Eighteen hundred and eleven : poetry, protest and economic crisis /E. J. Clery

Cover; Half-title; Series information; Frontispiece ; Title page; Copyright information; Dedication; Epigraph; Table of contents; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction: The Puzzle and the Myth; Part I The Making of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven; 1 Economic Warfare; 2 Writing for the Enemy; 3 Commercial Dissent; 4 Stoic Patriotism; 5 The Prophet Motive; 6 Ruin; 7 Lady Credit; Part II What Happened Next; 8 Publication to Vindication; January; 7-8 January 1812. The Case Against War; 12 January. William Roscoe and the Campaign to Repeal the Orders in Council 13 January. American Hostility Grows18 January. First Announcement of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven; 27 January. Coleridge's Attack on Barbauld; February; 1 February. Robert Southey and the Aikin-Barbauld Circle; Wednesday, 12 February. The Publication of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven; Thursday, 13 February. The Start of the Campaign Against the Orders in Council; Friday, 14 February. The Luddite Rising and the Frame Breaking Bill; February: The First Reception of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven; March; 3 March. Brougham's Motion for an Enquiry into the State of Commerce 10 March. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos I and II published22 March. The Examiner's Attack on the Prince Regent; March: The Reception of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven and the Growing Sense of Crisis; April; 6-7 April. The Capture of Badajoz and the Escalation of the Luddite Revolt; 28 April. The Government Agrees to Demands for an Enquiry into the Effects of the Orders in Council; May; 1 May. Wordsworth Hears Sir Francis Burdett Speak in the House of Commons; Monday, 11 May. The Assassination of Spencer Perceval; Wednesday, 13 May. An Uncomfortable Evening 26 May. John Wilson Croker and the Quarterly Review Defend the Orders in CouncilJune; June: The Anti-Jacobin reviews Eighteen Hundred and Eleven; Tuesday, 16 June The Government Capitulates; 9 The Summer of 1812 and After; Conclusion; Notes; Appendix; Bibliography; Index

In 1811 England was on the brink of economic collapse and revolution. The veteran poet and campaigner Anna Letitia Barbauld published a prophecy of the British nation reduced to ruins by its refusal to end the interminable war with France, titled Eighteen Hundred and Eleven. Combining ground-breaking historical research with incisive textual analysis, this new study dispels the myth surrounding the hostile reception of the poem and takes a striking episode in Romantic-era culture as the basis for exploring poetry as a medium of political protest. Clery examines the issues at stake, from the nature of patriotism to the threat to public credit, and throws new light on the views and activities of a wide range of writers, including radical, loyalist and dissenting journalists, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, and Barbauld herself. Putting a woman writer at the centre of the enquiry opens up a revised perspective on the politics of Romanticism.