Jon Mee – författare

'If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.'William Godwin, the author's future husband, was not alone in admiring Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Wollstonecraft's most popular book during her lifetime. Not easy to categorize, it is both an arresting travel book and a moving exploration of her personal and political selves. Wollstonecraft set out for Scandinavia just two weeks after her first suicide attempt, on a mission from the lover whose affections she doubted, to recover his silver on a ship that had gone missing. With her baby daughter and a nursemaid, she travelled across the dramatic landscape and wrote sublime descriptions of the natural world, and the events and people she encountered. What emerges most vividly is Wollstonecraft's courage and ability to look beyond her own suffering to the turmoil around her in revolutionary Europe, and a better future.This edition includes further material on the silver ship, Wollstonecraft's personal letters to Imlay during her trip, an extract from Godwin's memoir, and a selection of contemporary reviews. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

William Blake's work presents a stern challenge to historical criticism. Jon Mee's new study meets that challenge by investigating contexts outside the domains of standard literary histories. He traces the distinctive rhetoric of the illuminated books to the French Revolution controversy of the 1790s and Blake's fusion of the diverse currents of radicalism abroad in that decade.Dangerous Enthusiasm presents a more comprehensively politicized picture of Blake than any previous study. It is supported by a wealth of original research which will be of interest to historians and literary critics alike. Blake emerges from these pages as a `bricoleur' who fused the language of London's popular dissenting culture with the more sceptical radicalism of the Enlightenment. His prophetic books are shown to be less the expressions of isolated genius than the products of a complex response to the cultural politics of his contemporaries.

Dangerous Enthusiasm considers Blake's prophetic books written during the 1790s in the light of the French Revolution controversy raging at the time. His works are shown to be less the expressions of isolated genius than the products of a complex response to the cultural politics of his contemporaries.William Blake's work presents a stern challenge to historical criticism. Jon Mee's well-received study meets the challenge by investigating contexts outside the domains of standard literary histories. He traces the distinctive rhetoric of the illuminated books to the French Revolution controversy of the 1790s and Blake's fusion of the diverse currents of radicalism abroad in that decade.The study is supported by a wealth of original research which will be of interest to historians and literary critics alike. Blake emerges from these pages as a 'bricoleur' who fused the language of London's popular dissenting culture with the more sceptical radicalism of the Enlightenment. Dangerous Enthusiasm presents a more comprehensively politicized picture of Blake than any previous study."Mee....places Blake well and correctly...Dangerous Enthusiasm will do much to take Blake out of the somewhat attenuated discourse of analytic academicism and to put his back in a credible place.''a general, incontestable conclusion that, whatever their personal relations, Blake's political opinions, expressed in both his writings and his engravings, were much more Paineite than has ever been previously appreciated. Here in these pages Paine grows in stature, with the eager Blake at his side,,, [a] splendid volume...'

What is enthusiasm? Enthusiasm for most of the eighteenth century was identified with excess of religious feeling, although it came increasingly to be used to describe the unregulated and infectious urgings of the crowd more generally. Yet there was a developing alternative understanding of the term which identified it with a therapeutic influx of feeling in an increasingly formalistic and commodified world. This understanding came to be particularly identified with poetry. Enthusiasm was deemed a necessary condition of poetry by the end of the century, but not a sufficient one. For without proper regulation, poetic enthusiasm might become nothing more than the formless emotionalism of the crowd that the literary elite perceived all around them. Although enthusiasm might be thought of as a distinctly Romantic term, this study looks at the way the inherited discourse of enthusiasm structured most writing of the Romantic period. Many of those new to writing as a career in the period took enthusiasm to license their feelings as a legitimate basis for turning to print. Others took this as an alarming version of the old virus. A few elite writers, Coleridge and Wordsworth included, did not take pains to show they were on the right side of the fence that separated the noble enthusiasm of the poet from either the fanaticism of the crowd or the undisciplined pretensions of hacks and scribblers. Understanding the influence of these processes of regulation and the difficulty faced by writers in clearly articulating the difference they were meant to enshrine is at the centre of Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation.

What is enthusiasm? Enthusiasm for most of the eighteenth century was identified with excess of religious feeling, although it came increasingly to be used to describe the unregulated and infectious urgings of the crowd more generally. Yet there was a developing alternative understanding of the term which identified it with a therapeutic influx of feeling in an increasingly formalistic and commodified world. This understanding came to be particularly identified with poetry. Enthusiasm was deemed a necessary condition of poetry by the end of the century, but not a sufficient one. For without proper regulation, poetic enthusiasm might become nothing more than the formless emotionalism of the crowd that the literary elite perceived all around them. Although enthusiasm might be thought of as a distinctly Romantic term, this study looks at the way the inherited discourse of enthusiasm structured most writing of the Romantic period. Many of those new to writing as a career in the period took enthusiasm to licence their feelings as a legitimate basis for turning to print. Others took this as an alarming version of the old virus. Few elite writers, Coleridge and Wordsworth included, did not take pains to show they were on the right side of the fence that separate the noble enthusiasm of the poet from either the fanaticism of the crowd or the undisciplined pretensions of hacks and scribblers. Understanding the influence of these processes of regulation and the difficulty faced by writers in clearly articulating the difference they were meant to enshrine is at the centre of Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation.

'Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?'Keats's letters have long been regarded as an extraordinary record of poetic development and sout-making. They represent one of the most sustained reflections on the poet's art we have from any of the major English poets. Yet quite apart from the light they throw on the poetry, they are great works of literature in their own right. Written with gusto and occasionally painful candour, they show a powerful intelligence struggling to come to terms with its own mortality. Sometimes bitterly jealous in love and socially and financially insecure, at others playful and confident of his own greatness, Keats interweaves his personal plight with the history of a Britain emerging from the long years of the Napoleonic Wars into a world of political unrest, profound social change, and commercial expansion.This selection of 170 letters, written between 1816 and 1820, includes a new introduction and notes by Jon Mee explaining both the personal and political contexts that brought them to life. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Conversable Worlds addresses the emergence of the idea of 'the conversation of culture'. Around 1700 a new commercial society was emerging that thought of its values as the product of exchanges between citizens. Conversation became increasingly important as a model and as a practice for how community could be created. A welter of publications, in periodical essays, in novels, and in poetry, enjoined the virtues of conversation. These publications were enthusiastically read and discussed in book clubs and literary societies that created their own conversable worlds. From some perspectives, the freedom of a distinctively English conversation allowed for the 'collision' of ideas and sentiments. For others, like Joseph Addison and David Hume, ease of 'flow' was the key issue, and politeness the means of establishing a via media. For Addison and Hume, the feminization of culture promised to make women the sovereigns of what Hume called 'the conversable world'. As the culture seemed to open up to a multitude of voices, anxieties appeared as to how far things should be allowed to go. The unruliness of the crowd threatened to disrupt the channels of communication. There was a parallel fear that mere feminized chatter might replace learning. This book examines the influence of these developments on the idea of literature from 1762 through to 1830. Part I examines the conversational paradigm established by figures like Addison and Hume, and the proliferation of conversable worlds into gatherings like Johnson's Club and Montagu's Bluestocking assemblies. Part II looks at the transition from the eighteenth century to 'Romantic' ideas of literary culture, the question of the withdrawal from mixed social space, the drive to sublimate verbal exchange into forms that retained dialogue without contention in places like Coleridge's 'conversation poems,' and the continuing tensions between ideas of the republic of letters as a space of vigorous exchange as opposed to the organic unfolding of consciousness.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) is among the most brilliant critics and essayists to have ever written in the English language. Combative and insightful, he was close to two generations of romantic poets. His early friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth as a young man inspired him to a literary career, but he became disillusioned with them as apostates from the cause of liberty he associated with the French Revolution. As a mature writer, he inspired John Keats and contributed to his thinking about imagination and poetic character. A forceful commentator on contemporary London, he was also a committed radical, whose 'What is the People?' is an almost visionary statement of a new democratic politics. The Spirit of Controversy collects together Hazlitt's most coruscating and influential essays, using versions as they first appeared, including those that originally found their way into print in the cut and thrust of the newspapers and magazines of his day.

Conversable Worlds addresses the emergence of the idea of 'the conversation of culture'. Around 1700 a new commercial society was emerging that thought of its values as the product of exchanges between citizens. Conversation became increasingly important as a model and as a practice for how community could be created. A welter of publications, in periodical essays, in novels, and in poetry, enjoined the virtues of conversation. These publications were enthusiastically read and discussed in book clubs and literary societies that created their own conversable worlds. From some perspectives, the freedom of a distinctively English conversation allowed for the 'collision' of ideas and sentiments. For others, like Joseph Addison and David Hume, ease of 'flow' was the key issue, and politeness the means of establishing a via media. For Addison and Hume, the feminization of culture promised to make women the sovereigns of what Hume called 'the conversable world'. As the culture seemed to open up to a multitude of voices, anxieties appeared as to how far things should be allowed to go. The unruliness of the crowd threatened to disrupt the channels of communication. There was a parallel fear that mere feminized chatter might replace learning. This book examines the influence of these developments on the idea of literature from 1762 through to 1830. Part I examines the conversational paradigm established by figures like Addison and Hume, and the proliferation of conversable worlds into gatherings like Johnson's Club and Montagu's Bluestocking assemblies. Part II looks at the transition from the eighteenth century to 'Romantic' ideas of literary culture, the question of the withdrawal from mixed social space, the drive to sublimate verbal exchange into forms that retained dialogue without contention in places like Coleridge's 'conversation poems,' and the continuing tensions between ideas of the republic of letters as a space of vigorous exchange as opposed to the organic unfolding of consciousness.

A new literary-cultural history of the Industrial Revolution in Britain from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries.Working against the stubbornly persistent image of “dark satanic mills,” in many ways so characteristic of literary Romanticism, Jon Mee provides a fresh, revisionary account of the Industrial Revolution as a story of unintended consequences. In Networks of Improvement, Mee reads a wide range of texts—economic, medical, and more conventionally “literary”—with a focus on their circulation through networks and institutions. Mee shows how a project of enlightened liberal reform articulated in Britain’s emerging manufacturing towns led to unexpectedly coercive forms of machine productivity, a pattern that might be seen repeating in the digital technologies of our own time. Instead of treating the Industrial Revolution as Romanticism’s “other,” Mee shows how writing, practices, and institutions emanating from these industrial towns developed a new kind of knowledge economy, one where local literary and philosophical societies served as important transmission hubs for the circulation of knowledge.

A new literary-cultural history of the Industrial Revolution in Britain from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries.Working against the stubbornly persistent image of “dark satanic mills,” in many ways so characteristic of literary Romanticism, Jon Mee provides a fresh, revisionary account of the Industrial Revolution as a story of unintended consequences. In Networks of Improvement, Mee reads a wide range of texts—economic, medical, and more conventionally “literary”—with a focus on their circulation through networks and institutions. Mee shows how a project of enlightened liberal reform articulated in Britain’s emerging manufacturing towns led to unexpectedly coercive forms of machine productivity, a pattern that might be seen repeating in the digital technologies of our own time. Instead of treating the Industrial Revolution as Romanticism’s “other,” Mee shows how writing, practices, and institutions emanating from these industrial towns developed a new kind of knowledge economy, one where local literary and philosophical societies served as important transmission hubs for the circulation of knowledge.

This 2004 volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The first part of the volume focuses on broad themes including taste and aesthetics, national identity and empire, and key cultural trends such as sensibility and the gothic. The second part pays close attention to the work of individual writers including Sterne, Blake, Barbauld and Austen, and to the role of literary schools such as the Lake and Cockney schools. The wide scope of the collection, juxtaposing canonical authors with those now gaining new attention from scholars, makes it essential reading for students of eighteenth-century literature and Romanticism.

Charles Dickens became immensely popular early on in his career as a novelist, and his appeal continues to grow with new editions prompted by recent television and film adaptations, as well as large numbers of students studying the Victorian novel. This lively and accessible introduction to Dickens focuses on the extraordinary diversity of his writing. Jon Mee discusses Dickens's novels, journalism and public performances, the historical contexts and his influence on other writers. In the process, five major themes emerge: Dickens the entertainer; Dickens and language; Dickens and London; Dickens, gender, and domesticity; and the question of adaptation, including Dickens's adaptations of his own work. These interrelated concerns allow readers to start making their own new connections between his famous and less widely read works and to appreciate fully the sheer imaginative richness of his writing, which particularly evokes the dizzying expansion of nineteenth-century London.

This 2004 volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The first part of the volume focuses on broad themes including taste and aesthetics, national identity and empire, and key cultural trends such as sensibility and the gothic. The second part pays close attention to the work of individual writers including Sterne, Blake, Barbauld and Austen, and to the role of literary schools such as the Lake and Cockney schools. The wide scope of the collection, juxtaposing canonical authors with those now gaining new attention from scholars, makes it essential reading for students of eighteenth-century literature and Romanticism.

Charles Dickens became immensely popular early on in his career as a novelist, and his appeal continues to grow with new editions prompted by recent television and film adaptations, as well as large numbers of students studying the Victorian novel. This lively and accessible introduction to Dickens focuses on the extraordinary diversity of his writing. Jon Mee discusses Dickens's novels, journalism and public performances, the historical contexts and his influence on other writers. In the process, five major themes emerge: Dickens the entertainer; Dickens and language; Dickens and London; Dickens, gender, and domesticity; and the question of adaptation, including Dickens's adaptations of his own work. These interrelated concerns allow readers to start making their own new connections between his famous and less widely read works and to appreciate fully the sheer imaginative richness of his writing, which particularly evokes the dizzying expansion of nineteenth-century London.

Jon Mee explores the popular democratic movement that emerged in the London of the 1790s in response to the French Revolution. Central to the movement's achievement was the creation of an idea of 'the people' brought into being through print and publicity. Radical clubs rose and fell in the face of the hostile attentions of government. They were sustained by a faith in the press as a form of 'print magic', but confidence in the liberating potential of the printing press was interwoven with hard-headed deliberations over how best to animate and represent the people. Ideas of disinterested rational debate were thrown into the mix with coruscating satire, rousing songs, and republican toasts. Print personality became a vital interface between readers and print exploited by the cast of radicals returned to history in vivid detail by Print, Publicity, and Popular Radicalism in the 1790s. This title is also available as Open Access.

Jon Mee explores the popular democratic movement that emerged in the London of the 1790s in response to the French Revolution. Central to the movement's achievement was the creation of an idea of 'the people' brought into being through print and publicity. Radical clubs rose and fell in the face of the hostile attentions of government. They were sustained by a faith in the press as a form of 'print magic', but confidence in the liberating potential of the printing press was interwoven with hard-headed deliberations over how best to animate and represent the people. Ideas of disinterested rational debate were thrown into the mix with coruscating satire, rousing songs, and republican toasts. Print personality became a vital interface between readers and print exploited by the cast of radicals returned to history in vivid detail by Print, Publicity, and Popular Radicalism in the 1790s. This title is also available as Open Access.

This collection provides students and researchers with a new and lively understanding of the role of institutions in the production, reception, and meaning of literature in the period 1700-1900. The period saw a fundamental transition from a patronage system to a marketplace in which institutions played an important mediating role between writers and readers, a shift with consequences that continue to resonate today. Often producers themselves, institutions processed and claimed authority over a variety of cultural domains that never simply tessellated into any unified system. The collection's primary concerns are British and imperial environments, with a comparative German case study, but it offers encouragement for its approaches to be taken up in a variety of other cultural contexts. From the Post Office to museums, from bricks and mortar to less tangible institutions like authorship and genre, this collection opens up a new field for literary studies.

This collection provides students and researchers with a new and lively understanding of the role of institutions in the production, reception, and meaning of literature in the period 1700-1900. The period saw a fundamental transition from a patronage system to a marketplace in which institutions played an important mediating role between writers and readers, a shift with consequences that continue to resonate today. Often producers themselves, institutions processed and claimed authority over a variety of cultural domains that never simply tessellated into any unified system. The collection's primary concerns are British and imperial environments, with a comparative German case study, but it offers encouragement for its approaches to be taken up in a variety of other cultural contexts. From the Post Office to museums, from bricks and mortar to less tangible institutions like authorship and genre, this collection opens up a new field for literary studies.

The period 1792–94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain. This collection contains the key trials of London radicalism from 1792–94. It includes a general introduction, but each of the trials is introduced in its own right and supported by endnotes and further reading.

The period 1792–94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain. This collection contains the key trials of London radicalism from 1792–94. It includes a general introduction, but each of the trials is introduced in its own right and supported by endnotes and further reading.

The period 1792–94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain. This collection contains the key trials of London radicalism from 1792–94. It includes a general introduction, but each of the trials is introduced in its own right and supported by endnotes and further reading.

The period 1792–94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain. This collection contains the key trials of London radicalism from 1792–94. It includes a general introduction, but each of the trials is introduced in its own right and supported by endnotes and further reading.

The period 1792–94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain. This collection contains the key trials of London radicalism from 1792–94. It includes a general introduction, but each of the trials is introduced in its own right and supported by endnotes and further reading.

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain. After the phenomenal success of Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man", the government moved swiftly to prevent French republican ideas taking hold in Britain, beginning with the prosecution of Paine himself in absentia. This book focuses on this period.

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain. After the phenomenal success of Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man", the government moved swiftly to prevent French republican ideas taking hold in Britain, beginning with the prosecution of Paine himself in absentia. This book focuses on this period.

The period 1792-94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain. After the phenomenal success of Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man", the government moved swiftly to prevent French republican ideas taking hold in Britain, beginning with the prosecution of Paine himself in absentia. This book focuses on this period.

Romanticism and Revolution: A Readerpresents an anthology of the key texts that both defined the debate over the French Revolution during the 1790s and influenced the Romantic authors. Presents readings chronologically to allow readers to experience the unfolding of the debate as it occurred in the 1790sProvides an accessible and in-depth sampling of the major contributors to the Revolution debate, from Price, Burke, and Paine to Wollstonecraft and Godwin

Romanticism and Revolution: A Readerpresents an anthology of the key texts that both defined the debate over the French Revolution during the 1790s and influenced the Romantic authors. Presents readings chronologically to allow readers to experience the unfolding of the debate as it occurred in the 1790sProvides an accessible and in-depth sampling of the major contributors to the Revolution debate, from Price, Burke, and Paine to Wollstonecraft and Godwin