John Cannon Research Articles

“The Tennis Ball of Fortune”: Print, Manuscript, and Provincial Literacies in The Chronicles of John Cannon

This paper will focus on the Chronicles of John Cannon, a ploughboy turned exciseman and writing master living in the Somerset levels who described himself as a “Tennis Ball of Fortune.” Cannon's story of self-education and writerly self-fashioning took striking material form in an illustrated manuscript book he produced in the first decades of the eighteenth century. As a work and an object, the Chronicles stages a series of conversations between print and manuscript. In exploring this unique case study, we expose how the mixed medium of the manuscript book could present different and mutually supportive forms of authority. In this case, print is referred to through citation, graphic imitation, and paratextual format, whilst at the same time, the virtuoso scribal acts of transcribing and refining within the volume operate as an alternative index of textual fidelity and credibility. Our case study also pushes us to reconsider some of the clustered assumptions around the nature of the manuscript book in this period: this is the work of a male, non-elite writer, an amateur production. It is not a family or coterie production, and rather than offering a miscellany of genres and hands, it subsumes its varied contents into the narrative of a single life. How do we understand this unique blended form in the context of existing narratives about the nature of the manuscript book? And how might we edit such materials to retain a sense of their hybridity? Cannon's Chronicles also helps us connect the study of the manuscript book to a concern with the social dimensions of manuscript forms in a community of mixed literacies. Cannon's copying and writing became an important performance of professional competence in a culture of amateur literary production. As a case study, his work challenges expectations of gender and class in eighteenth-century manuscript studies and reveals how the affordances of the pen might reflect the burgeoning print culture of the period.

From True Grit to “Big Damn Heroes”: Cowboys, Pirates, and Relational Ethics

When I was a kid, cowboys ruled. Every week, my heroes—Lucas McCain, the Cartwrights, Matt Dillon, Paladin, Big John Cannon—were taming the “wild west.” These were good guys, in charge and on a mission. But in the world around us, everything was changing. 1969 was a turning point. Everything was suddenly in Technicolor, and as we gave up on the West and turned to outer space for our hero-adventures, our heroes morphed from Cowboys to Space-Pirate-Cowboys. These space-pirate-cowboys (or big damn heroes) manage to do the right thing as they improvise their (opportunistic) ethics of friendship.

Conjugate factorizations of finite groups

‎In this paper we illustrate recent results about factorizations of finite groups into conjugate subgroups‎. ‎The illustrated results are joint works with John Cannon‎, ‎Dan Levy‎, ‎Attila Mar'oti and Iulian I‎. ‎Simion‎.

The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master, Part 1: 1684–1733 (Somerset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire) ed. by John Money

The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master, Part 1: 1684–1733 (Somerset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire) ed. by John Money

The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master. Part 1: 1684–1733 (Somerset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire). Edited by John Money. Records of Social and Economic History, new series, volume 43. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2010. Pp. cl+240; $110.00.The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master. Part 2: 1734–43 (Somerset). Edited by John Money. Records

<i>The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master. Part 1: 1684–1733 (Somerset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire)</i>. Edited by John Money. Records of Social and Economic History, new series, volume 43. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2010. Pp. cl+240; $110.00.<i>The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master. Part 2: 1734–43 (Somerset)</i>. Edited by John Money. Records

The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master: Part One, 1684-1733 (Somerset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire), edited by John Money. and, The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master: Part Two, 1734-1743 (Somerset), edited by John Money.

<i>The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master: Part One, 1684-1733 (Somerset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire)</i>, edited by John Money. and, <i>The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master: Part Two, 1734-1743 (Somerset)</i>, edited by John Money.

The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master, part 1: 1684-1733 - Edited by John Money; The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master, part 2: 1734-43 - Edited by John Money

The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master, part 1: 1684-1733 - Edited by John Money; The Chronicles of John Cannon, Excise Officer and Writing Master, part 2: 1734-43 - Edited by John Money

The Chronicles of John Cannon: Excise Officer and Writing Master. Part 1, 1684-1733 (Somerset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire) - Edited by John Money; The Chronicles of John Cannon: Excise Officer and Writing Master. Part 2, 1734-1743 (Somerset) - Edited by John

The Chronicles of John Cannon: Excise Officer and Writing Master. Part 1, 1684-1733 (Somerset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire) - Edited by John Money; The Chronicles of John Cannon: Excise Officer and Writing Master. Part 2, 1734-1743 (Somerset) - Edited by John

The Chronicles of John Cannon: Excise Officer and Writing Master, Part 1: 1684–1733 (Somerset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire); Part 2: 1734–1743 (Somerset), ed. John Money

The Chronicles of John Cannon: Excise Officer and Writing Master, Part 1: 1684–1733 (Somerset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire); Part 2: 1734–1743 (Somerset), ed. John Money

The House of Lords in the Age of George III (1760-1811), by Michael W. McCahill

Michael McCahill has been studying the House of Lords and its members for forty years and this work is the culmination of that lengthy scholarship. Published in the Parliamentary History: Texts and Studies series this work is a rich and thorough study which will be valuable to any scholar of the Lords. It extends his previous volume Order and Equipoise: The Peerage and the House of Lords, 1783–1806 (1978; rev. ante, xcv [1980], 916–17) to cover the whole reign of George III—it is certainly a heftier text. Again McCahill focuses on the workings of Parliament and the role of the Lords within it rather than how the Lords were viewed by the rest of society. While he engages briefly with the historiography on the nobility there is no great revisionism here. The text implicitly confirms the findings of historians such as John Cannon, David Cannadine and J.C.D. Clark that the political and social power and prestige of the peerage was not seriously challenged during the period covered here. For the most part, McCahill expands his earlier arguments and the main thrust is still to counter the traditional view he earlier linked to A.S. Turberville and John Brooke that the Lords were the creatures of the Crown. But there is much new evidence here which adds depth and detail.

Pamela edwards. The Statesman's Science. History, Nature, and Law in the Political Thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Pp. ix + 312. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Cloth, $45.00.

This book begins bravely, and in my opinion, more or less rightly. Pamela Edwards asserts that Coleridge was neither a ‘Young Radical’ nor an ‘Old Tory’, that never being a party man, he was never an apostate; or to paraphrase Stuart Andrews’ words, Coleridge was much less radical in his youth and much more radical in his maturity than received opinion has allowed. It is a well-produced volume, with nine provocatively titled chapters (repeated both in the page headings and the notes, so one knows exactly where one is when looking up a reference), buttressed by an introduction and a conclusion. All in all a good-looking book set fair to fulfil its promises. Coleridge the liberal is the thesis of the book, and the introduction develops the notion of organic liberalism, asserting that ‘Coleridge believed that the common law and the ancient constitution revealed, through an ongoing adjustment and accommodation of social and political will, the workings of reason and providence.’ (p. 2) A reasonable generalisation, but I would have liked a reference—and of course, since it is Coleridge, is it ‘reason’ or ‘Reason’? It's not quite clear, nor is it quite clear that the distinction, and its significance, has occurred to the author. Still, that generalisation carries us on to a rapid review of those who have made Coleridge into a political apostate: cited are Hazlitt, De Quincey (spelt variously on the same page—DeQuincey, DeQuincy—but never correctly), Norman Fruman, E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams and Marilyn Butler; the last three have all ‘approached the cultural politics of this period through the lens of Marx-influenced ideologies, whether economic reductionism or Gramiscian hegemony theory’ (p. 5). Interesting, and I can see where the author is coming from, but I wonder whether that triumvirate would agree. But if ‘Gramiscian hegemony theory’ is beginning to make me feel a tad ignorant, worse is to follow. A rapid historiography of the period raps out a multitude of names with which I have no familiarity at all—John Cannon, H. T. Dickinson, J. G. A. Pocock, Caroline Robbins, C. B. Macpherson and Bernard Bailyn, whose works are all dealt with in single sentences, but who have all considered Coleridge the radical ‘with an evener temper’—slightly troublesome English, but a remarkable series of summaries: is this the fate of even the best of us—years of work stuffed into a single sentence? John Morrow is given at least a page here, and more in the next chapter, in conjunction with the slightly patronising comment that ‘Some of the best works on Coleridge have, arguably, been produced by the meticulous editors of the Bollingen collected works’ (p. 7). Close reading of the text is always a good way to start a careful study. But those literary readers of Coleridge's political works who haven't kept pace ‘with the changing face of debate in historiography …’ are now beginning to feel a bit dazed. Fortunately, after another short roll-call (Miller, Skinner, Tuck; Winch) the introduction ends.

Women and Foxite Strategy in the Westminster Election of 1784

Research Article| January 01 2002 Women and Foxite Strategy in the Westminster Election of 1784 Renata Lana Renata Lana Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Eighteenth-Century Life (2002) 26 (1): 46–69. https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-26-1-46 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Renata Lana; Women and Foxite Strategy in the Westminster Election of 1784. Eighteenth-Century Life 1 January 2002; 26 (1): 46–69. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-26-1-46 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsEighteenth-Century Life Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. The College of William & Mary2002 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Articles You do not currently have access to this content.

The Return of the Jacobites and Other Johnsonian Topics

Samuel Johnson: The Return of the Jacobites and Other Topics Robert Folkenflik John Cannon. Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). Pp. vii + 326. $59.00 cloth. J.C.D. Clark. Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from Restoration to Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Pp. xiv + 270. $49.95 cloth. $17.95 paper. Greg Clingham, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Pp. xx + 266. $59.95 cloth. $18.95 paper. Richard C. Cole, ed. with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, and with the assistance of James J. Caudel. The General Correspondence of James Boswell 1766–1769. The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, Research Edition, Correspondence: vol. 7 (vol. 2: 1768–1769). Edinburgh and New Haven: Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press, 1997. Pp. xxii, 330. $75.00 cloth. Thomas Crawford, ed. The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple 1756–1795. The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, Research Edition, Correspondence: vol. 6 (vol. 1: 1756–1777). Edinburgh and New Haven: Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press, 1997. Pp. lix, 479. $75.00 cloth. Leopold Damrosch, ed. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Major Authors on CD-ROM (Woodbridge: Primary Source Media, 1997). $395.00 CD-ROM. Robert DeMaria, Jr. Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Pp. 270. $39.95 cloth. A.D. Horgan. Johnson on Language: An Introduction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). Pp. ix + 226. $25.00 cloth. Samuel Johnson. A Dictionary of the English Language on CD-ROM: The First and Fourth Editions, ed. Anne McDermott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). $295.00 CD-ROM. [End Page 289] Irma Lustig, ed. Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995). Pp. xvii + 270. $37.50 cloth. Donald J. Newman, ed. James Boswell: Psychological Interpretations (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995). Pp. viii + 222. $39.95 cloth. Bruce Redford, ed. The Letters of Samuel Johnson 1731–1772; The Hyde Edition 5 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992–94). Pp. xxix + 431; xvii + 385; xvii + 399; xix + 462; xv + 174. $175.00 cloth. Thomas Reinert. Regulating Confusion: Samuel Johnson and the Crowd (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996). Pp. 195. $49.95 cloth, $17.95 paper. Pat Rogers. Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Pp. x + 245. $49.95 cloth. Pat Rogers. The Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia (Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1996). Pp. xvii + 483. $85.00 cloth. Arthur Sherbo. Samuel Johnson’s Critical Opinions: A Reexamination (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995). Pp. 214. $36.50 cloth. Marshall Waingrow, ed. James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, vol. 1 (Edinburgh and New Haven: Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press, 1994). Pp. xxxi + 518. $85.00 cloth. The Age of Johnson exists as a journal title in the field of eighteenth-century studies, but what has become of the concept? The canon shifts in classrooms and anthologies are well-known. If, however, monographic studies of Samuel Johnson appeared for a time to be on the wane, this is clearly no longer the case. A combination of new accounts, scholarly editions and electronic versions, in the wake of new biographies by Pat Rogers (brief), Robert DeMaria, Jr., and Richard Holmes (a two-hander with a Stevensonian allusion, Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage), show that a somewhat different Johnson is now receiving close attention. Jonathan Clark’s Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from Restoration to Romanticism is at once a case study in Clark’s rehabilitation of Jacobitism and part of his much larger historical project. As Henry Adams once attempted to establish two points, one in the middle ages and one in modern times, and draw a historical line between them, so Clark attempts something similar, taking as his termini the late seventeenth century and the Thatcher era. But in Clark’s case, the intention is to move the line distinctly to the right and...

Biography Database 1680-1830 on CD-ROM. Directed by John Cannon and Frank Robinson (England: Avero Publications Ltd. 1995. Personal Research Edition, Disk 1: $125.00)

Journal Article Biography Database 1680–1830 on CD-ROM. Directed by John Cannon and Frank Robinson (England: Avero Publications Ltd. 1995. Personal Research Edition, Disk 1: $125.00) Get access Walter L. Arnstein Walter L. Arnstein University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 32, Issue 3, Spring 1999, Pages 755–757, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/32.3.755 Published: 01 March 1999

Late Modern

The Oxford Companion to British History. Edited by John Cannon Charity, Self‐interest and Welfare in the English Past. Edited by Martin Daunton Land and Society in Britain, 1700–1914: Essays in Honour of F. M. L. Thompson. Edited by Negley Harte and Roland Quinault The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy. Edited by D. George Boyce and Alan O'Day John Wilkes: A Friend to Liberty. By Peter D. G. Thomas Modern Europe, 1789–1989. By Asa Briggs and Patricia Clavin Microhistories: Demography, Society and Culture in Rural England, 1800–1930. By Barry Reay Europe after Napoleon: Revolution, Reaction and Romanticism, 1814–1848. By Michael Broers Escape from the Market: Negotiating Work in Lancashire. By Michael Huberman Powers of the Press: Newspapers, Power and the Public in Nineteenth‐Century England. By Aled Jones Before the Famine Struck: Life in West Clare, 1843–1845. By Ignatius Murphy A Starving People: Life and Death in West Clare, 1845–1851. By Ignatius Murphy The Essential Mayhew: Representing and Communicating the Poor. Edited by Bertrand Taithe Medical Services and the Hospitals in Britain, 1860–1939. By Steven Cherry The Austro‐Prussian War: Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866. By Geoffrey Wawro Disraeli: A Brief Life. By Paul Smith Masters of Bedlam: The Transformation of the Mad‐Doctoring Trade. By Andrew Scull, Charlotte MacKenzie and Nicholas Hervey A New History of Ireland, Volume VI: Ireland Under the Union, II: 1870–1921. Edited by W. E. Vaughan The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880–1914. By E. H. H. Green Britannia's Children: Reading Colonialism through Children's Books and Magazines. By Kathryn Castle Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women's Suffrage Movement. By Sandra Stanley Holton The Politics of Pessimism: Albert de Broglie and Conservative Politics in the Early Third Republic. By Alan Grubb French Revolutionary Syndicalism and the Public Sphere. By Kenneth H. Tucker The Agony of the Russian Idea. By Tim McDaniel Poverty is not a Vice: Charity, Society and the State in Imperial Russia. By Adele Lindenmeyr Histoire du Royaume‐Uni au XXe siècle. By Fran¸ois‐Charles Mougel A History of Conservative Politics, 1900–1996. By John Charmley France and Britain, 1900–1940: Entente and Estrangement. By P. M. H. Bell Wilhelm II. Volume 2: Emperor and Exile, 1900–1941. By Lamar Cecil The Health of the Schoolchild: A History of the School Medical Service in England and Wales. By Bernard Harris Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Political Activism. By Barbara Winslow Grandeur and Misery: France's Bid for Power in Europe 1914–1940. By Anthony Adamthwaite Aspects of British Political History 1914–1995. By Stephen J. Lee Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War. By Gerard J. De Groot Tickled to Death to Go: Memoirs of a Cavalryman in the First World War. Edited by Richard van Emden Republican and Fascist Germany: Themes and Variations in the History of Weimar and the Third Reich 1918–1945. By John Hiden Feminism and the Third Republic: Women's Political and Civil Rights in France, 1918–1945. By Paul Smith The Failure of British Fascism: The Far Right and the Fight for Political Recognition. Edited by Mike Cronin Personalities and Power: Stanley Baldwin and the Search for Consensus. By Duncan Watts Red Tempest: The Life of a Surgeon in the Gulag. By Isaac J. Vogelfanger Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation. By David Dutton Britain in the Second World War: A Social History. By Harold L. Smith Voices of D‐Day: The Story of the Allied Invasion, Told by Those Who Were There. Edited by Ronald J. Drez The War for the German Mind: Re‐educating Hitler's Soldiers. By Arthur L. Smith The World Reacts to the Holocaust. Edited by David S. Wyman Britain and European Integration since the Second World War. Edited by Sean Greenwood The Great Alliance: Economic Recovery and the Problems of Power 1945–1951. By Jim Phillips The Conservative Governments 1951–1964. By Andrew Boxer Winston Churchill's Last Campaign: Britain and the Cold War 1951–1955. By John Young Spain: Democracy Regained. Second Edition. By E. Ramón Arango Britain in the 1970s; The Troubled Economy. Edited by Richard Coopey and Nicholas Woodward

Open Elites: Recruitment to the French Noblesse and the English Aristocracy in the Eighteenth Century

Over the past fifteen years historians of Britain have debated the degree to which the nation's aristocracy was open to newcomers. First, W. D. Rubinstein suggested that the new rich of the nineteenth century broke with the pattern of centuries and refrained from large-scale land purchases, in part because the established aristocracy had assumed a more “caste-like” mentality that held outsiders at bay. Then in 1984 two important works extended the challenge to earlier centuries. John Cannon demonstrated that throughout the eighteenth century recruits to the peerage were chosen from among the upper reaches of the landed aristocracy, a fact that suggested to him that the British nobility was a closed group, more closed than its continental counterparts. More significantly, Lawrence and Jeanne Stone completed an immense study of the elite of three counties over a 340-year period; they concluded that the proportion of newcomers was small and that new recruits were drawn mainly from groups already affiliated with the aristocracy. It was not businessmen but small gentry, office holders, and members of the professions who dominated the ranks of newcomers to their county elites.Other leading students of the British aristocracy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have taken exception to the claims of these iconoclasts. Sir John Habakkuk concluded in his Ford Lectures that “there was no weakening among new men in the eighteenth century of the desire to acquire landed estates. Almost all the wealthiest (or their descendants in the next generation) joined the landed elite….” In greater detail F. M. L. Thompson called into question Rubinstein's findings by challenging the usefulness of his probate data and by showing that millionaire Victorian businessmen or their direct heirs made substantial land purchases.

SHORTER NOTICES

SHORTER NOTICES JOHN CANNON JOHN CANNON University of Newcastle upon Tyne Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume CXII, Issue 446, April 1997, Pages 491–492, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/CXII.446.491 Published: 01 April 1997

Reviews

Reviews

The Double Tradition of Samuel Johnson's Politics Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England John Cannon Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion, and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism J. C. D. Clark

The Double Tradition of Samuel Johnson's Politics Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England John Cannon Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion, and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism J. C. D. Clark

Samuel Johnson and the politics of Hanoverian England

This is a lively and readable reinterpretation of the Georgian political order. Samuel Johnson's life (1709-1784) spans most of the eighteenth cetnury. His contacts in the literary and cultural, scholarly, and political worlds were wide, including Gibbon, Goldsmith, Fox, Burke, Reynolds, Adam Smith, and many others. This book uses Johnson's remarkable career as a point of entry into Hanoverian England. John Cannon explores major contemporary issues, such as education, the poor, capital punishment, the colonies, and Toryism. He challenges many assumptions about Johnson's own attitudes, and offers a substantial modification to the traditional picture of Johnson and the political world of the eighteenth century.