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ScholarlyCommons
Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations
1-1-2016
Romantic Periodicals and the Invention of the
Living Author
Christine Marie Woody
University of Pennsylvania,
Romantic Periodicals and the Invention of the Living Author
Abstract
ROMANTIC PERIODICALS AND THE INVENTION OF THE LIVING AUTHOR
Christine Marie Woody
Michael Gamer
Tis dissertation asks how the burgeoning market of magazines, book reviews, and newspapers shapes the
practice and meaning of authorship during the Romantic period. Surveying the innovations in and
conventions of British periodical culture between 1802 and 1830, this study emphasizes the importance of
four main periodicals—the Edinburgh Review, Quarterly Review, London Magazine, and Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine—to the period’s understanding of what it means to be, or read, an author who is still
living. In it, I argue that British periodicals undertook a project to theorize, narrativize, and regulate the
deceptively simple concept of a living author. Periodicals confronted the inadequacy of their critical methods
in dealing with the living and came to defne the “living author” as a disturbing model for the everyday
person—an encouragement to self-display and a burden on public atention. Trough their engagement with
this disruptive fgure, periodical writers eventually found in it a potential model for their own contingent,
anonymous work, and embraced the self-actualizing possibilities that this reviled fgure unexpectedly ofered.
My chapters survey crises and scandals in the periodical sphere; from the famous atacks on John Keats and
Leigh Hunt, to the dismissal of female novelists like Fanny Burney, to the uproar over the political apostasies
of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey. Trough a critical look at the book-
reviewing project and other responses to living authors, I argue that the Romantic periodical invented living
authorship as practice rather than ontology, emphasizing the importance of body, habit, and iterative
performance to its signifcance.
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Graduate Group
English
First Advisor
Michael Gamer
Keywords
authorship, book history, periodicals, reception studies, Romantic, Romanticism
Tis dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: htp://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2102
ROMANTIC PERIODICALS AND THE INVENTION OF THE LIVING AUTHOR
Christine Marie Woody
A DISSERTATION
in
English
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania
in
Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
2016
Supervisor of Dissertation
___________________________________________
Michael Gamer
Associate Professor of English
Graduate Group Chairperson
_____________________________________________
Melissa E. Sanchez
Associate Professor of English, Graduate Chair
Dissertation Committee
Paul Saint-Amour, Associate Professor of English
Peter Stallybrass, Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English
ROMANTIC PERIODICALS AND THE INVENTION OF THE LIVING AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
2016
Christine Marie Woody
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my thanks to my dissertation committee—Michael Gamer, Paul Saint-
Amour, and Peter Stallybrass—for their wisdom and support as I completed this project. I am
deeply indebted to them for their thoughtful feedback and willingness to slog through some very
baggy early drafts. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Rachel Buurma, whose
feedback on my second chapter was revelatory, and Laurence Lockridge and Mary Poovey, under
whose guidance at New York University the seed of this project was planted.
My thanks to the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania for its support, both
financial and intellectual, during the course of my degree. I am obliged to the staff of the British
Library, National Library of Scotland, and New York Public Library, as well as the University of
Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center and New York University’s Fales Library for their assistance in my
research. I gratefully acknowledge support from the University of Pennsylvania’s King’s College
Fellowship, which made my research in the United Kingdom possible, and from the Research
Society for Victorian Periodicals, which allowed to me share an earlier version of my third
chapter with other periodical aficionados.
Finally, a thank you to my parents, David and Diane Woody, and my husband, Ken Cushen,
whose unflagging love and dogged faith helped me see my way through.
iii
ABSTRACT
ROMANTIC PERIODICALS AND THE INVENTION OF THE LIVING AUTHOR
Christine Marie Woody
Michael Gamer
This dissertation asks how the burgeoning market of magazines, book reviews, and newspapers
shapes the practice and meaning of authorship during the Romantic period. Surveying the
innovations in and conventions of British periodical culture between 1802 and 1830, this study
emphasizes the importance of four main periodicals—the Edinburgh Review, Quarterly Review ,
London Magazine , and Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine—to the period’ s understanding of
what it means to be, or read, an author who is still living. In it, I argue that British periodicals
undertook a project to theorize, narrativize, and regulate the deceptively simple concept of a
living author. Periodicals confronted the inadequacy of their critical methods in dealing with the
living and came to define the “living author” as a disturbing model for the everyday person—an
encouragement to self-display and a burden on public attention. Through their engagement with
this disruptive figure, periodical writers eventually found in it a potential model for their own
contingent, anonymous work, and embraced the self-actualizing possibilities that this reviled
figure unexpectedly offered. My chapters survey crises and scandals in the periodical sphere;
from the famous attacks on John Keats and Leigh Hunt, to the dismissal of female novelists like
Fanny Burney, to the uproar over the political apostasies of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, and Robert Southey. Through a critical look at the book-reviewing project and other
responses to living authors, I argue that the Romantic periodical invented living authorship as
practice rather than ontology, emphasizing the importance of body, habit, and iterative
performance to its significance.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................... III
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................................................... V
LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................. VII
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .............................................................................................. VIII
INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 1: THE SYNECDOCHE AND THE REVIEW .......................................... 21
I: The Synecdochic Review ................................................................................................................... 26
II: The Edinburgh’s acid and synecdochic play ................................................................................... 36
III: The reviewing persona – Lawyers, tyrants, and cannibals ............................................................ 46
IV: Conclusion – Surface Reading? ...................................................................................................... 55
CHAPTER 2: THE PRACTICE OF PERSONALITY ................................................... 62
I: “Personality” as Personal Attack ...................................................................................................... 62
II: The Problem of the Surplus Author ................................................................................................ 69
III: Controlling the Authorship Drive .................................................................................................. 79
IV: Driving to Distraction ..................................................................................................................... 90
V: Unintended Consequences ............................................................................................................... 97
CHAPTER 3: CONFRONTING THE LIVING AUTHOR ........................................ 101
I: What is a Living Author? ............................................................................................................... 102
II: Death, Neglect, and Apostasy – Narratives of Living Authorship ................................................ 111
III: Reviewing “Greatness” – The Case of Walter Scott .................................................................... 130
IV: The “Living Authors” pantheon and the personal public domain .............................................. 148
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CHAPTER 4: PERSONA A ND THE PERFORMANCE O F LIVING ................... 153
I: Defining Periodical Persona ............................................................................................................ 154
II: Test-Case – Thomas De Quincey and the English Opium-Eater .................................................. 162
III: Living in “such a crazy body as mine” ........................................................................................ 170
IV: London Cockneys, or How to Consume like an Author ............................................................... 178
V: Blackwood’s and the New Cockaigne............................................................................................. 187
WORKS CITED .................................................................................................................... 200
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List of Tables
Fig 1. Usage of terms for living authorship in the British Periodicals database………………108
Fig 2. Google ngram illustration of the usage of terms for living authorship………………….109
vii
List of Illustrations
Fig. 3. “Death and Funeral of Mr. Southey” (Examiner [13April 1817] 485)....………...……..115
Fig. 4. “Death and Funeral of Mr. Southey” (Examiner [13April 1817] 486)………..………...116
Fig 5. “First Course.—Soup” (BEM 27:165 [April 1830] 659)………………………...………192
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