson's Reputation and the Problem of Literary Debt

All reputation is ... hard to win, harder to keep. --William Hazlitt, Table Talk Reputation is valuable; and whatever is of value ought to enter into our estimates. A and man will be anxious so to conduct himself that he may not be misunderstood. He will be patient in explaining, where his motives have been and misconstrued. It is a spirit of false bravado that will not descend to vindicate itself from misrepresentation. ---William Godwin, Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature WRITERS IN LATE EIGHTEENTH--AND EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND shared a personal AND social investment in the necessary danger and fragile asset, reputation. As the reading market grew exponentially, authors were increasingly confronted with their inability to limit the meanings of their words and, thus, they faced an inability to control their public images. Reputation was precarious, William Hazlitt's comment implies; like money, it circulated. Its substance was determined from outside by critics and reviewers, by readers and market demands and by the literary tradition. It often had little grounding in a writer's sense of his/her own value, though it was nonetheless essential for continued publication. Like writing, reputation culminated in credit, not property, and credit implied debts. Reputation, then, signified dependence, a failure to authorize one-self Simultaneously, however, an author's value in the late eighteenth century increasingly focused on qualities of personality and originality. (1) Such an emphasis on qualities of the author seemingly extricated him/her from these increasing debts to publishers, critics, and other authors, and refigured him/her as a self-authorizing subject, a creative Genius. While the literary property debates and the defeat of perpetual copyright in the second half of the eighteenth century increased the commodification of books, as many critics have shown, this romantic myth of the Genius Author--a production of both poets and literary critics since then--rose to obscure the reality of the literary marketplace. In an increasingly capitalist economy, no longer a world of strict patronage, this contradiction, inherent in the concept of reputation, between debt to others and demand for originality pervaded many writers' realities. As Hazlitt and Godwin suggest in the epigraphs above, reputation became an important but tenuous commodity in a competitive economy, a representation separate from the writer's self (something to be won and defended) and yet explicitly linked to the writing subject's authority (something to be misapprehended and misconstrued by others). A reputation that was just and reasonable was valuable in and of itself, despite its immateriality; it required maintenance through continual explanation and vindication. Such continual self-defense suggests that any reputation was always also misrepresentation, any sense of original genius always embattled, even illusory. In this light, reputation might be read as a form of dispossession, providing identity at the same time it points to the hollowness of that identity, a subjectivity that is necessarily other within itself, continually requiring elaboration, and always defined by forces outside itself. No longer self-possessed, but a copy of oneself, and a copy that must be defended in order to maintain one's reputation as original, the writing subject is continually confronted with his/her own contingency. While romantic writers, male and female, shared this sense of dispossession, for women writers, the marketplace was especially hazardous and reputation even more fragile. (2) In the case of many women writers, the danger was at least double-edged: on the one hand, they needed to create enough of a reputation as writers to support themselves; on the other hand, as women, their reputations were already fixed by their gender and they had continually to defend their virtue. …

Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England. By Marc W. Steinberg. Cornell University Press, 1999. 286 pp.

Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England. By Marc W. Steinberg. Cornell University Press, 1999. 286 pp.

Mathematics in the Age of Jane Austen: Essential Skills of 1800

THE ACADEMY AWARD–WINNING MOVIE Sense and Sensibility presented a wonderful vision of life in early nineteenth-century England. In the absence of television, radio, movies, and videos, families sought entertainment in a manner far different from today's. The Dashwood girls—Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret—filled their days with visiting, reading, practicing the pianoforte, needleworking, and letter writing, not to mention gossiping and matchmaking. Long days were highlighted by a wonderfully relaxed midday family meal, during which conversation was paramount. Above all, Jane Austen portrays a concern for the thoughts and feelings of one's immediate acquaintances and pride in one's village.

Leonard D Smith, ‘Cure, comfort and safe custody’: public lunatic asylums in early nineteenth-century England, London and New York, Leicester University Press, 1999, pp. ix, 310, illus., £55.00 (0-7185-0094-6).

Leonard D Smith, ‘Cure, comfort and safe custody’: public lunatic asylums in early nineteenth-century England, London and New York, Leicester University Press, 1999, pp. ix, 310, illus., £55.00 (0-7185-0094-6). - Volume 44 Issue 4

Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Book Review: Historical Studies: Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Book Review: Historical Studies: Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Free Trade and State Formation: The Political Economy of Fisheries Policy in Britain and the United Kingdom circa 1780–1850

It is striking that historians of the early nineteenth century have been relatively reluctant to consider relationships between economic policy and the consolidation of the British state. In today's context, the economic and political challenges posed by both European integration and resurgent nationalism have generated hotly contested controversies on the political economy of state formation. From the perspective of the United Kingdom, the prospect of political and administrative devolution has forced us to address the implications of political decentralization for regional economic development (and vice versa) and to consider in turn the impact of these dynamics on the political integrity of a multinational state. For Britain, the period between circa 1780 and 1850 was characterized by unprecedented economic growth, imperial crisis and acquisition, and political consolidation. In a metropolitan sense the most dramatic feature of this process was, of course, the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800. Insofar as historians of early nineteenth-century Britain have examined the relationship between “state formation” and economic policy, however, they have tended to focus on the ideas, politics, and pressures surrounding the retreat of the state from economic intervention. Thus in more general accounts it became axiomatic that the nineteenth-century state shrank progressively from social and economic intervention, liberating commerce, and resting the fiscal system on secure but modest direct taxation.More recently, the relationship between the concept of “laissez-faire” and British state formation has been dramatically revised and refined by Philip Harling and Peter Mandler.

Men's things: Masculine possession in the consumer revolution

This article uses the diaries of the Sussex shopkeeper Thomas Turner, the Reverends James Woodforde of Norfolk and William Holland of Somerset, and the Yorkshire schoolmaster Robert Sharp to explore men's multiple relations to the consumer market in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England. Arguing that historians have unduly discounted male participation in household provisioning and personal purchasing, it documents these diarists' engagement with a host of quotidian exchange activities. Avid purchasers and consumers of fish, potatoes, lace, buttons,china and clocks,these men were also active in promoting extended gift relations among neighbours, friends and kin. Their strategic deployment of gifts fostered sociability and commerce while bolstering hierarchical distinctions within the community and the state. Helping to constitute a broad-based moral economy of exchange, these masculine gifting behaviours meshed easily with the men's identities as acquisitive purchasers of consumer goods but undercut their ability to act as economic free agents. An understanding of men's shifting relations to the world of things in this period helps to explain the broader changes in English market moralities that underpinned the transition from custom to contract in the nineteenth century.

England and the Machinery of Reason 1780 to 1830

Recent historians, most notably Maxine Berg and Larry Stewart, have highlighted the importance but also ambiguity over the reception of the machine in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century England. This essay is concerned with a mode of reason developed in studies of machines and human power, and its application within specific spheres during this period. In particular, it focuses on certain sites of manufacture at the vanguard of industry, the machine's role in forging a distinctive view of intelligence, and, lastly, the impact of the machine upon developments within the state's system of prison punishment. For some commentators the machine was a symbol of progress and potential human emancipation, but for numerous others the mechanical heart that lay at the core of enlightenment libertarianism had degenerated into an enslaving project.

The census and the servant: a reassessment of the decline and distribution of farm service in early nineteenth-century England

I n 1981 Ann Kussmaul published her book on farm servants in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. This clearly demonstrated the early decline and extinction of farm service in the south and east and its survival for longer in the north and west of the country.2 Her argument remains the orthodox interpretation of the changing composition of the English agricultural workforce and the spatial distribution of the decline of farm service in the early nineteenth century. While a number of local studies have revised Kussmaul's figures or contended technical points, the main thrust of her argument and her methods have not been seriously challenged.3 This article offers some caveats to employing IKussmaul's methods. Both these and the 1831 data are shown to be flawed, a finding which has important implications for our understanding of the changing composition of the agricultural workforce and the decline of farm service. Conventional wisdom points to the persistence of farm service in the north of England until the mid-nineteenth century and beyond, and suggests that this was caused by the peculiar nature of the labour requirements in pastoral husbandry, often on the urban fringes, and the competition for labour from industry.4 Kussmaul calculated that by far the highest proportion of farm servants in 1831 were found in northern counties, reaching as high as 60 per cent of the adult male agricultural workforce in Lancashire and Westmorland, compared with the national average of 31 per cent.5 In 1851, the highest proportion of farm servants continued to be found in the northern and western counties despite an overall decline in their significance.6 These data have contributed to the

Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England. Kevin Gilmartin

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsPrint Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England. Kevin Gilmartin Steven JonesSteven Jones Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 97, Number 3Feb., 2000 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/492879 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 2000 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Fighting words: working-class formation, collective action, and discourse in early nineteenth-century England

Fighting words: working-class formation, collective action, and discourse in early nineteenth-century England

Marc W. Steinberg. Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 1999. Pp. x, 286. $45.00. ISBN 0-8014-3582-X.

Marc W. Steinberg. Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action, and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 1999. Pp. x, 286. $45.00. ISBN 0-8014-3582-X. - Volume 32 Issue 4

The Shampooing Surgeon and the Persian Prince: Two Indians in Early Nineteenth-century Britain

At an estate belonging to the Baker family in Cork, in the year 1799, there was an encounter between two Indians. Dean Mahomed had settled in Cork with his Anglo-Irish wife, and Abu Taleb Khan was a nobleman on a European tour. Both wrote travel narratives, the earliest accounts to be published by Indians in English. This paper explores the questions of cultural identity raised by these texts and by the careers of the two writers. To what extent do the authors adopt or subvert an orientalized persona? Do the texts offer points of resistance to the dominant discourses of colonialism? By asking such questions, we may hope to achieve a more nuanced reading of the forms of hybridity. The Travels of Dean Mahomet (1794) recounts the young Mahomed's infatuation with British military life, his adoption by Captain Baker, service with an East India Company regiment and passage to Ireland. Later in his career, Dean Mahomed ran the Hindostanee Coffee House in London, then a series of steam baths in Brighton as Shampooing Surgeon to the king. His history suggests the capacity to appropriate new cultural forms, anticipate shifts in fashion, and reinvent himself constantly. The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan in Asia, Africa, and Europe (published London 1810), originally written in Persian, was translated into English by a professor at the East India Company college. During his stay in London, Abu Taleb was known as 'the Persian Prince' and extensively feted by high society. Although generally an anglophile, Abu Taleb does include a section in his journal on the defects of the English character. While clearly a form of legitimized dissent, the chapter offers a rare opportunity of listening to the voice of an Indian subject answering back.

Reviews: Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII: Literary Culture and the Arts of Deceit, Religion and Culture in Renaissance England, Shakespeare's Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire, Shakespeare and Ireland: History, Politics, Culture, History and the English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe, Inventing a Republic: The Political Culture of the English Commonwealth, Jane

Reviews: Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII: Literary Culture and the Arts of Deceit, Religion and Culture in Renaissance England, Shakespeare's Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire, Shakespeare and Ireland: History, Politics, Culture, History and the English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe, Inventing a Republic: The Political Culture of the English Commonwealth, Jane

Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access KEVIN GILMARTINPrint Politics The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England Pp XIV+274 (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism 21) Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1997 £35 JON MEE JON MEE University CollegeOxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume 50, Issue 197, February 1999, Pages 115–116, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/50.197.115 Published: 01 February 1999