{"id":398,"date":"2014-09-15T13:58:32","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T13:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=398"},"modified":"2014-09-15T13:58:32","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T13:58:32","slug":"five-questions-james-grande-on-william-cobbett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=398","title":{"rendered":"Five Questions: James Grande on William Cobbett"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"William<\/a><\/p>\n

James Grande currently works at King’s College London as a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC-funded project ‘Music in London, 1800-1851<\/a>‘.\u00a0 He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Oxford and moved to KCL in 2011 to take up a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship.\u00a0 He has worked on William Godwin, the literary cultures of London and Norfolk, Dissent, and on a range of other Romantic-period topics, but the central figure in his research\u00a0is William Cobbett, the subject of his first monograph, William Cobbett, the Press and Rural England<\/a>, <\/em>which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in July.\u00a0 Below, we discuss this book\u00a0below alongside his co-edited collection The Opinions of William Cobbett<\/em><\/a>, which was published by Ashgate last year.<\/p>\n

1) How did you first encounter William Cobbett, and how did you come to decide that you wanted to dedicate\u00a0your doctoral thesis and (thus far) two books to examining him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I first came across Cobbett through a special author paper on Hazlitt that I took in the final year of my undergraduate degree. \u00a0I read Hazlitt\u2019s \u2018Character of Cobbett\u2019 and was intrigued by the way Hazlitt scholars compare their journalism.\u00a0 Richard Ingrams\u2019s biography of Cobbett had just come out, so I read that, and immersed myself in Cobbett\u2019s enormous published output and the archive of manuscripts at Nuffield College in Oxford.\u00a0 I was fortunate to hold a doctoral studentship on the Godwin Diary Project<\/a>, and was originally planning to write a thesis on Cobbett, the Godwin circle, radical life-writing and the public sphere.\u00a0 But I was well advised that this might be taking on too much, so devoted my doctoral thesis to Cobbett while working as a research assistant on Godwin\u2019s diary.\u00a0 William Cobbett, the Press and Rural England<\/em> is a rewritten version of my thesis and The Opinions of William Cobbett<\/em> is a co-edited selection of his writings aimed at a wider audience, published in 2013 to mark the 250th anniversary of Cobbett\u2019s birth.<\/p>\n

2) Your reading of Cobbett’s career in\u00a0William Cobbett, the Press and Rural England<\/em> ’emphasizes coherence over contradiction’, seeing\u00a0it as\u00a0‘a\u00a0serious and sustained attempt to\u00a0think\u00a0through a\u00a0set of ideas that\u00a0had been crystallized\u00a0in the pamphlet wars of the\u00a01790s’. How did you come to see these continuities in Cobbett’s thought, and how did you\u00a0choose the\u00a0biographical\u00a0episodes\u00a0through which you trace\u00a0the development of\u00a0his personal ideology?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was initially attracted to the radical, nineteenth-century Cobbett, but became increasingly convinced that in order to understand the nature of Cobbett\u2019s radicalism we need to go back to the 1790s.\u00a0 I had read Cobbett\u2019s anti-Jacobin writing, and in particular the pamphlets he wrote in Philadelphia as Peter Porcupine, and for a long time was unsure what to do with it \u2013 it was just too reactionary.\u00a0 But one of the distinguishing features of Cobbett\u2019s career is his unusual evolution from (in crude terms) right to left, and it was his experience as an anti-Jacobin that made him such an effective radical.\u00a0 In the book, I argue that we should read Cobbett\u2019s ruralism as a response to the revolution controversy and as an eclectic combination of Burke and Paine. There has always been a tendency to view Cobbett as a crude populist who merely reacts to changing circumstances; by contrast, I see his project as the creation of a democratic radicalism that could appeal to ideas of tradition, patriotism and the domestic affections. \u00a0This gave him the status memorably described by Hazlitt as \u2018a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country\u2019 \u2013 a virtual embodiment of both rural England and the campaign for parliamentary reform.\u00a0 One of the surprises here was that I came to see Cobbett as much less insular than he often appears. His writing incorporates a broad range of transatlantic influences, and appealed to audiences far beyond a narrow rural constituency.<\/p>\n

When it came to selecting particular episodes to focus on, I was guided by the archive I was working with and towards moments in Cobbett\u2019s career that seemed particularly significant and under-researched. \u00a0The first chapter presents new evidence for Cobbett\u2019s authorship of The<\/em> Soldier\u2019s Friend<\/em> (1792), including a previously neglected letter from the publisher, James Ridgway.\u00a0 In this letter, Ridgway defends himself from rumours that he had been imprisoned for high treason but concedes that the work had caused \u2018greater alarm at its publication than any pamphlet in my memory\u2019 \u2013 and Ridgway was one of the publishers of the second part of Rights of Man<\/em>. \u00a0After this foray into radicalism, Cobbett fled to France and then America and the rest of this chapter shows how his myth of rural England developed in the United States.\u00a0 The next chapter concentrates on the first decade of the 1800s and his strange, sub-Burkean correspondence with William Windham. \u00a0I suggest that Cobbett\u2019s move to Hampshire began in imitation of Windham\u2019s patrician independence, but was quickly directed towards more radical ends.\u00a0 The work Cobbett wrote in Newgate during his imprisonment for seditious libel, Paper Against Gold<\/em>, is of central importance to the rest of his career.\u00a0 There has been some excellent recent work on paper money and I have tried to extend this by reading Paper Against Gold<\/em> alongside Cobbett\u2019s prison letters.\u00a0 There are chapters on Cobbett\u2019s re-creation of rural England on Long Island, following the 1817 suspension of Habeas Corpus, and his work as press secretary and speechwriter for Queen Caroline during her trial.\u00a0 There is a chapter on Rural Rides<\/em> and other major works of the 1820s, Cottage Economy<\/em> and A History of the Protestant \u201cReformation\u201d<\/em> (kept in scare quotes), and the final chapter is on 1830-1 and the relationship as Cobbett saw it between the July Revolution in France and Swing Riots in England. \u00a0William IV and the new Whig government tried to make Cobbett a scapegoat for the riots \u2013 there are extracts from Rural Rides<\/em> in the Treasury Solicitor\u2019s archives, with passages that could be construed as seditious marked up \u2013 but Cobbett subpoenaed the entire Cabinet as witnesses, conducted his own defence and was sensationally acquitted.\u00a0 The following year, he completed his providential progress from \u2018Ploughboy to a Seat in Parliament\u2019 with his election to the reformed Parliament as an MP for Oldham.\u00a0 There is a short postscript examining Cobbett\u2019s myriad legacies, for popular journalism, \u2018Condition of England\u2019 writing and radical pastoral.<\/p>\n

3) Why did you decide to focus particularly on Cobbett as a writer of various kinds of letters?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My doctoral thesis was on \u2018William Cobbett\u2019s Correspondence\u2019 and explored the open letter rhetoric of his journalism \u2013 often credited with creating the modern leading article \u2013 alongside the archive of manuscript letters.\u00a0 Correspondence is still key to how I read Cobbett.\u00a0 His arguments are always addressed to specific audiences, from political allies and opponents to groups of ordinary people.\u00a0 This gives them their brilliant directness (\u2018Wilberforce, I have you before me in a canting pamphlet\u2019) and invests them with a situatedness that is unmatched in radical writing of the period.\u00a0 In this respect, Cobbett draws on the epistolary tropes of intimacy, authenticity and spontaneity, as well as the unique place of letters in everyday life.\u00a0 The book includes many previously unpublished letters from the remarkable archive at Nuffield<\/a>, assembled by the guild socialist G.D.H. Cole, who edited, collected and wrote an important biography of Cobbett.\u00a0 These letters tell us a huge amount about how Cobbett worked and on the role of his family \u2013 particularly his seven children \u2013 in his literary, political and agricultural projects.<\/p>\n

\"Opinions<\/a><\/p>\n

4) How did you and your co-editors, John Stevenson and Richard Thomas,\u00a0choose the pieces which you include in\u00a0The Opinions of William Cobbett<\/em>,\u00a0and are there particular selections from among these which you’d recommend for converting newcomers to his work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cobbett published an estimated twenty million words \u2013 a figure unrivalled in the history of English letters \u2013 so there was plenty to choose from.\u00a0 We decided on thematic sections, and tried to find passages that would work well as short extracts, present the full range of Cobbett\u2019s opinions and convey his power as a writer.\u00a0 To Hazlitt, he was \u2018one of the best writers in the language\u2019, and even the Attorney General, leading the prosecution in 1831, described him as \u2018one of the greatest masters of the English language who has ever composed in it\u2019.\u00a0 Newcomers to his work might be surprised by the variety of his writing.\u00a0 So we see Cobbett thundering against \u2018Old Corruption\u2019, but there are also moments of Romantic autobiography and sentimental comedy.\u00a0 For example, one of the longest extracts is a autobiographical passage describing his time as a soldier in New Brunswick and imagining an alternative life in which he had never returned to England and achieved political celebrity.\u00a0 And one of my personal favourites is a brilliantly funny scene from his anti-Malthusian comedy, Surplus Population<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As one of the reviews pointed out, the selection does not try to present a sanitised version of Cobbett.\u00a0 His violent prejudices, including his anti-Semitism, cannot be politely ignored.\u00a0 Linda Colley wrote more than a decade ago that \u2018Cobbett\u2019s unfailing concern for the English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh labouring poor, and his work on behalf of adult male suffrage make him \u2013 up to a point \u2013 a plausible hero for the democratic Left\u2019, and the qualification here is important.\u00a0 Colley also discusses Cobbett\u2019s enduring legacy for British political journalism and if anything his concerns and style of journalism seem to have even greater relevance today, in the context of the financial crisis, political and press corruption, anxieties about the national debt and the post-devolution debate about national identity and Scottish independence.\u00a0 However, with the rise of the Tea Party in America and UKIP in Britain, Cobbett\u2019s particular brand of Enlightenment common sense now seems to be almost exclusively the province of the modern right.\u00a0 There is nothing inevitable here, and I would contest any straightforward comparison, but this does seem to be what has happened.<\/p>\n

5) What new projects are you currently pursuing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

John Stevenson and I are editing a volume of essays from a conference on \u2018Cobbett at 250\u2019, which will be published next year by Pickering & Chatto and will, incredibly, be the first collection of essays devoted to Cobbett.\u00a0 I am really excited about the range of topics and contributors, including scholars from Romantic and Victorian literary studies, social and political history and sociology.<\/p>\n

My current research is linked to my new post as a research fellow for \u2018Music in London, 1800-1851\u2019, directed by Roger Parker and based at King\u2019s College London.\u00a0 The project is focused on non-elite music and on the social and political meanings that music carried in metropolitan culture.\u00a0 My own research is on the intersections between music, literature and religious dissent, so this takes me back to the intellectual milieu of the Godwin diary and my earlier postdoctoral research on nineteenth-century nonconformism.\u00a0 If any BARS members are interested in getting involved with the broader project, there is a website \u2013 musicinlondon.org<\/a> \u2013 with further information and details of upcoming conferences<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Grande currently works at King’s College London as a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC-funded project ‘Music in London, 1800-1851‘.\u00a0 He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Oxford and… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}