'The Laurel of Liberty': The Culture of Popular Radicalism in London 1792-5

《自由的月桂》将对1792- 1795年伦敦流行的激进文学文化进行描述。这本书是对1789年法国大革命，特别是托马斯·潘恩的《人权》（1791- 1792）出版后在伦敦形成的文化的探索。1795年底通过的《禁言法案》有效地将这种文化繁荣推向了地下。除了参与者出版的诗歌和散文外，该专著还将探讨在书店，酒馆和辩论社团中发现的文学社交文化中的更多短暂的小册子，讽刺作品，民谣，诗歌和歌曲。那些参与的人渴望创造一个文字和隐喻的共和国的信件创造的机会，在法国革命和潘恩的书，面对皮特的镇压。这本书将有两个部分。第一章将探讨1789年之前印刷文化的扩张与政府的镇压和监视发生冲突时，革命乐观主义所创造的条件。1792年，潘恩被缺席审判。第二部分将研究一系列特定的案例研究：罗伯特·梅里、查尔斯·皮戈特、理查德·“公民”李和约翰·塞尔沃尔，将他们的作品与其他激进作家的作品联系起来，包括W。H.里德、托马斯斯宾塞、罗伯特·汤普森以及丹尼尔艾萨克·伊顿、詹姆斯·里奇韦和H. D.西蒙兹的作品给人一种在这些令人兴奋的岁月里流行的激进主义的复杂景观的感觉。这一时期经常被视为浪漫主义时期的直接背景。对威廉·布莱克、塞缪尔·泰勒·柯勒律治和威廉·华兹华斯等诗人的经典研究经常提到他们参与其中，但“文化”本身很少被作为一个独特的文学共和国整体来研究。同样，政治历史学家倾向于关注改革议程中的狭隘问题，经常严厉批评那些未能提出连贯计划的人。最后一种方法忽略了这样一个事实，即有关各方是在对文化变革和愿望作出反应，而这些变革和愿望超越了狭隘的政治改革问题。在法国大革命前的几年里，许多人写诗，向期刊投稿，参加流行的辩论社团，扩大印刷文化。该项目通过在各种分散的档案馆中提供一份在这种文化中制作的出版物的手册，并提供一个关于这些资源的性质和潜力的讲习班，旨在传播这种档案的丰富性和可能性，以便在这一时期和以后进行其他文学和历史研究。

The Laurel of Liberty will provide an account of popular radical literary culture in London 1792-5. The book is an exploration of the culture brought into being in London by the French Revolution of 1789 and, especially, by publication of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1791-2). This cultural efflorescence was effectively driven underground by the passing of the Gagging Acts at the end of 1795. As well as volumes of poetry and prose published by the participants, the monograph will also explore more ephemeral pamphlets, satires, ballads, poems, and songs in the culture of literary sociability found in the bookshops, taverns, and debating societies where they circulated. Those involved aspired to create a literal and metaphorical republic of letters out of the opportunities created by the Revolution in France and Paine's book in the face of Pitt's repression. The book will have two parts. A long first chapter will explore the conditions created by revolutionary optimism out of the expansion of print culture that preceded 1789 as they collided with the government repression and surveillance. It culminates with the trial of Paine in absentia in 1792. The second part will look at a series of particular case studies: Robert Merry, Charles Pigott, Richard 'Citizen' Lee, and John Thelwall, relating their work to a network of other radical writers, including the W. H. Reid, Thomas Spence, Robert Thompson, and publishers such as Daniel Isaac Eaton, James Ridgway, and H. D. Symonds to give a sense of the complex landscape of popular radicalism in these heady years. The period is frequently seen as the immediate background to Romantic period. Canonical studies of poets such as William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth often refer to their involvement in it, but the 'culture' in itself has rarely been studied as a whole as a distinctive republic of letters. Similarly political historians tend to focus on narrow questions of the agenda for reform, often castigating those involved for failing to come up with a coherent program. This last approach ignores the fact that those involved were responding to cultural changes and aspirations that reached beyond questions of political reform narrowly conceived. Many had written poetry, contributed to journals, joined in popular debating societies in the expansion of print culture in the years before the French Revolution. By making available a handlist of the publications produced in this culture available in limited copies in various scattered archives and providing a workshop on the nature and potential of these resources, the project aims to disseminate a sense of the fecundity and possibilities of this archive for other literary and historical studies in the period and beyond.