Metropolitan Art and Literature, 1810-1840

by Dart, Gregory

• ISBN13: 9781107024922
• ISBN10: 1107024927
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-10
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

Gregory Dart expands upon existing notions of Cockneys and the 'Cockney School' in the late Romantic period by exploring some of the broader ramifications of the phenomenon in art and periodical literature. He argues that the term was not confined to discussion of the Leigh Hunt circle, but was fast becoming a way of gesturing towards everything in modern metropolitan life that seemed discrepant and disturbing. Covering the ground between Romanticism and Victorianism, Dart presents Cockneyism as a powerful critical currency in this period, which helps provide a link between the works of Leigh Hunt and Keats in the 1810s and the early works of Charles Dickens in the 1830s. Through an examination of literary history, art history, urban history and social history, this book identifies the early nineteenth century figure of the Cockney as the true ancestor of modernity.

Table of Contents

Introduction: the Cockney moment

Leigh Hunt, John Keats and the suburbs

William Hazlitt and the Periodical Press

Liber Amoris and lodging houses

Pierce Egan and life in London

Charles Lamb and the alchemy of the streets

John Martin, John Soane and Cockney art

B. R. Haydon and debtors' prisons

Charles Dickens and Cockney adventures

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