The Liberal State of the Art

State of the Art

The scholarly and critical state of the art is heterogeneous and discontinuous in various interrelated areas. There is no critical edition of The Liberal available. In terms of critical literature, few specific investigations have been carried out. Drawing on manuscripts, letters, periodicals, and unpublished materials, Marshall’s pioneering monograph Byron, Shelley, Hunt and The Liberal (1960) is still the most comprehensive study on the subject. Yet, as Marshall himself admits, the book aims at reporting and summarising the contents of the periodical, rather than critically investigating them.

Moreover, despite his vast archival research, there remains much primary material to be recovered. Unexamined letters and documents can illuminate the interrelations linking Byron, Hunt and Mary Shelley in Italy after the death of Percy Shelley, as well as the relationships between the Pisan Circle and the radical journalist William Hazlitt.

Further insights into the reception of The Liberal can emerge from the annotations in first editions preserved in libraries and archives in Italy and elsewhere. In terms of examinations on specific themes, there are some analyses focusing on single contributors to the periodical, eg Leigh Hunt (Holden, Morrison, Webb) or Byron (Franklin, Gross). These, however, tend only to approach an essentially collective periodical from the partial perspectives of its single contributors. Indeed, as one commentator suggests, recent studies tend to endorse the position that The Liberal “cannot be considered a complete, consistent project either on the basis of its political direction, or in terms  of its contributions” (Schoina, 2009). In contrast, Hay contends that, despite the uneven quality of its content, the journal “reveals a surprisingly coherent political philosophy” (2008). Stabler endorses this argument, observing that “the project was more consistent, coherent, and successful than previous critics have allowed”.

Our proposed project expands on the latter positions, promoting investigations of The Liberal as a collaborative and homogeneously structured cultural document. Related to the (admittedly not very abundant) studies on The Liberal are examinations of the so-called Cockney school in Pisa or “Pisan Circle” (Cox 1998). However, available work does not adequately address the connections between this coterie and its Anglo-Italian cultural milieu in relation to the specific contents of the periodical. Critics have explored Romantic Anglo-Italian relations both in the past (Brand) and more recently (Crisafulli, Saglia and Bandiera), but the topic requires further extensive examinations of the historical, political and cultural contexts of the Romantics’ Italian experience, and the role of The Liberal within it.

Another thematic area concerns hybrid (Anglo-Italian) identities emerging among the members of the Pisan Circle. Research here has produced revisionist readings of Byron, Percy Shelley, Leigh Hunt and Mary Shelley (Schoina 2009), but much remains to be done in the case of Leigh Hunt, whose work and personality have long been dismissed by critics (except for his role as leader of the London Cockneys). Recent studies (Roe, Steier) have re-evaluated Hunt’s artistic achievements and his contribution to the literary production of the Pisan Circle. Particularly, Cox’s groundbreaking “Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School” suggests a new approach to Hunt’s writings in close relation to Byron’s and Shelley’s works.

Similarly, further attention needs to be given to Byron as a coterie poet and as a committed member of a poetical group (Mole) in light of The Liberal. In terms of the history of ideas and political-ideological conceptualizations, recent scholarship has highlighted the relevance of the Hunt-Byron-Shelley editorial enterprise in relation to the changing semantics of “liberal/liberalism” (Gross, 2001; Leonhard 2004, 2012) within an expanding international context (Zanou 2018, Saglia 2017). Several members of the research group have relevant expertise in this area, which has resulted in two panels at recent international conferences on Romantic studies. However, to date there is little literary-critical investigation of Romantic-period liberalism, and, save for sporadic articles (Hay), it only occasionally touches on The Liberal. Consequently, there is ample scope for an in-depth investigation of The Liberal's significance for the development of notions of liberalism in nineteenth-century Britain and the rest of Europe. Such an analysis can be carried out through a wide-ranging scrutiny of the entire periodical as a homogeneous literary corpus. In addition, as the key outcome of this project, the electronic edition provides the groundbreaking tool to carry out further cultural, intellectual as well as literary investigations.