The Introduction to this book offers an overview of the literary culture of the 1830s. It explores existing literary-critical approaches to the decade’s culture, and considers why the decade has proved so resistant to absorption in literary genealogies. This is a consequence of the decade’s own uncertainty about and self-conscious analysis of its literary temporality. The Introduction proposes that the 1830s are uniquely placed to direct the future interests of contemporary literary studies.

This chapter argues that instead of being a quiet gap between the noise of the post-Waterloo period and the rise of Chartism, the 1830s has its own under-examined, violently radical character. I concentrate on William Benbow and Francis Macerone, who produced inciting revolutionary works including Grand National Holiday and Defensive Instructions for the People, which pointed to the 1830s being a time of class conflict. During the 1820s, Benbow produced cheap editions of poetry for the working classes. However, Grand National Holiday was designed to promote a general strike that would lead to revolution. Colonel Francis Macerone, a revolutionary ultra-radical, created works that would be banned today, such as Defensive Instructions for the People. This pamphlet shows amateurs how to make pikes, bullets, incendiary devices, and bombs, as well as ways to engage in street-fighting against soldiers. I argue that Benbow and Macerone are central figures in pre-Chartist 1830s radicalism and examine the revolutionary early 1830s through their works published on the eve of the Reform Bill.

As Raymond Williams notes, the meanings of words belong to their time, although within that moment definitions are ‘sectarian’. Significations belong to differing factions. The Google Books Ngram viewer shows peaks in the use of ‘liberal’ in the 1780s and again in the 1820s. Uday Singh Mehta argues that, in this time frame, liberalism came out of a ‘substantially European’ tradition and became ‘self-consciously universal as a political, ethical and epistemological creed’. But, as D. M. Craig writes, even ‘by the end of the eighteen-twenties … it remained unclear precisely what a “liberal” was … “liberals” were not a firmly defined group and “liberalism” did not securely mark out a single intellectual phenomenon’. In the 1820s, liberalism could mean support for free trade, reform, Catholic emancipation and a pro-European stance. Liberalism signalled being neither a Tory, nor a member of the labouring classes.

Writing in 1819, William Hazlitt simply identified liberalism with tolerance: ‘It always struck me as a singular proof of good taste, good sense, and liberal thinking, in an old friend who had Paine's Rights of Man and Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, bound up in one volume, and who said, that, both together, they made a very good book.’4 In 1827 Thomas Hodgskin took a similar view: ‘I trust that our countrymen are now much too liberal and enlightened to be offended with the honest expression’ of opinions. However, for the weaver poet Samuel Bamford, liberalism was something only the educated and enfranchised could enjoy, not the working classes. In his preface to The Weaver Boy, Bamford has ‘Liberal’ as a class-bound word, associated with a particular kind of education:

For Bamford, whose training was occupational, a ‘“Liberal Education”’ marks a class barrier between him and his ‘“betters”’.

This chapter focusses on the early years of the first Mechanics’ classes, instituted at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These classes were formed out of well-meaning paternalism, aimed at educating, and reforming, disenfranchised labouring class people. Institutional leadership quickly dictated what was suitable, or not, for the men and women who became members of these institutes. Denied agency in what they read and discussed, members agitated for more say. Some split to form their own institutes, as in Glasgow in 1823 and Manchester in 1829. These new institutions, led by members, enabled the concerns of working-class communities on industrial pollution, breadth of education, and aspirations for goods, to emerge as subjects for discussion. Mechanics’ institutions therefore became places where political engagement, denied by an unreformed parliament and the Six Acts, took place. This is evidenced in the content of the new unstamped Mechanics’ magazines that were closely tied to Mechanics’ Institutes. These institutes were faced with much conservative opposition, particularly from the established church, fearing radicalism. Indeed, some mechanics were involved in publishing details on how to make bombs and bullets on the eve of the Reform Bill in 1831.

For the best part of fifty years, theoretical reflection on the law of torts has been afflicted by a schism between ‘economic’ and ‘moral’ approaches. More than an affliction, the schism has become an obsession among many who place themselves on the ‘moral’ side. On the ‘moral’ side, many write with embarrassing defensiveness as if their main task were to see off the economistic threat. Those on the ‘economic’ side who react at all tend to react condescendingly. As this cartoon suggests, the economists hold greater cultural sway, and this lends them a certain swagger in their work that their adversaries generally lack.

From Herbert Howells

261. 28th May 1953 Herbert Howells to DMF

Royal Hotel, Bristol

My dear Dora:

Here in Bristol this morning I have read with great concern and very real regret of Hubert's death, and it has come not only with disturbing unexpectedness but with added poignancy in this week of general colour and happiness. I send you and your son and daughter the very genuine sympathy of a fellowmusician to whom Hubert shewed unfailing and most heartening kindness and encouragement right through the years.

My last news of him had been so reassuring. He was, I know, destined for new and important editorial work in a post he w[oul]d have filled brilliantly: and he must have been looking forward to it keenly.

We will all be so sorry it was not to be.

And among countless others I shall bear him in mind with admiration and affection.

You yourself will be much in our sympathetic thoughts.

I beg you not to attempt any acknowledgement of this note.

Yours very sincerely

Herbert Howells

From Gordon Jacob

262. 28th May 1953 Gordon Jacob to DMF

Pine Cottage, Brockenhurst, Hants.

My dear Dora,

Sidney and I were much shocked to see the announcement of Hubert's death in the Times today.

It seems impossible that such a vital personality should have passed away at such an early age. We quite thought that he had recovered from his illness in a remarkable way. He will be very much missed by the wide circle of friends he made in the course of his varied interests to each of which he brought his always youthful and vivid enthusiasm.

Please accept our deepest sympathy,

Yrs sincerely,

Gordon Jacob

From Dora Powell

263. 28th May 1953 Dora Powell to DMF

Poels, East Grinstead, Sussex

Dear Mrs. Foss

I was so shocked and sad to see today's Times. I am so very sorry – & so sorry for you and all the trouble & anxiety that you must have been through. I have known Mr. Foss for so many years and shall never forget his kindness & encouragement over the 1st edition of my Elgar book by the Oxford Press in 1937.

I doubt if I should have got on so well as I have without his help.

Critical Introduction

John Gardner (1933–1982) was a prolific writer—especially in the arena of fiction and literary criticism. He is, perhaps, best known for his 1971 novel Grendel, of which a large portion is excerpted here. In the novel, Gardner retells the first two-thirds of Beowulffrom Grendel's perspective, exploring the character and trying to understand him. It is clear that Gardner does not accept the Beowulf-poet's dismissive explanation of Grendel's behaviour (he is evil) and instead delves into a careful character study. What he comes up with is particularly modern: there are strains of Frankensteinin Grendel's attempts to befriend Hrothgar's tribe, Catcher in the Rye in his social isolationism and outcast status, and Freud in his relationship with his mother.

Though clearly a more sympathetic treatment than Grendel had at the hands of the Beowulf-poet, the novel is not, however, a modern redemption project. Gardner's Grendel has all the impetuousness and isolation of a Holden Caulfield (the protagonist of Catcher in the Rye), but he also has the ability to exert his will and whim upon his surroundings— something most outcast characters in fiction seem to lack. That is what makes this version of Grendel so scary: it is a meditation on what might happen if a maladjusted, childish individual were given an enormous amount of power. Years before Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve of their classmates at Columbine High School, Gardner plumbed the depths of the troubled outsider who is drawn to the power of violence.

Reading Questions

One of the more interesting angles of Gardner's novel is how he deals with communication. Grendel does all the narrating, but he cannot communicate with his mother and has difficulty communicating with the Danes. How does that correlate with other monsters you have read about? How does it contribute to Grendel's motivations in this version of the story?

Compare Gardner's Grendel to Beowulf and try to identify specific differences in the characterization of the monster. Are they effective? That is, does Gardner's Grendel or Beowulf's Grendel seem more monstrous? Why?