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

by Kevin Gilmartin

Overview

Print Politics is the first literary study of the culture of the popular radical movement for parliamentary reform in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The period was characterized by popular agitation and repressive political measures, including trials for seditious and blasphemous libel. Kevin Gilmartin explores the styles and strategies of radical opposition in the periodical press (including the work of William Cobbett, Richard Carlile and Leigh Hunt), and in the public culture of the time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521021128
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/13/2005
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Romanticism , #21
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.63(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: locating a plebeian counterpublic sphere; Part I. A Rhetoric of Radical Opposition: 1. Party, corruption and political opposition; 2. Representing the people: the press and parliamentary reform; 3. Beyond corruption: independence, personality, egotism; 4. The radical profession and 'the wholesale trade of sedition'; 5. Countersystem and the ends of opposition; Part II. Radical Print Culture In Periodical Form: 1. Popular radicalism in print; 2. Periodical forms in crisis; 3. A form deformed; 4. Radical reading and radical organization; Part III. The Trials of Radicalism: Assembling the Evidence of Reform: 1. The law of libel; 2. The courtroom defence as public offence; 3. Radical assembly in print; 4. 'A fair, plain and honest account'; 5 The language of fact: apocalypse without imagination; Part IV. Reading Cobbett's Contradictions: 1. 'The system'; 2. Writing as system and countersystem; 3. The economy of the world and the disappearance of the writer; Part V. Leigh Hunt and the End of Radical Opposition: 1. 'Reform of periodical writing'; 2. The antinomies of independent opposition: egotism and community; 3. The language of class in a progressive public sphere; Afterword: William Hazlitt: a radical critique of radical opposition?

Editorial Reviews

"While anchored in a rich historical contextualization and punctuated by ideologically edged perceptions, Gilmartin's study of the early nineteenth-century radical culture is most notable for its nuanced description of and appreciation for that culture's rhetorical and literary achievements." Michael Scrivener, Victorian Periodicals Review

"In his finely written book Print Politics: The press and radical opposition in early ninteenth-century England, Kevin Gilmartin argues that Romantic-era reformist journalism was at once limited and empowered by the paradox of ‘radical opposition'." Kim Wheatley, The Wordsworth Circle

"This is a profoundly important plebeian study which will prove indispensable to scholars of the period." Romantic Movement

"It is a book written by a young literary scholar that is so rich in historical insight that historians of popular radicalism cannot afford to ignore it. ...a canonical text within radical scholarship." Philip Harling, Albion

From the Publisher