Romanticism was not only heterogeneous and disunited. It also had to face the hostile counter-movement of the Enlightenment and Augustan Neoclassicism, still going strong at the time of and in the decades following the French Revolution due to support from the ruling Establishment (the ancien regime of the Crown and Church of England). Neoclassicists regarded Romanticism as a heteretical amalgam of dissenting new schools, which threatened the monopoly of the Classical Tradition. The acrimonious debates in aesthetics and politics were conducted with the traditional strategies of the classical ars disputandi on both sides. Under the duress of the heaviest satirical attacks, Romanticism began gradually to see itself as one movement, giving rise to the problematic opposition of Classical and Romantic. The construction of this rough divide, however, was indispensable for the clarification of different positions in the hubbub of conflicting voices, and has also proved critical in literary and cultural studies which cannot do without such subsumptions. The Classical Tradition, encompassing Christianity, emerges as an ongoing event from Greek and Latin antiquity running through to our time.

The French Revolution ignited the biggest debate on politics and society in Britain since the Civil War 150 years earlier. The public controversy lasted from the initial, positive reaction to French events in 1789 to the outlawing of the radical societies in 1799. This Cambridge Companion highlights the energy, variety and inventiveness of the literature written in response to events in France and the political reaction at home. It contains thirteen specially commissioned essays by an international team of historians and literary scholars, a chronology of events and publications, and an extensive guide to further reading. Six essays concentrate on the principal writers of the Revolution controversy: Burke, Paine, Godwin and Wollstonecraft. Others deal with popular radical culture, counter-revolutionary culture, the distinctive contribution of women writers, novels of opinion, drama, and poetry. This volume will serve as a comprehensive yet accessible reference work for students, advanced researchers and scholars.

This book, originally published in 1979, traces the growth of English radicalism from the time of Wilkes to the final suppression of the radical societies in 1799. The metropolitan radical movement is described in the context of the general democratic evolution of the West in the age of the American and French revolutions, by showing how its direction was influenced by events in France, Scotland and Ireland. The book emphasizes the importance of the great regional centres of provincial radicalism and of the evolution of a local, radical press. It also throws light on the impact of Painite radicalism, the origins of Anglo-french hostilities in 1793, the English treason trials of 1794, the protest movement of 1795 and the final phase of Anglo-Irish clandestine republicanism.