Offbeat Radicals
By Geoffrey Ashe
The French Revolution sent shock waves throughout Europe at the end of the 18th Century. Just across the Channel, and mired in poverty and injustice, England was as rife for revolutionary change as France. Many of its leading intellectuals were keen to stoke the fires, and initially applauded the actions of their neighbours. But the Reign of Terror that quickly took hold after the first storming of the Bastille was to have a serious effect on Britain’s own radicals.
Former advocates, such as poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, quickly recognised the bloody shortcomings of the revolution. The free thinkers of England looked on and took note. By the early 19th Century, they had begun to assemble a tradition of dissent aimed at a more benevolent social reform, and seeking a more just society. The ruling classes would see their power slowly diminish, without the rolling of heads.
Geoffrey Ashe turns here to a most intriguing period of British historical thought. Drawing on the lives and works of a unique collection of scholars, philosophers and literary figures – among them Wordsworth, Shelley, William Blake, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and George Eliot – he shows how the heirs of English radical thought sowed the seeds for future British reform.
This is an excellent study, illustrating how ideas initially seen as offbeat infiltrate into mainstream culture – as true today as it was back then.
Buy from Amazon
