Political Readers and the Associational Reading Space in the Age of Reform

我的博士研究的重点是拿破仑时代的“政治读者”。关注读者而不是文本，这将涉及分析读者阅读和理解政治文本的方式，以及政治事件如何影响其他类型材料的阅读。这种方法将进一步强调阅读的社会和政治层面。读者不仅仅是文本内容的单一接受者，而是将自己的党派倾向和经验带入文本的阅读。马克·托西最近的研究，英国和美国的历史阅读，c.1750-c.1840（2019），重申了这一点，并证明了18世纪的读者经常以作者从未想过的方式阅读文本。此外，当代读者有时会通过阅读来更好地理解和理解发生在他们自己时代的事件。我的建议将继续这一方法，尽管对历史作品以外的其他文本进行了分析。阅读活动不是在真空中发生的，读者对文本的态度可能受到许多其他因素的影响。因此，研究的另一个方面将是阅读协会，如订阅图书馆或读书俱乐部，在19世纪早期充满政治色彩的几十年里进行谈判的方式。协会领域之外的事件如何影响协会内部的程序，例如在有关购买某些书籍或关于管理社会成员行为的规则的决定中。我相信这些都是目前的史学没有提出的问题。以前的研究在范围和分析方面都是有限的，特别是集中在普赖斯、潘恩和伯克的政治小册子上，或者集中在18世纪90年代特定年份的事件上。因此，在19世纪最初的几十年里，很少有关于阅读其他类型的政治文本或读者经历的讨论。此外，还有许多其他文本可以分析读者的反应，特别是在阅读激进或反动的小说时。后一组，有时被称为反雅各宾小说，是我硕士论文的主题，因为我在1791年至1818年间出版了69部小说。在这个过程中，我特别感兴趣的是绘制这些小说的寿命图表，超越它们首次出版的日期，通过图书馆、书商和最终读者的后续版本。利用这项研究，这一建议将固定在读者对反雅各宾小说的接受程度上，而且还将固定在读者对激进作家如威廉·戈德温、罗伯特·贝奇、伊丽莎白·英奇博尔德和托马斯·克罗夫特的作品的接受程度上。通过阅读日记、旁注、普通书籍和自传中的回忆来解读读者的反应是可能的，但这项研究计划也将对阅读协会参与或审查某些文本的方式以及他们如何处理成员之间的政治分歧感兴趣。作为私人协会，读书俱乐部或订阅图书馆代表了其成员的利益，国家政治不可避免地在地方层面发挥作用。

The focus of my doctoral research would be on the subject of 'political readers' during the Napoleonic era. Focusing on readers rather than texts, this would involve an analysis of the ways in which political texts were read and understood by readers and how political events impacted the reading of other kinds of material. This approach would further emphasise the social and political dimensions of reading. Readers were not simply one-dimensional recipients of a text's content and instead brought their own partisan leanings and experiences to the reading of a text. Mark Towsey's recent study, Reading History in Britain and America, c.1750-c.1840 (2019), reaffirmed this and demonstrated that eighteenth-century readers often read texts in ways never intended by authors. Moreover, contemporary readers sometimes used the act of reading to better understand and make sense of events happening in their own times. My proposal would continue this approach although with an analysis of other kinds of texts beyond works of history. The activity of reading did not occur within a vacuum and a reader's approach to a text could be influenced by a host of other factors. Therefore, another aspect of research would be upon the ways in which reading associations, such as subscription libraries or book clubs, negotiated through the politically charged decades of the early nineteenth century. How did events beyond the realm of the associational societies impact proceedings within it, for example in decisions relating to the acquisition of certain books or on the rules which governed the conduct of societal members. I believe that these are questions not currently being asked by the existing historiography. Previous studies have been limited in both the scope and picture of their analysis, particularly focusing on the political pamphlets of Price, Paine and Burke or on events in specific years during the 1790s. There has therefore been little discussion regarding the reading of other kinds of political texts or of reader's experiences in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, there are a host of other texts from which a reader's response can be analysed particularly in the reading of radical or reactionary novels. This latter group, sometimes termed anti-Jacobin novels, were the subject of my Masters' dissertation, as I charted the publication of sixty-nine novels between 1791 and 1818. In doing so I was particularly interested in charting the longevity of such novels, beyond the dates of their first publications through subsequent editions to libraries, booksellers and ultimately readers. Making use of this research, this proposal will be fixed upon readers receptions not only to anti-Jacobin novels but also to works by radical authors such as William Godwin, Robert Bage, Elizabeth Inchbald and Thomas Croft.Deciphering a reader's response is possible through a perusal of diaries, marginalia, commonplace books and recollections in autobiographies yet this research proposal will also be interested in the ways in which reading associations engaged with or censored certain texts and how they dealt with political differences between members. As associational societies of private individuals, book clubs or subscription libraries were representative of their members interests with national politics inevitably played out at a local level.