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

我博士研究的重点是拿破仑时代的政治读物。这将侧重于读者而不是文本，包括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向度接受者，而是将自己的党派倾向和经验带到文本的阅读中。马克·托西最近的研究《英国和美国的阅读史，1750-1840年(2019)》重申了这一点，并证明了18世纪的读者经常以作者意想不到的方式阅读文本。此外，当代读者有时会使用阅读行为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类型的文本进行分析。阅读活动不是在真空中发生的，读者对文本的处理方式可能会受到许多其他因素的影响。因此，研究的另一个方面将是研究阅读协会，如订阅图书馆或读书俱乐部，在19世纪初充满政治色彩的几十年中谈判的方式。社团领域以外的事件如何影响社团内部的诉讼程序，例如关于某些书籍的购置的决定或管理社会成员行为的规则。我认为，这些都是现有史学目前没有提出的问题。以往的研究都局限于分析的范围和图景，特别是集中在普莱斯、潘恩和伯克的政治小册子或18世纪90年代特定年份的事件上。因此，关于阅读其他类型的政治文本或读者在十九世纪头几十年的经历的讨论很少。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小说时。后一类小说，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。在这样做的过程中，我特别感兴趣的是绘制这类小说的寿命图表，从它们的第一次出版到图书馆、书商和最终的读者的后续版本。利用这项研究，这一建议将不仅固定在读者对反雅各宾小说的接受上，也将固定在读者对威廉·戈德温、罗伯特·贝奇、伊丽莎白·英奇巴尔德和托马斯·克罗夫等激进作家的作品的接受程度上。通过阅读日记、旁白、普通书籍和自传中的回忆来确定读者的反应是可能的。然而，这项研究建议还将关注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。作为个人协会，读书俱乐部或订阅图书馆是其成员利益的代表，国家政治不可避免地在地方一级上演。

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.