Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book finds an aesthetic element even in routinely antagonistic, politicized and gossipy exchanges between writers and reviewers. It examines the furor that erupted in 1817 over the near-simultaneous appearance of Southey's early revolutionary play, Wat Tyler, and the virulent attack on parliamentary reform in the Quarterly. The book explores how personal attacks and autobiographical self-vindications can undercut yet re-inscribe Romantic models of self-representation. It explores a tangentially related feud of 1817, centered on the fraught relationship between Coleridge and Jeffrey, the Edinburgh editor. The book finds literary elements within the Quarterly itself, examining a series of reviews of books on Arctic exploration by Barrow, the government official behind the Romantic-era push to discover the Northwest Passage. It examines the bemused public reaction to the disagreement between Coleridge and Jeffrey, culminating in brilliantly comic attack on Jeffrey by Blackwood's in 1818.