Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:47:11.195Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Illegitimate Shelley: Radical Piracy and the Textual Edition as Cultural Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Neil Fraistat
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A textual edition can be read as a cultural performance if one considers its interlaced linguistic and bibliographical codes as monumentalizing rhetoric, opening the textual space of the edition into the social space of its production, distribution, and reception. Mary Shelley's 1824 edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Posthumous Poems and the pirated volume published by the radical William Benbow in 1826 each produce what might be called a “rhetoric of Shelley,” a product of—and participant in — a larger set of social discourses and mechanisms of cultural reproduction. Whereas Mary Shelley's edition was successful, however, Benbow's “illegitimate” edition was not. Derwent Coleridge's discussion of Benbow's piracy reveals how the failure to appropriate Shelley for radical discourse could be claimed not merely as a justification of the “purity” of Shelley's poetry but also as what Pierre Bourdieu calls a “sociodicy,” the justification of an entire social hierarchy. (NF)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 109 , Issue 3 , May 1994 , pp. 409 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Altick, R. D The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1957.Google Scholar
“Art. VI.—Cases of Walcot v. Walker, Southey v. Sherwood; Murray v. Benbow; and Lawrence v. Smith.” Quarterly Review 27 (1822): 123–12.Google Scholar
“Art. VIII.—Historical Romance.” Quarterly Review 35 (1827): 518–51.Google Scholar
Baylen, Joseph O., and Grossman, Norbert, eds The Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals. 2 vols. Sussex: Harvester, 1979.Google Scholar
Behrendt, Stephen C Shelley and His Audiences. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989.Google Scholar
Benbow, William, ed Miscellaneous and Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: William Benbow, 1826.Google Scholar
Benbow, William Scourge for the Laureate. London: William Benbow, 1825.Google Scholar
Bennett, Betty T “Mary Shelley, Editor: ‘With All the Correctness Possible.‘” Shelley conference. Gregynog, Wales, 21 Aug. 1982.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Trans. Nice, Richard. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Cameron, Kenneth Neill The Young Shelley: Genesis of a Radical. New York: Macmillan, 1950.Google Scholar
[Coleridge, Derwent] “An Essay on the Poetic Character of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and on the Probable Tendency of His Writings.” Metropolitan Quarterly Magazine 2.3 (1826): 191–203.Google Scholar
Cronin, Richard “Shelley, Tennyson, and the Apostles, 1828–1832.” Keats-Shelley Review 5 (1990): 14–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curran, Stuart “Horace Smith's Obituary Panegyric on Shelley.” Keats-Shelley Journal 37 (1988): 27–34.Google Scholar
Davenport, Allen “Remarks on the Genius and Writings of the Late Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley.” Republican 15 Dec. 1826: 715–71.Google Scholar
Dawson, P. M. S The Unacknowledged Legislator: Shelley and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1980.Google Scholar
de Grazia, Margreta, and Stallybrass, Peter “The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text.” Shakespeare Quarterly 44 (1993): 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Man, Paul “Shelley Disfigured.” The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Columbia UP, 1984. 93–123.Google Scholar
Durling, Robert Petrarch's Lyric Poems: The Rime sparse and Other Lyrics. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1976.Google Scholar
Engelberg, Karsten Klegs The Making of the Shelley Myth: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism of Percy Bysshe Shelley 1822–1860. London: Mansell, 1988.Google Scholar
Fleck, P. D “Mary Shelley's Notes to Shelley's Poems and Frankenstein.” Studies in Romanticism 6 (1967): 226–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forman, H. Buxton The Viscissitudes of Queen Mab. Privately printed, 1887.Google Scholar
Fraistat, Neil “‘I Hate to Mutilate’: Mary Shelley and the Transmission of Shelley's Textual Corpus.” Graduate Center, City U of New York, 15 Nov. 1990.Google Scholar
Fraistat, Neil, ed The “Prometheus Unbound Notebooks.” Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts 9. New York: Garland, 1991.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard Seuils. Paris: Seuil, 1987.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Albert J The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Griggs, Earl Leslie, ed The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1956–71.Google Scholar
Hone, J. Ann For the Cause of Truth: Radicalism in London, 1796–1821. Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Howe, P. P., ed The Complete Works of William Hazlitt. 21 vols. Toronto: Dent, 1930–34.Google Scholar
Jack, Ian English Literature, 1815–1832. 1963. Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1976.Google Scholar
James, Louis Print and the People, 1819–1851. 1976. London: Peregrine, 1978.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, Francis “Art. II.” Rev. of Tales, by George Crabbe. Edinburgh Review Nov. 1812: 277–305.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Julia Confessions of Julia Johnstone, Written by Herself in Contradiction to the Fables of Harriette Wilson. London: William Benbow, 1826.Google Scholar
Jones, Gareth Stedman Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Keach, William “Knowing Readers: Shelley and the Sunetoi.” MLA Convention. Chicago, 29 Dec. 1985.Google Scholar
Klancher, Jon P The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1790–1832. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1987.Google Scholar
Luke, Hugh J “‘Drams for the Vulgar’: A Study of Some Radical Publishers and Publications in Early Nineteenth-Century London.” Diss. U of Texas, 1963.Google Scholar
Luke, Hugh J “An Overlooked Obituary Notice of Shelley.” Papers on Language and Literature 2 (1966): 38–46.Google Scholar
Manning, Peter “The Hone-ing of Byron's Corsair.” Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation. Ed. McGann, Jerome. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985. 107–10.Google Scholar
McCalman, Iain Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome J The Textual Condition. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Merivale, J. H Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery from the Commencement of Michaelmas Term, 1815, to the End of the Sittings after Michaelmas Term, 1817. 3 vols. London: Joseph Butterworth, 1817–18.Google Scholar
Neale, R. S Class and Ideology in the Nineteenth Century. London: Routledge, 1972.Google Scholar
Norman, Sylva Flight of the Skylark: The Development of Shelley's Reputation. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1954.Google Scholar
Perkin, Harold The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780–1880. London: Routledge, 1969.Google Scholar
Pottle, Frederick A Shelley and Browning: A Myth and Some Facts. 1923. Hamden: Archon, 1965.Google Scholar
Prothero, Iorwerth Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century London. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Prothero, Iorwerth “William Benbow and the Concept of the ‘General Strike.‘” Past and Present 63 (1974): 132–13.Google Scholar
Prothero, Rowland E., ed The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals. Rev. and enl. ed. 6 vols. London: John Murray, 1898–1901.Google Scholar
Rambler's Magazine; or, Fashionable Emporium of Polite Literature … and All the Gay Variety of Supreme Bon Ton 1 Mar. 1822.Google Scholar
Rambler's Magazine; or, Fashionable Emporium of Polite Literature … and All the Gay Variety of Supreme Bon Ton Sept. 1822.Google Scholar
Reiman, Donald H., ed The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of British Romantic Writers. 9 vols. New York: Garland, 1972.Google Scholar
Reiman, Donald H. “Shelley as Agrarian Reactionary.” Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 30 (1979): 5–15.Google Scholar
Rev. of Queen Mab, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres 19 May 1821:305–30.Google Scholar
Rüter, A. J. C “William Benbow's Grand National Holiday.” International Review for Social History 2 (1936): 217–21.Google Scholar
Scrivener, Michael Radical Shelley: The Philosophical Anarchism and Utopian Thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaaban, Bouthaina “The Romantics in the Chartist Press.” Keats-Shelley Journal 38 (1989): 25–46.Google Scholar
Shaaban, Bouthaina “Shelley in the Chartist Press.” Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 34 (1983): 41–60.Google Scholar
Shaw, George Bernard “Shaming the Devil about Shelley.” The Collected Works of Bernard Shaw. Ayot St. Lawrence Edition. Vol. 29. New York: Wise, 1932. 248–59. 30 vols.Google Scholar
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Bennett, Betty T. 3 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Shelley, Percy Bysshe Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations, and Fragments by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. London: Edward Moxon, 1840 [1839].Google Scholar
Shelley, Percy Bysshe The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Jones, Frederick L. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1964.Google Scholar
Shelley, Percy Bysshe The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. 4 vols. London: Edward Moxon, 1839.Google Scholar
Shelley, Percy Bysshe The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Rev. ed. London: Edward Moxon, 1840 [1839].Google Scholar
Shelley, Percy Bysshe Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. London: John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824.Google Scholar
Sinfield, Alan Alfred Tennyson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.Google Scholar
Smith, Olivia The Politics of Language, 1791–1819. Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1984.Google Scholar
St. Clair, William The Godwins and the Shelleys: A Biography of a Family. New York: Norton, 1989.Google Scholar
St. Clair, William “The Impact of Byron's Writings: An Evaluative Approach.” Byron: Augustan and Romantic. Ed. Rutherford, Andrew. New York: St. Martin's, 1990. 1–25.Google Scholar
Sunstein, Emily Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. Boston: Little, 1991.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles H. Jr The Early Collected Editions of Shelley's Poems. New Haven: Yale UP, 1958.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P The Making of the English Working Class. 1963. New York: Vintage, 1966.Google Scholar
Vesey, Francis Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery during the Time of Lord Chancellor Eldon. Containing from Easter Term to the Sittings after Trinity Term Inclusive, 42, Geo. III. London: Brooke and Clarke, 1804.Google Scholar
Webb, R. K The British Working Class Reader, 1790–1848: Literacy and Social Tensions. London: Allen, 1955.Google Scholar
Webb, Timothy Shelley: A Voice Not Understood. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1977.Google Scholar
Weiner, Joel H Radicalism and Freethought in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Life of Richard Carlile. Westport: Greenwood, 1983.Google Scholar
White, Newman Ivey Shelley. 2 vols. 1940. New York: Octagon, 1972.Google Scholar
Williams, Gwynn Artisans and Sans-culottes. New York: Norton, 1969.Google Scholar
Wolfson, Susan J “Editorial Privilege: Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley's Audiences.” The Other Mary Shelley. Ed. Fisch, Audrey A., Mellor, Anne K., and Schor, Esther H. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. 39–72.Google Scholar
Zall, Paul “Lord Eldon's Censorship.” PMLA 68 (1953): 436–43.Google Scholar