ABSTRACT
At a time when the periodical was increasingly focused on superintending literary matters and instantiating class distinctions, William Cobbett’s Political Register remained unflinchingly focused on political initiatives and injustices: Cobbett repeatedly figures the Register as a battlefield and his readers as soldiers fighting the good fight for political justice. This essay shows how Cobbett uses the inexpensive version of his Political Register, the Two-Penny Trash, to reanimate ancient republican ideas of both literacy and citizenship during a moment when such ideas were in danger of disappearing. Using the contemporary literary discourse of sympathy, Cobbett makes classical ideals of reading and writing accessible to a broad readership, positioning his readers as activist citizens rather than consuming subjects. Through the Two-Penny Trash, Cobbett enlists his readers in a campaign of discursive resistance that ultimately challenges both the periodical and the political culture of early nineteenth-century England.
