Imagining Socialism: Aesthetics, Anti-politics, and Literature in Britain, 1817-1918

287 Pages·2021·1.963 MB·English

by  Mark A. Allison

Imagining Socialism

Imagining Socialism
Aesthetics, Anti- politics, and Literature
in Britain, 1817–1918
MARK A. ALLISON
1
1
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For K.
Ahora y siempre

Acknowledgments
Socialism maintains that society precedes the individual; consequently, a book on
the subject should be expansive in its acknowledgement of the contributions of
others. I am delighted to oblige!
My first debt is to Catherine Gallagher, Ian Duncan, and James Vernon, who
supervised a singularly unpropitious Ph.D. thesis—to which, I am pleased to
report, this study bears no discernable resemblance. Nevertheless, the sagacious
will detect their salutary influence on every page. I am grateful for their intelli-
gence, generosity, and wisdom.
I am fortunate to have learned from the faculty of three outstanding academic
institutions. James P. Carson, C. Perry Lentz, Adele Davidson, Donald Rogan,
and Joel Richeimer (at Kenyon College); Elaine Hadley, Elizabeth Helsinger, and
Lawrence Rothfield (at the University of Chicago); Kevis Goodman, Celeste
Langan, and Jeffrey Knapp (at the University of California, Berkeley) among oth-
ers, taught me to think, write, read, and teach. Equally important, they encour-
aged me to continue my studies despite the daunting odds and my periodic—and
appropriately Victorian—crises of faith.
Teachers are indispensable, but so, too, are friends in the trenches. Erin Zink,
Currey Dorris, Dan Young, Scott Scrivner, Katie (Warwick) Scrivner, Darren
Eisenhauer, Taylor Wray, and Felicia (Bonani) Wray challenged my assumptions
and lifted my spirits. Penelope Anderson was my foremost confidant and
co-enthusiast during the intellectual and emotional gauntlet of graduate school.
Paul Hurh, besides much else, shamed me into raising my stylistic game with his
inimitable prose and all-s eeing editorial eye. Paul Stasi rekindled my interest in
Western Marxism and was always eager to talk shop (or hoops). Chris Eagle
ensured that I never lost touch with the aesthetics of literature and the joys of
signification. Joseph Scalice was my inexhaustible reading partner for what, in
retrospect, was a staggering amount of Marx. My colleagues and students at Ohio
Wesleyan University have continued to support and sustain me. Marty Hipsky,
Zack Long, and David Caplan, in particular, deserve thanks for their contribu-
tions to this study. My (former) students, Patrick Shay and Andrew Padget-
Gettys, provided scrupulous assistance with the preparation of the manuscript,
saving me from many errors.
Sincere thanks is due as well to Jacqueline Norton and her team at Oxford
University Press, who shepherded me through the publication process with a
rare combination of professionalism and warmth. The anonymous referees who
viii Acknowledgments
assessed this project—both as a whole and in the stages along the way—were
collegial and constructive, and this book is much stronger for their suggestions.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that it is a luxury to grow up
in family as caring as my own. My mother, Carole K. Allison, made me a reader
through her example as much as her unfailing encouragement—though, mom,
the encouragement didn’t hurt either! With unflagging patience, my father, Jerry
Allison, taught me to be methodical and disciplined. My siblings, Lane Allison
and Greg Allison, made me (and make me) that rarest of creatures: a contented
middle child.
Speaking of families, my daughters, Sabrina Elyse and Vivian Alexandra, have
grown up alongside this study: girls, I could not be more proud of you. (And
sorry for keeping you waiting so long for the book- release party. I promise you
can stay up as late as you want!) Finally, and most important, I wish to thank my
wife, Kimberly—with gratitude, respect, awe, and love. “Worthy t’ have not
remain’d so long unsung.”
List of Figures
1.1. George Cruikshank, A Peep into the City of London Tavern. By an Irish
Amateur—On the 21st of August 1817 (London: J. J. Stockdale, 1817).
British Museum, 1859,0316.122. © The Trustees of the British Museum 47
1.2. Robert Owen, A View and Plan of the Villages of Mutual Unity and
Co- operation (1817). Repr. in A Supplementary Appendix to the First Volume of
A Life of Robert Owen (London: Effingham Wilson, 1858). Courtesy of the
Baker Old Class Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School 54
1.3. Stedman Whitwell, Description of an Architectural Model from a Design by
Stedman Whitwell, Esq. for a Community upon a Principle of United Interests,
as Advocated by Robert Owen, Esq. (London: Hurst & Chance, 1830).
Courtesy of the Kress Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School 54
2.1. Laura Lofft, untitled portrait of Capel Lofft (n.d.). With permission of the
Provost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge 81
4.1. Jean- Jacques Frilley and Félix Philippoteaux, Le Père Enfantin (Paris: Impr.
Frault Jeune r. S. and des Arts, n.d.). Gallica.bnf.fr/Bibliothèque/nationale
de France, ark:/12148/btv1b530061784 184
E.1. Walter Crane, The Party Fight and the New Party, or Liberalism and Toryism
Disturbed by the appearance of Socialism. In Cartoons for the Cause,
1886–96 (London: The Twentieth Century Press, 1896), n.p. 235
Introduction
A Socialist Century
In early January 1892, Oscar Wilde and the socialist organizer Henry Hyde
Champion rushed to the aid of John Evelyn Barlas. Barlas, a mentally disturbed
member of the Socialist League, had been arrested after firing multiple revolver
rounds at the wall of the House of Commons on the final day of 1891. “I am an
anarchist,” Barlas explained as he surrendered peacefully. “What I have done is to
show my contempt for the House of Commons.”1 The medical officer of Holloway
Prison quickly determined that Barlas was insane and recommended he be
institutionalized.
Yet on 16 January, Barlas was bound over to Champion and Wilde on the con-
dition that he keep the peace.2 Barlas’s liberators had met for the first time mere
hours earlier; Champion had hurried to the author’s door in quest of a second
householder to provide surety, recalling that Barlas said that he knew Wilde well
when they were students together at Oxford. He intercepted Wilde “just setting
out to read his first play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, at the St. James’s Theatre,
to . . . the Company who were to produce it.”3
Despite the exceptional circumstances, each man served as a surety for half
the £200 bond, and Champion took Barlas under his care.4 Responding to
Barlas’s letter of gratitude a few days later, Wilde struck a magnanimous tone:
“Whatever I did was merely what you would have done for me or for any friend
of yours whom you admired and appreciated. We poets and dreamers are all
brothers.”5
1 “Police,” The Times, no. 33,523 (1 January 1893): p. 6.
2 “Police,” The Times, no. 33,536 (16 January 1892): p. 4.
3 H[enry] H[yde], C[hampion], “Men I Have Met.—VII. Oscar Wilde,” Champion 4, no. 87
(13 February 1897): p. 3.
4 For the definitive study of Barlas, see Philip K. Cohen, John Evelyn Barlas, a Critical Biography:
Poetry, Anarchism, and Mental Illness in Late-V ictorian Britain (High Wycombe: Rivendale, 2012);
Cohen recounts this episode at greater length (pp. 111–118). For a helpful recent discussion of
Champion, an important but understudied figure in fin- de- siècle British socialism, see John Barnes,
“Gentleman Crusader: Henry Hyde Champion in the Early Socialist Movement,” History Workshop
Journal 60, no. 1 (autumn 2005): pp. 116–138, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbi003.
5 Oscar Wilde to John Barlas, [postmark 19 January 1892], in The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde,
eds. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart- Davis (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), p. 511.
Imagining Socialism: Aesthetics, Anti-politics, and Literature in Britain, 1817–1918. Mark A. Allison, Oxford University Press
(2021). © Mark A. Allison. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192896490.003.0001