Living as an Author in the Romantic Period

306 Pages·2012·1.84 MB·English

by  Matthew Sangster

Living as an Author in the Romantic Period:
Remuneration, Recognition and Self-Fashioning

Matthew James Robert Sangster
Royal Holloway, University of London
Ph.D.

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Declaration of Authorship

I, Matthew James Robert Sangster, hereby declare that this thesis and the work
presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is
always clearly stated.

th
18 July 2012

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(Version with amendments submitted 8 November 2012)

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Abstract

The early nineteenth century was a transitional period for conceptions of authorship,
which was not yet established as a solid profession or seen as the special province of
the inspired genius. Authors therefore focused their ambitions on various different
objectives, some seeking primarily to achieve the difficult goal of earning a living by
publishing, some pursuing critical acclaim, others looking to access influential
networks and a few attempting to redefine and reify conceptions of authorship.
Achieving any of these ends was usually contingent on social connections, which
dominated and validated the tightly-networked literary milieu.

After an introduction giving an overview of the ways in which authors and
authorship were apprehended in the period, the thesis examines the financial and
social aspects of building a career as an author, considering in three chapters the
publishing industry contexts in which writers worked, the struggles faced by those
who sought to prosper by the pen, and the methods employed by those exceptional
figures who managed to achieve significant successes through literary labours. The
fourth chapter focuses on the politicised reviewing culture of the period, looking at
the ways in which ambitious quarterly critics sought to propagate political,
professional and institutional authority through defining and censuring literary
authors. The fifth chapter examines the networks in which authors were embedded
and valued, paying particular attention to issues of publicity and privacy and to
reciprocal processes of self-definition. The thesis concludes by briefly examining
the ways in which the canonical Romantic poets’ responses to the environment
depicted in the rest of the thesis paved the way for kinds of enduring success which
eluded many of the authors with whom they competed for popularity and plaudits
during the 1800s and the 1810s.
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Contents

Declaration of Authorship p. 2.
Abstract p. 3.
Contents p. 4.
ote on Abbreviations and Attributions p. 6.
Acknowledgements p. 8.

Introduction: What was an Author in the Romantic Period?

Calamities of Authors p. 9.
Social Readers, Social Writers p. 26
Romanticism and Retrospection p. 34.
Continuities and Discontinuities p. 38.

Chapter One: Publishers, Book Production and Profits

The Costs of Literature p. 49.
Common Publishing Arrangements p. 54.
The Costs of Production p. 63.
The Life of a Successful Book: The World before the Flood p. 66.
Co-operation in the Book Trade p. 72.

Chapter Two: The Working Writer

The Foundation and Philosophies of the Literary Fund p. 80.
The Unfortunate Robert Heron p. 95.
Eliza Parsons: ‘Compelled by dire necessity to become an Author’ p. 106.
Robert Bloomfield, Patronage and Fashion p. 116.
Southey’s Critique and the Profession of Authorship p. 129.

Chapter Three: Succeeding in ‘the Worst Trade’

Status and Connections p. 133.
Robert Southey: Entire Man of Letters? p. 138.
Thomas Moore and Sociable Authorship p. 153.
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Walter Scott: The Wizard of the North p. 169.
Byron: Transcending Commerce p. 181.

Chapter Four: The Oligarchs of Literature: Authority and the
Quarterly Reviews

Paradigm Shift p. 186.
Enlightenment vs. The Anti-Jacobin p. 193.
The Edinburgh’s New Methodology p. 202.
Disciplining Authors and Readers p. 208.
The Quarterlies and Canonical Romanticism p. 219.

Chapter Five: Sociability, Resistance and Self-Definition

Friends, Groups and Networks p. 229.
Character in Pen and in Print: Elizabeth Hamilton vs. Mary Hays p. 239.
Relational Self-Fashioning: Leigh Hunt’s Correspondence p. 249.
Women, Networking and Audiences p. 258.

Coda: Where the Romantics Fit (or fail to) p. 270.

Bibliography p. 288.
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ote on Abbreviations and Attributions

As this investigation ranges widely rather than focusing intensively on a single
author or group, I have given the references for books, periodicals and online
resources fully in the footnotes rather than abbreviating. I have, however, made
extensive use of certain manuscript repositories, which I have abbreviated thus:

BL – London, British Library
NLS – Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland
NYPL Berg – New York Public Library, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg
Collection of English and American Literature
NYPL Pforzheimer – New York Public Library, Carl H. Pforzheimer
Collection of Shelley and His Circle
RUL – Reading University Library

I have made particularly extensive use of the Archive of the Royal Literary Fund,
held at the British Library (Loan 96 RLF). When referring to parts of this archive, I
have generally omitted ‘BL’ and provided the title and the full number for the
relevant series, file or item as given on the online catalogue
(<http://searcharchives.bl.uk>).

Following standard conventions, I have abbreviated the Oxford English Dictionary
as OED and the Oxford Dictionary of ational Biography as ODB. In both cases,
I have worked from the online versions (<www.oed.com> and
<www.oxforddnb.com>). In discussing poorly-documented figures I have often
drawn heavily on the ODB ; to provide appropriate credit, I have cited article
references and access dates in the footnotes.

I have deviated from the MHRA style slightly when referring to periodicals, as the
Volume (Year) system is less well-adapted to online repositories than it is to bound
volumes. To aid looking-up, therefore, I have given enough relevant information to
clearly identify the specific issue to which I am referring, generally adding, for
example, the month of publication for monthlies or quarterlies. When referring to
period Reviews, I have given the running title for longer articles where the journal
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itself provides one; for all reviews I have given the page range to indicate their
scope.

Unless otherwise indicated, attributions are taken from the Wellesley Index to
Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900 (originally edited by Walter Houghton; now
maintained online at <http://wellesley.chadwyck.com>) for the Edinburgh Review
and from Jonathan Cutmore (ed.), The Quarterly Review Archive, Romantic Circles,
<http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/qr/> for the Quarterly.
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Acknowledgements

This thesis could not have been completed without the Royal Literary Fund, who
provided the funding for my research and for my cataloguing their archive at the
British Library, a project which has had an enormous influence on my thinking
about authorship in the early nineteenth century. I would like to offer my heartfelt
thanks to the Committee and to Eileen Gunn, the Fund’s Chief Executive, for their
interest and support.

My supervisor, Judith Hawley, has provided invaluable guidance and trenchant
criticism throughout the composition of this thesis; I am profoundly grateful for her
many contributions. I am also very grateful for the helpful feedback and
encouragement provided by my advisor, Vicky Greenaway.

I would like to thank the curators and staff at the following institutions for their
generous assistance: New York Public Library (particularly Elizabeth Denlinger and
Charles Carter), the National Library of Scotland (particularly Rachel Beattie) and
the Special Collections Department at the University of Reading. I am also hugely
indebted to Jamie Andrews and all my other colleagues at the British Library,
especially Chris Beckett, Rachel Foss, Kathryn Johnson, Helen Melody, Rachel
Stockdale, William Stockting and Zoë Wilcox, for their help and advice.

This thesis has benefitted enormously from the wisdom and encouragement of
colleagues and friends; conversations with Daniel Cook, Jeremy Davies, Elizabeth
Eger, Margot Finn, David Higgins, Jon Mee, Anne Mellor and William St Clair have
been especially important to my progress. I would particularly like to thank Lynda
Pratt for kindly allowing me access to the proofs of the fourth part of The Collected
Letters of Robert Southey before its release. Finally, I wish to extend a general
thank-you to all those who have organised and spoken at the conferences and
seminars I have attended. The scholarship and conviviality on display at such events
have both played huge parts in bringing me and my research to this point.
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Introduction
What was an Author in the Romantic Period?

Calamities of Authors

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, increasing numbers of men and
women were seeking to pursue authorship as if it were a professional career. They
were drawn by the wealth, influence and social cachet of high-profile successes and
by the glorification of writing engendered through education and the periodical
press, both of which were becoming increasingly accessible. However, while a few
writers, mostly socially-advantaged gentlemen, were able to make their fortunes and
reputations through literature, for most aspirants the realities of the writing life
proved disappointing. Rather than receiving plaudits, their works were passed over
by a censorious and hierarchal print culture. Rather than being showered with
wealth, they received at best modest payments, seldom sufficient to serve as a sole
means of support. As David Williams, the founder of the Literary Fund, lamented,
those who believed that their talents would enable them to live comfortably as
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authors were generally ‘soon and miserably undeceived.’

It was partly to warn away some of these potential scribblers that Isaac
D’Israeli published his 1812 miscellany Calamites of Authors, in which he
scrutinised the many pitfalls of the literary life by drawing on examples ranging
from Elizabethan writers through to his early nineteenth-century contemporaries.
From the outset he took pains to contradict explicitly the impression that authors are
generally successful and respected:

The title of AUTHOR still retains its seduction among our youth, and is
consecrated by ages. Yet what affectionate parent would consent to see his
son devote himself to his pen as a profession? The studies of a true Author
insulate him in society, exacting daily labours; yet he will receive but little

1
David Williams, Claims of Literature: The Origin, Motives, Objects, and Transactions, of the
Society for the Establishment of a Literary Fund (London: William Miller, 1802), p. 62.
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encouragement, and less remuneration. It will be found that the most
successful Author can obtain no equivalent for the labours of his life […]
Authors themselves never discover this melancholy truth till they have
yielded to an impulse, and adopted a profession, too late in life to resist the
one, or abandon the other. Whoever labours without hope, a painful state to
which Authors are at length reduced, may surely be placed among the most
injured class in the community. Most Authors close their lives in apathy or
despair, and too many live by means which few of them would not blush to
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describe.

Throughout Calamities D’Israeli stressed that living by the pen is a risky and
precarious form of existence. He did not dispute that literary history contained a
number of examples of writers such as Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson who
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were able to earn respect, influence and significant payments by writing. He was an
enthusiastic proponent of the proliferation of books and of the achievements of the
marginalised writers he examined, using the term ‘genius’ liberally to describe many
of them. Brilliance and innovation, though, in D’Israeli’s formulation, had never
guaranteed either fortune or respect. Indeed, he argued that novel works are likely to
be met at first with critical distrust and popular incomprehension, a claim that
chimes with William Wordsworth’s 1815 assertion that ‘every author, as far as he is
great and at the same time original, has had the task of creating the taste by which
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he is to be enjoyed: so has it been, so will it continue to be.’ Wordsworth, of
course, could afford to wait (albeit impatiently) for recognition due to his non-
literary incomes. Had the pen been his sole source of support, he would have been a
very poor man, as in 1835 he estimated that over forty years of publishing had

2
Isaac D’Israeli, Calamities of Authors; including some Inquiries Respecting their Moral and
Literary Characters, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1812), I, viii-ix.
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Although these authors often asserted their claims in vexed dialogue with patrons and with others
who sought control over written discourses; see Dustin Griffin, Literary Patronage in England 1650-
1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 123-154, 220-245.
4
William Wordsworth, ‘Essay, Supplementary to the Preface’ (1815), in The Prose Works of William
Wordsworth, ed. W.J.B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1974), III, 80.
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