Book contents
- Percy Shelley in Context
- Percy Shelley in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Part I Life and Death
- Part II Intellectual, Cultural, and Political Contexts
- Chapter 7 Ancient Philosophy
- Chapter 8 Ancient Poetry
- Chapter 9 English Literature to 1792
- Chapter 10 European Literature, Dante to Rousseau
- Chapter 11 The Visual and Plastic Arts
- Chapter 12 The Radical Press
- Chapter 13 Shelley and the Lake Poets
- Chapter 14 Mary Shelley
- Chapter 15 Thomas Love Peacock
- Chapter 16 Byron and Shelley
- Chapter 17 Keats and Shelley
- Chapter 18 Revolution and Reform
- Chapter 19 Political Economy
- Chapter 20 Empire
- Chapter 21 Shelley’s Sexless Sexuality
- Chapter 22 The British Empiricists
- Chapter 23 The Sciences
- Chapter 24 Religion
- Part III Writings
- Part IV Afterlives
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 12 - The Radical Press
from Part II - Intellectual, Cultural, and Political Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2025
- Percy Shelley in Context
- Percy Shelley in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Part I Life and Death
- Part II Intellectual, Cultural, and Political Contexts
- Chapter 7 Ancient Philosophy
- Chapter 8 Ancient Poetry
- Chapter 9 English Literature to 1792
- Chapter 10 European Literature, Dante to Rousseau
- Chapter 11 The Visual and Plastic Arts
- Chapter 12 The Radical Press
- Chapter 13 Shelley and the Lake Poets
- Chapter 14 Mary Shelley
- Chapter 15 Thomas Love Peacock
- Chapter 16 Byron and Shelley
- Chapter 17 Keats and Shelley
- Chapter 18 Revolution and Reform
- Chapter 19 Political Economy
- Chapter 20 Empire
- Chapter 21 Shelley’s Sexless Sexuality
- Chapter 22 The British Empiricists
- Chapter 23 The Sciences
- Chapter 24 Religion
- Part III Writings
- Part IV Afterlives
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines Shelley’s relation to the periodical print culture associated with the revival of political radicalism in the 1810s. It offers a summary overview of the generic and ideological diversity of the reformist press in this period and provides a broadly chronological account of Shelley’s interactions with radical journalism. His religious scepticism brought him into contact, early in his career, with the ‘unrespectable’ literary milieu associated with Spencean freethought, but Shelley soon moved into the more socially congenial circle of the celebrated poet and reformist newspaper editor Leigh Hunt. Despite his enduring concerns about the potentially revolutionary consequences of cheap print, Shelley was a committed reader of William Cobbett’s Political Register, and the influence on his writing of the post-war radical press – including both the Register and Hunt’s Examiner – was sustained even after the poet’s departure from England in 1818.
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- Percy Shelley in Context , pp. 91 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025