Romantic Sociability – European Romanticisms in Association

Contributor: Yuri Yoshino

Location: The Taylor Institution Library, the University of Oxford

Description: This house, Edgeworthstown House in Co. Longford, Ireland, was an important intellectual powerhouse in Europe during the Romantic period. This engraving, published on the front cover of the 42nd issue of Le Magasin Pittoresque (1833-1938) in October 1850, testifies to the continuing influence of works by Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) and her family in France and beyond, years after the publication of her final major novel, Helen (1834) and its translation into French by Louise Swanton-Belloc in the same year. The object of Le Magasin was popular education; it had been launched as the earliest imitation of Charles Knight’s Penny Magazine (1832-46), which aimed to enlighten popular readers with the aid of wood-engraved images without provoking radical ideas. Le Magasin was, however, more progressive than its British counterpart, promoting the institutionalization of general education in France during the period (Mainardi 86), and this may account for its interest in the Edgeworths.

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Contributor: Serena Baiesi

Location: Surrey Gaol, Horsemonger Lane, London. Detail from Edmund Blunden, ed., Leigh Hunt. A Biography (Archon Books, 1930)

Description: In 1812 Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) wrote that the Prince Regent was a violator of his word and a disreputable libertine in an article published in The Examiner — a radical newspaper he edited with his brother John. As a result he was sentenced to prison for two years from 1813 until 1815 for seditious libel and sent to Surrey Gaol, Horsemonger Lane. After a month spent in a small dwelling, Hunt was moved to a two-room suite in the prison infirmary. Here Hunt spent his days reading, writing, meeting with friends who constantly visited him, and enjoying the company of his wife and children. Even though during his prison days Hunt suffered several nervous attacks, characterised by palpitations, headaches, and uncontrollable anxiety, he describes this period in his autobiography, in many letters, and in reported conversations, as very convivial. Secluded in prison, Hunt became very productive, constantly contributing to The Examiner, writing poetry later collected in Foliage, composing the long poem The Story of Rimini, and beginning his drama The Descent of Liberty. He also became the centre of a very animated literary and liberal intellectual circle, which became legendary as a model for Romantic intellectual sociability.

Continue reading “Leigh Hunt’s Parlour at Surrey Gaol”