The Spirit of Despotism: Invasions of Privacy in the 1790s

by John Barrell

Overview

How was the social and cultural life of Britain affected by the fear that the French Revolution would spread across the channel? In this brilliant, engagingly written, and profusely illustrated book, John Barrell, well-known for his studies of the history, literature, and art of the period, argues that the conflict between the ancien regime in Britain and the emerging democratic movement was so fundamental that it could not be contained within what had previously been thought of as the 'normal' arena of politics. Activities and spaces which had previously been regarded as 'outside' politics suddenly no longer seemed to be so, and the fear of revolution produced a culture of surveillance and suspicion which penetrated every aspect of private life. Drawing on an unusually wide range of sources, including novels, poems, plays, newspapers, debates in parliament, trials, political pamphlets, and caricatures, The Spirit of Despotism focuses on a number of examples of such invasions of privacy. It shows how the culture of suspicion affected how people spoke and behaved in London coffee-houses; how it influenced attitudes to the king's behaviour in private, especially during his summer holidays in Weymouth; how it infiltrated the country cottage, previously idealized as a protected haven of peace and retirement from political life; and how it influenced the fashion of the period, so that even the way people chose to style their hair came to be seen as a political issue.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191515682
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	01/26/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

John Barrell is the author of numerous books on the literature, art, and history of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He has taught at the universities of Essex, Cambridge, and Sussex, and for the last twelve years has been at the University of York, where he is a Professor of English in the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Charing Cross and the City2. Coffee-House Politicians3. Weymouth Amusements4. Hair Powder5. Cottage PoliticsBibliography

Editorial Reviews

"Gripping."—Margaret Russett, Studies in English Literature

"Not only an excellent contribution to the ever-growing literature on the British 1790s, but an erudite, immensely scholarly, copiously illustrated, and closely argued cultural history with much to detain the general reader as well as the specialist."—Journal of Modern History

"The collective achievement of these various chapters is to make us think again about the different ways that despotism worked and to challenge our assumptions about the multiple contexts within which political struggles played themselves out. In doing so, Barrell has breathed new life into one of the most heavily trampled decades of British history." —Modern Philology

From the Publisher