Rethinking British Romantic History, 1770 - 1845

353 Pages·2015·3.219 MB·English

by  Porscha Fermanis, John Regan, Mary-Anne Constantine

RETHINKING BRITISH ROMANTIC
HISTORY, 1770–1845

Rethinking British
Romantic History,
1770–1845
Edited by
PORSCHA FERMANIS
and
JOHN REGAN
1
1
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Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank the former Irish Research Council for
the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), now the Irish Research
Council (IRC), for its generous funding of this project, as well as for
its contributions to a conference on ‘Romantic Historiography’ held at
University College Dublin in the summer of 2010. The conference dem-
onstrated the outstanding work being done in the field of eighteenth- and
early nineteenth-century British and Irish historiography by historians
and literary scholars, and encouraged the editors in their pursuit and com-
mission of chapters for this volume. We would like to thank in particular
James Chandler, Luke Gibbons, Karen O’Brien, Murray Pittock, Fiona
Price, Mark Salber Phillips, Clifford Siskin, and other speakers for their
contributions to the conference, and for their ongoing conversations and
ideas on this topic. Friends and colleagues at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and
University College Dublin have been similarly supportive and accom-
modating. Thanks must also go to the librarians of University College
Dublin; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Cambridge University Library;
the British Library; and the Historical Studies Library at the Institute for
Advanced Study, Princeton. At Oxford University Press, we acknowledge
with gratitude the work of Jacqueline Baker and Rachel Platt. Our anony-
mous readers provided constructive and invaluable criticism, for which
we are very grateful. Other readers and thinkers to whom we are indebted
include Phillip Connell, Robert Gerwarth, John Horne, and Corinna
Russell. We would also like to thank the Wallace Collection, London,
for permission to reproduce selected material. Finally, the editors would
like to express our profound thanks to the contributors to this volume for
their professionalism, diligence, and collegiality. It has been a pleasure to
work with and among you. Further acknowledgements can be found in
the endnotes to individual chapters.

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
List of Contributors xi
Introduction 1
Porscha Fermanis and John Regan
I. HISTORY, RHETORIC, GENRE
1. The History Girls: Charlotte Smith’s History of England and
the Politics of Women’s Educational History 35
Greg Kucich
2. ‘The fanciful traditions of early nations’: History, Myth, and
Orientalist Poetry in India Prior to James Mill 54
Daniel Sanjiv Roberts
3. No ‘nonsense upon stilts’: James Mill’s History of British India
and the Poetics of Benthamite Historiography 72
John Regan
4. A ‘poor crotchety picture of several things’: Antiquarianism,
Subjectivity, and the Novel in Thomas Carlyle’s Letters and
Speeches of Oliver Cromwell 94
Porscha Fermanis
II. HISTORICAL SPACE AND TIME
5. ‘To trace thy country’s glories to their source’: Dangerous
History in Thomas Pennant’s Tour in Wales 121
Mary-Ann Constantine
6. Historicism, Temporalization, and Romantic Prophecy in
Percy Shelley’s Hellas 144
Christopher Bundock
7. Magazines, Don Juan, and the Scotch Novels: Deep and
Shallow Time in the Regency 165
Richard Cronin
8. ‘Diamonds by which the eye is charmed’: Facets of Romantic
Historiography in the Works of Richard Parkes Bonington 179
Rosemary Mitchell
viii Contents
III. AESTHETICS OF HISTORY
9. The Same Rehearsal of the Past: Byron and the Aesthetics of
History and Culture 205
Michael O’Neill
10. Byron, Clare, and Poetic Historiography 223
Paul Hamilton
11. Historical Fiction and the Fractured Atlantic 246
Fiona Robertson
12. A Bookish History of Irish Romanticism 271
Claire Connolly
Bibliography 297
Index 325
List of Illustrations
2.1. Vishnu’s Slumber from Thomas Maurice,
The History of Hindostan (1795) 57
8.1. Richard Parkes Bonington, Meditation (1826),
Wallace Collection 184
8.2. Richard Parkes Bonington, The Antiquary (1827),
Wallace Collection 186
8.3. Richard Parkes Bonington, François I and Marguerite of
Navarre (1827), Wallace Collection 193
8.4. Richard Parkes Bonington, A Lady Dressing her Hair (1827),
Wallace Collection 196