Unusual Suspects

Abstract

The French Revolution was greeted with enthusiasm by young British writers and intellectuals like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, following the lead of slightly older ‘public intellectuals’ like Thomas Paine, Joseph Priestley, William Godwin, and John Thelwall. But as the revolution turned violent, British enthusiasm for it waned. Activists for the cause of British parliamentary reform, who had embraced the revolution’s symbolic potential, were badly caught out by the turn of events. The Reign of Terror (1793–4) sealed the revolution’s fate in British cultural memory, but it was anticipated by a ‘reign of Alarm’ in England, announced by King George III’s proclamation against seditious writings in May, 1792. Originally aimed at Paine, this official encouragement of spying and informing spread rapidly, resulting in the largest number of trials for sedition and treason in British history. Paralleling official legal actions against accused traitors were unofficial vigilante acts by private citizens and institutions against persons whose liberal expressions alarmed others. These are the ‘unusual suspects’ of this book. As in the McCarthyite witch-hunts in 1950s America, the victims of this unregulated ‘hegemonic’ blacklisting are found disproportionately in academic and cultural arenas. National religious and educational bodies purged liberals, and promising literary careers were nipped in the bud. The loss to British culture is immense, if inestimable. Traces of this Alarmist trauma can be found in the works of six Romantic writers who did not find it ‘bliss to be alive [and] heaven to be young’ then: Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, Burns, and Blake.

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