The Making of a Radical Romantic Counterculture in Britain

This project challenges the dominant interpretations of the origins, nature and impact of British Romanticism and Radicalism by showing how a collection of seditious reformers, religious enthusiasts, medical quacks, and criminal imposters, who were imprisoned by the British state in Newgate gaol during the 1790s, combined to create a radical-romantic culture. In the face of opposition, this counterculture percolated into the wider society to infiltrate Victorian literature, political and scientific thought, and medical and legal reform. Related outcomes are a sole-authored book of historical analysis, a prison-writing anthology, a set of state trails, and a new edition of Dickens' Barnaby Rudge.