The Liberal and its significance

In a Letter of 16 August 1821 to Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that his "great content" would be in isolation from society, retiring with her and their child "to a solitary island in the sea"; whereas the "other side of the alternative’ could be "to form for ourselves a society of our own class, as much as possible, in intellect or in feelings: & to connect ourselves with the interests of that society. – Our roots were never struck so deeply as at Pisa & the transplanted tree flourishes not". This was one of the earliest signs announcing the formation of what has become known as the Pisan group or Pisan circle in British Romanticism.

This group gathered gradually between 1820 and 1822, and eventually comprised Mary and Percy Shelley, his cousin Thomas Medwin, the Irish expatriate John Taaffe, Professor Francesco Pacchiani who taught at the local University (1801-21), Lord Byron’s friends Count Gamba and his son Pietro Gamba, Byron’s mistress Countess Teresa Gamba Guiccioli, Byron himself, Shelley’s friend Edward John Trelawny, Leigh Hunt, his wife Marianne (and their children), and a host of other figures including the Greek prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos.

Shelley, who possibly had the original idea for a periodical, insisted on inviting Hunt to Pisa as editor-in-chief and contributor, while Hunt’s brother John, in London, would be the publisher. Shelley, Byron and Hunt would be its main contributors and animators. In other words, TL issued from the variegated environment of the Pisan group, its sociable climate and intellectual exchanges, as well as from its ‘excentric’ geographical, political and cultural position in relation to Britain. It was the expression of a community of exiles and expats - controversial figures propounding radical ideas and conceiving literature as an instrument to intervene in politics and society, and as a vehicle for cosmopolitan, transnational principles.

To be sure, in its short life the periodical had no Italian contributors, but it was deeply imbued with Italian literary and culture features: the context of Pisa, Tuscany and Italy bore upon it in countless ways, and it promoted a decidedly Southern viewpoint as an expression of ‘Anglo-Italian radicalism’ (as proclaimed in its subtitle) in contrast to Britain’s rampantly conservative climate in the 1820s.

TL was beset by difficulties from the outset. Setting it up meant confronting the lively but ruthless world of 1820s periodicals and trying to make a place for it in a conflictive and heavily ideologized milieu. Its four issues were assembled in Pisa first, and then, after the ‘colony’ broke up, in Genoa. Its day-to-day running was always a bumpy affair, fraught with interpersonal tensions, and complicated by distance from London. Its end was also accelerated by Shelley’s untimely death, in July 1822, before the publication of the first issue.

These complex dynamics enrich, rather than diminish, the significance of TL, its uniqueness as a groundbreaking, transcultural publication seeking to instigate a sea-change in literature and politics – in politics ‘through’ literature. It was an unprecedented laboratory of new ideas and principles, only seemingly disorganized, but actually informed by an underlying rationale. Indeed, though the contents of its four miscellaneous issues may appear disorderly and discontinuous, they are traversed by countless interconnecting lines.

The four issues contained both pieces expressly written for the periodical, and manuscripts already available for publication. These consisted of a variety of prose pieces, the majority written by Leigh Hunt, such as his Letters from Abroad (one for every issue); the historical narratives The Florentine Lovers and The Giuli Tre also by Leigh Hunt; Mary Shelley’s historical essay Giovanni Villani and the short story A Tale of the Passions and William Hazlitt’s biographical My First Acquaintance with Poets; ‘sketches’ such as one on ‘the Scotch Character’, “Portrait of Alfieri”, and a piece on the Suliotes of the Balkans; and literary criticism such as an article on Shakespeare’s fools by Charles Brown. It also contained long compositions in verse, especially by Byron (“The Vision of Judgment”, “The Blues”, “Heaven and Earth”) and Leigh Hunt (“The Dogs”). There were also translations from Italian and other languages, among which Byron’s version of the first canto of Pulci’s Morgante Maggiore; a section from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso; and Shelley’s translation of parts of Goethe’s Faust. Each issue also offered shorter poems such as epigrams, lyrics and ‘minor pieces’ in verse - both original and translated.

What made TL so unique was that it originated from collaborative creativity; the Italian location of its origins and development; its links with Italian literature as the main focus of many of its articles; and its interlacing of literature and politics (highlighted also by its subtitle “Verse and Prose from the South”). In many ways, this radical, contentious periodical could not have been conceived in England: instead, its geographical dislocation allowed for new experimentations that resulted in a publication that was exceptional in its conception and output. Significantly, it proved controversial both for the conservative press, which saw it as dangerously subversive, and the radical press, which downplayed it by seeing it as a mainly literary organ.

This overview makes clear the overall significance of TL. However limited its circulation and problematic its history, it is a unique cultural landmark. On a general level, its relevance relates to: