Re-evaluating the Literary Coterie, 1580–1830: From Sidney to Blackwood's

248 Pages·2016·3.12 MB·English

by  Will Bowers

Re-evaluating the Literary Coterie,
1580–1830
From Sidney to Blackwood's
Edited by
Will Bowers &
Hannah Leah Crummé
Re-evaluating the Literary Coterie, 1580–1830
Will Bowers • H annah L eah Crummé
Editors
Re-evaluating the
Literary Coterie,
1580–1830
From Sidney to Blackwood’s
Editors
Will Bowers Hannah Leah Crummé
Merton College Watzek Library
University of Oxford Lewis & Clark College
Oxford , UK Portland, Oregon, USA
ISBN 978-1-137-54552-7 ISBN 978-1-137-54553-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54553-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958203
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016
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A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank University College London’s Faculty Institute of
Graduate Studies for their generous support of the seminar from which
this volume arose. The energetic debate encouraged by Stephen W. May,
Arthur F. Marotti, and Gregory Dart during this seminar highlighted the
need for greater clarity as we speak about different types of social net-
works. We would particularly like to thank Helen Hackett, who has been
a mentor to us both and without whose encouragement we would not
have undertaken this collection. It seems redundant to say, but no essay
collection exists without its contributors. We were blessed with an array
of incredibly talented academics, across periods and methodologies, all
of whom produced engaging, insightful, and punctual contributions. We
would also like to thank the editors and readers from Palgrave Macmillan
who have helped us produce this volume, particularly Benjamin Doyle
and Tomas René, who were perfectly understanding while simultaneously
ensuring a manuscript reached their desk nearly on time. Finally we would
like to thank the Master and fellows of University College, Oxford, for
permission to use a painting in their collection as our cover image.
Will Bowers:
The quizzical looks of John Mullan and Peter Swaab catalysed my interest
in coteries and their teaching has been central to my questioning of the
term. So too were conversations with Michael Rossington while crossing
the Town Moor in 2014. The Creative Communities Network at Leeds,
especially David Higgins, provided me with a forum to discuss coteries and
circles in the long eighteenth century among like minds. New colleagues
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
at Merton College, Oxford, particularly Richard McCabe, Guy Westwood,
Tom Phillips, Richard Rabone, and Jo Bellis, require much thanks for their
welcome and their commitment to good conversation. From my life out-
side college I would like to thank the various residents of 30 Crayford
Road, members of the RCJ and Hackney RFC, and a group of fi ne ONs
for keeping me content while ‘at rest, Partly from voluntary holiday, And
part through outward indolence’. My parents, Lorna and Wayham, have
shown unstinting support, wisdom, and good humour during the years
this book was formed, for which I am extremely grateful. I’d like to reserve
my fi nal thanks for Hazel Wilkinson: you’re going somewhere and so am I.
Hannah Leah Crummé:
The close scrutiny of the idea of the coterie by Hannah Crawforth, Sonia
Massai, and Rivka Zim led to this project, for which I am immensely grate-
ful. The same is true of Alan Stewart’s and Warren Boutcher’s interroga-
tion of the term—and the idea—of networks. King’s College London’s
Graduate School Studentship and Overseas Research Studentship both
provided support as this project began. Without the energy, enthusiasm,
and persistence of my co-editor, Will Bowers, this volume would cer-
tainly have withered on the vine; I am forever in his debt for seeing it
through. For tea, I’m grateful to my own circle, most notably Mercedes
Aguirre, Ellie Bass, Julia Cameron, and Fariha Sheikh. Thank you to Doug
Crummé, Beth Aronoff, and Eleanor Crummé, who are always excited to
hear about progress in any endeavour, no matter how obscure. Finally,
thank you to David Hirsch, who has always humoured laboured investiga-
tion of nearly obsolete words.
C
ONTENTS
Introduction 1
Will Bowers and Hannah Leah Crummé
Literary Coteries of Mary Sidney Herbert,
Countess of Pembroke and William Herbert,
Third Earl of Pembroke 1 5
Mary Ellen Lamb
Maecenas and ‘Oxford-Witts’: Pedagogy and Flattery
in Seventeenth-Century Oxford 3 5
Christopher Burlinson
The Circulation of Verse at the Inns of Court
and in London in Early Stuart England 5 3
Arthur F. Marotti
‘If I Had Known Him, I Would Have Loved Him’:
Bloomsbury Appropriations of the Scriblerian Coterie 75
Abigail Williams and Peter Huhne
vii
viii CONTENTS
The Hillarian Circle: Scorpions, Sexual Politics
and Heterosocial Coteries 9 3
Christine Gerrard
Edmund Spenser and Coterie Culture, 1774–1790 1 11
Hazel Wilkinson
Charles Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
and the Forging of the Romantic Literary Coterie 137
Felicity James
The Many Rooms of Holland House 159
Will Bowers
Aggressive Intimacy: Mass Markets
and the B lackwood’s Magazine Coterie 1 81
Robert Morrison
Afterword: Writing Coteries, Reading Coteries 201
Helen Hackett
Bibliography of Secondary Sources 219
Index 231
A
BBREVIATIONS
OED O xford English Dictionary , Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2016. Online at: h ttp://www.oed.com (accessed 1 Feb. 2016).
ODNB O xford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016. Online at: h ttp://www.oxforddnb.com
(accessed 1 Feb. 2016)
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N E
OTES ON DITORS
Will   Bowers is a Junior Research Fellow in English at Merton College,
Oxford. He has published a number of articles on the literature of the
Romantic period and his research interests include Romantic poetry; the
idea of a cosmopolitan London; the trial of Queen Caroline; and English
perceptions of Italy and Italians. He is also an assistant editor on the
Longman Annotated English Poets: Shelley .
Hannah   Leah   Crummé is head of special collections and college archi-
vist at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Her research focuses
on the political impact of the Sidney-Herbert-D udley network. She has
published broadly across her fi eld and ‘By Me William Shakespeare’, an
exhibition of documents held at The National Archives curated by Hannah,
opened in Somerset House, London in 2016.
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