Reloading the British Romantic Canon: The Historical Editing of Literary Texts

doi:10.1017/9781009231053.014

13 - Reloading the British Romantic Canon: The Historical Editing of Literary Texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 December 2022

Pamela Clemit

Edited by

Richard Bourke and

Quentin Skinner

Show author details

Richard Bourke: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Quentin Skinner: Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London

Book contents

Get access

Summary

This view of the relationship between philosophy and history has been remarkably enduring. It flourished in the early-modern period, as I show in the case of Spinoza; but it also retained an influence within analytical philosophy, as some of Russell’s early work illustrates. I propose that contemporary advocates of the Separation Thesis remain motivated by the exclusive image of philosophy embodied in the Classical Conception, and the concomitant desire for a transcendent form of knowledge. As long as this is so, the relationship between history and philosophy will remain uneasy.

Keywords

Historicism romanticism literature Marilyn Butler

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: History in the Humanities and Social Sciences , pp. 306 - 328

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009231053.014 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abrams, M. H. 1971. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, New York.Google Scholar

Anon, . 1826. Review of Felicia Hemans, The Forest Sanctuary, and Other Poems, Literary Chronicle, 379, pp. 518–19.Google Scholar

Barrell, John. 1986. The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: ‘The Body of the Public’. New Haven.Google Scholar

Bromwich, David. 1994. ‘Perfection without Consolation: William Godwin and the Divinity of Reason’, Times Literary Supplement, 20 May, pp. 7–9.Google Scholar

Butler, J. A. 1997. ‘The Cornell Wordsworth Series’, The Wordsworth Circle, 28, pp. 96–8.CrossRef Google Scholar

Butler, Marilyn. 1972. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Oxford.Google Scholar

Butler, Marilyn. 1979. Peacock Displayed: A Satirist in his Context. London.Google Scholar

Butler, Marilyn. 1981. Romantics, Rebels, and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background, 1760–1830. Oxford.Google Scholar

Butler, Marilyn. 1983. ‘Three Feet on the Ground’, London Review of Books, 5, pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

Butler, Marilyn. 1986. ‘Against Tradition: The Case for a Particularized Historical Method’ in Historical Studies and Literary Interpretation, ed. McGann, Jerome J.. Madison.Google Scholar

Butler, Marilyn. 1987. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, 2nd ed. Oxford.Google Scholar

Butler, Marilyn. 1995a. ‘Editing Women’, Studies in the Novel, 27, pp. 273–83.Google Scholar

Butler, Marilyn. 1995b. ‘Thompson’s Second Front’, History Workshop Journal, 39, pp. 71–8.CrossRef Google Scholar

Butler, Marilyn. 2015. Mapping Mythologies: Countercurrents in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry and Cultural History. Cambridge.Google Scholar

Cameron, Kenneth Neill. 1951. The Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical. London.Google Scholar

Cantor, Paul. 1989. ‘Stoning the Romance: The Ideological Critique of Nineteenth-Century Literature’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 88, pp. 705–20.Google Scholar

Claeys, Gregory. 1987. ‘Godwinian Enthusiasms’, Historical Journal, 30, pp. 759–64.Google Scholar

Clemit, Pamela. 1993. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford.CrossRef Google Scholar

Clemit, Pamela. 2011. ‘Introduction’ in The Letters of William Godwin, Volume. I: 1778–1797, ed. Clemit, Pamela. Oxford.Google Scholar

Clemit, Pamela. 2019. ‘The Signal of Regard: William Godwin’s Correspondence Networks’, European Romantic Review, 30, pp. 353–66.Google Scholar

Davidson, James Dale and Rees-Mogg, William. 1987. Blood in the Streets: Investment Profits in a World Gone Mad. London.Google Scholar

Dumas, D. Gilbert. 1966. ‘Things as they Were: The Original Ending of Caleb Williams’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 6, pp. 575–97.Google Scholar

Fisher, D. R., ed. 2009. The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1820–1832. 7 vols. Cambridge.Google Scholar

Fitzpatrick, Martin. 1982. ‘Toleration and Truth’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 1, pp. 5–31.Google Scholar

Foot, Paul. 1984. Red Shelley, 2nd ed. London.Google Scholar

Gill, Stephen. 1983. ‘Wordsworth’s Poems: The Question of Text’, Review of English Studies, n.s. 34, pp. 172–90.Google Scholar

Gill, Stephen. 2011. Wordsworth’s Revisitings. Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1812a. Letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley, 4 Mar. [ms.]. Bod. MS Abinger c. 19, fols. 37–41. Bodleian Library, Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1812b. Letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley, 14 Mar. [ms.] Bod. MS Abinger c. 19, fols. 42–3. Bodleian Library, Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1812c. Letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley, 30 Mar. [ms.] Bod. MS Abinger c. 19, fols. 44–5. Bodleian Library, Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1819. Letter to William Henry Curran, 9 June. [ms.] Bod. MS Abinger c. 12, fols. 55–6. Bodleian Library, Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1820. Of Population: An Enquiry Concerning the Power of Increase in the Numbers of Mankind. London.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1824–8. History of the Commonwealth of England. From its Commencement, to the Restoration of Charles the Second. 4 vols. London.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1827a. Letter to Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee, Viscount Dillon, 8 June. [ms.] Pforz. MS G 0152. New York Public Library, New York.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1827b. Letter to [William Henry Curran], 19 Dec. [ms.] Bod. MS Abinger c. 20, fol. 9. Bodleian Library, Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1946. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness, ed. Priestley, F. E. L.. 3 vols. Toronto.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1970. Caleb Williams, ed. McCracken, David. Oxford English Novels. Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1976. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Happiness, ed. Kramnick, Isaac. London.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1988. Things as They Are, or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, ed. Hindle, Maurice. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1992a. Collected Novels and Memoirs of William Godwin, gen. ed. Philp, Mark. Pickering Masters. 8 vols. London.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1992b. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. Woodstock Facsimile. 2 vols. Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 1993. Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, gen. ed. Philp, Mark. Pickering Masters. 7 vols. London.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 2000. Caleb Williams, ed. Handwerk, Gary and Markley, A. A.. Broadview Literary Texts. Peterborough, Ont.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 2009. Caleb Williams, ed. Clemit, Pamela. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 2010. William Godwin’s Diary, ed. Myers, Victoria, O’Shaughnessy, David and Philp, Mark, http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/index2.html.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 2011. The Letters of William Godwin. Volume I: 1778–1797, ed. Clemit, Pamela. Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 2013. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, ed. Philp, Mark. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford.Google Scholar

Godwin, William. 2014. The Letters of William Godwin. Volume II: 1798–1805, ed. Clemit, Pamela. Oxford.CrossRef Google Scholar

Goldie, Mark. 2006. ‘The Context of the Foundations’ in Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, ed. Brett, Annabel et al. Cambridge.Google Scholar

Graver, Bruce E. 2015. ‘Editing Wordsworth’ in The Oxford Handbook of William Wordsworth, ed. Gravil, Richard and Robinson, Daniel. Oxford.Google Scholar

Hamilton, Paul. 1996. Historicism. London and New York.Google Scholar

Hanna, Ralph. 1991. ‘Annotation as Social Practice’ in Annotation and its Texts, ed. Barney, Stephen A.. New York.Google Scholar

Jakacki, Diane K. 2017. ‘The Women Writers Project’, Early Modern Women, 11, pp. 140–4.Google Scholar

Kelly, Gary. 1976. The English Jacobin Novel, 1780–1805. Oxford.Google Scholar

Laslett, Peter. 1988. ‘Introduction’ in Locke: Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge.Google Scholar

Leask, Nigel. 1988. The Politics of Imagination in Coleridge’s Critical Thought. Basingstoke.Google Scholar

Leask, Nigel. 2017. ‘Marilyn Speers Butler, 1937–2014’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, 16, pp. 85–106.Google Scholar

Linkin, Harriet Kramer. 1991. ‘The Current Canon in British Romantics Studies’, College English, 53, pp. 548–70.Google Scholar

McGann, Jerome J. 1983. The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. Chicago.Google Scholar

McNiece, Gerald. 1969. Shelley and the Revolutionary Idea. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar

New, Melvyn. 1984. ‘At the Backside of the Door of Purgatory’ in Laurence Sterne: Riddles and Mysteries, ed. Myer, Valerie Grosvenor. London.Google Scholar

O’Brien, Paul. 2002. Shelley and Revolutionary Ireland. London.Google Scholar

O’Shaughnessy, David. 2012. ‘Caleb Williams and the Philomaths: Recalibrating Political Justice for the Nineteenth Century’, Nineteenth-Century Literature, 66, pp. 423–48.Google Scholar

O’Shaughnessy, David. 2015. ‘Introduction: “Tolerably Numerous”: Recovering the London Irish of the Eighteenth Century’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 39, pp. 1–13.CrossRef Google Scholar

Pallares-Burke, Maria Lúcia G. 2002. ‘Quentin Skinner’ in The New History: Confessions and Conversations. Oxford.Google Scholar

Philp, Mark. 1986. Godwin’s Political Justice. London.Google Scholar

Pocock, J. G. A. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton.Google Scholar

Redfield, Marc. 2006. ‘Wordsworth, Poetry, Romanticism: An Interview with Geoffrey Hartman’ in Geoffrey Hartman and Harold Bloom: Two Interviews, ed. Wang, Orrin N. C., http://romantic-circles.org/praxis/bloom_hartman/toc.html.Google Scholar

Rees-Mogg, William. 2011. ‘The Fault Line beneath our Nuclear World’, Mail on Sunday, 20 March.Google Scholar

Robey, David. 1986. ‘Anglo-American New Criticism’ in Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction, ed. Jefferson, Ann and Robey, David, 2nd ed. London.Google Scholar

Robinson, Daniel. 1996. ‘Reviving the Sonnet: Women Romantic Poets and the Sonnet Claim’, European Romantic Review, 6, pp. 98–127.CrossRef Google Scholar

Robinson, Howard. 1948. The British Post Office: A History. Princeton.Google Scholar

Roe, Nicholas. 1988. Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years. Oxford.Google Scholar

St Clair, William. 2004. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. Cambridge.Google Scholar

Shelley, Mary. 1994. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text, ed. Butler, Marilyn. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford.Google Scholar

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. 1964. The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Jones, F. L.. 2 vols. Oxford.Google Scholar

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. 1993. The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Volume I, ed. Murray, E. B.. Oxford.Google Scholar

Skinner, Quentin. 1969. ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory, 8, pp. 3–53.Google Scholar

Stillinger, Jack. 1989. ‘Textual Primitivism and the Editing of Wordsworth’, Studies in Romanticism, 28, pp. 3–28.Google Scholar

Sutherland, Kathryn. 1994. ‘“Events … Have Made a World of Readers”: Reader Relations 1780–1830’ in The Penguin History of Literature, vol. V: The Romantic Period, ed. Pirie, David B.. Harmondsworth.Google Scholar

Thomas, Keith. 1988. History and Literature: The Ernest Hughes Memorial Lecture Delivered at the College on 7 March 1988. Swansea.Google Scholar

Thompson, E. P. 1968. The Making of the English Working Class, 2nd rev. ed. Harmondsworth.Google Scholar

Thompson, E. P. 1993. Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law. Cambridge.Google Scholar

Trilling, Lionel. 1955. ‘Mansfield Park’ in The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism. London.Google Scholar

Webb, Timothy. 2007. ‘Missing Robert Emmet: William Godwin’s Irish Expedition’ in Reinterpreting Emmet: Essays on the Life and Legacy of Robert Emmet, ed. Dolan, Anne, Geoghegan, Patrick M. and Jones, Darryl. Dublin.Google Scholar

Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1989. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Todd, Janet and Butler, Marilyn. Pickering Masters. 7 vols. London.Google Scholar

Wordsworth, Dorothy. 1991. The Grasmere Journals, ed. Woof, Pamela. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford.Google Scholar

Wordsworth, William. 2014. Wordsworth’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Halmi, Nicholas. Norton Critical Editions. New York.Google Scholar

Wordsworth, William and Wordsworth, Dorothy. 1979. The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Volume V: The Later Years: Part II: 1829–1834, ed. Hill, Alan G., 2nd rev. ed. Oxford.Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Why this information is here

This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility compliance for the HTML of this chapter is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.