Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Counterfactual Romanticism
- 1 ‘The object as in itself it really is not’: Counterfactual Romanticism and the aesthetics of contingency
- 2 Door-to-door and across-thecounter factuals: history as fashion, furniture, fraud, forgery, folklore and fiction in the Romantic onset of modernity
- 3 The possibilists: Romantic-era literary forgery and British alternative pasts
- 4 Sophia Lee’s The Recess and the epistemology of the counterfactual
- 5 Lord Byron reads The Prelude
- 6 Counterfactual obstetrics: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Frankenstein
- 7 John Thelwall: a counterfactual ghost story
- 8 Counterfactual speculations in late Romanticism: Scott, Banim, Galt and Mitford
- 9 Piratical counterfactual, piratical counterfictional: from Misson to melodrama
- 10 Romanticism and the (counterfactual) Chinese awakening
- 11 Counterfactual and future Romanticisms: the academy and the canon
- Index
9 - Piratical counterfactual, piratical counterfictional: from Misson to melodrama
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2025
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Counterfactual Romanticism
- 1 ‘The object as in itself it really is not’: Counterfactual Romanticism and the aesthetics of contingency
- 2 Door-to-door and across-thecounter factuals: history as fashion, furniture, fraud, forgery, folklore and fiction in the Romantic onset of modernity
- 3 The possibilists: Romantic-era literary forgery and British alternative pasts
- 4 Sophia Lee’s The Recess and the epistemology of the counterfactual
- 5 Lord Byron reads The Prelude
- 6 Counterfactual obstetrics: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Frankenstein
- 7 John Thelwall: a counterfactual ghost story
- 8 Counterfactual speculations in late Romanticism: Scott, Banim, Galt and Mitford
- 9 Piratical counterfactual, piratical counterfictional: from Misson to melodrama
- 10 Romanticism and the (counterfactual) Chinese awakening
- 11 Counterfactual and future Romanticisms: the academy and the canon
- Index
Summary
This chapter conceptualises the layered forms in which the figure of the pirate was entailed to the Romantic-period stage and novel, offering a case study in the multi-genre energies of counterfactual speculation and ‘counterfictional’ experimentation within the genre of pirate histories. The chapter reveals the process of adaptation and speculation-driven laminations of fact, fiction, counter-fact and counter-fiction that underlie the colourful – and genuinely historically and politically inquiring – ur-pirate history, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724–28), whose thought experiments explore (but ultimately contain and neutralise) a series of radical possibilities.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Counterfactual Romanticism , pp. 251 - 276Publisher: Manchester University PressFirst published in: 2025
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 PDF of this chapter is currently unknown
and may be updated in the future.