ABSTRACT
Mary Robinson’s essay on the “Present State of the Manners and Society of the Metropolis,” published in the Monthly Magazine in 1800, is read as a significant statement on the status of print culture and the free press at the turn of the nineteenth century. Suggesting that Robinson’s “Metropolis” essay may have been an catalyst for (or at the very least an counterargument to) Wordsworth’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, this essay traces one possible genealogy of “Metropolis” and its influence through different periodicals, genres, and even authors (in its pirated versions). “Metropolis” is characteristic of Robinson’s later prose works in its engagement with radical print culture and its championing of the free press, particularly in reformist periodicals like the Monthly Magazine and newspapers like the Morning Post.
