ABSTRACT
The years between 1785 and 1840 witnessed a veritable industry of satirical writing, much of which, with the exception of the major canonical writers, is little read. Satire ‘is the dominant generic construct, the modal anvil over and against which early-nineteenth-century literature gets clustered, hammered out, formed, and hardened into a recognizable poetic movement, to be ensconced in literary history as uniquely representative of the spirit of the age’. In the political literature, it is Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, that sets the conservative and Tory schema. Burke is prominently and positively featured in one of the most politically reactionary satires of the 1790s. The focal point for much radical satire in the early nineteenth century continued to be George, Prince of Wales, later Prince Regent. British satire between 1785 and 1840 is a highly diverse literary form that investigates a bewildering array of events, political processes, religious and political ideologies, and personalities.
