Description

This book examines the Cockney phenomenon of the late Romantic period - the new metropolitan art and literature of the 1820s and 1830s. 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 and examining Cockneyism as a link between the works of Keats and the early works of Dickens. 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 and examining Cockneyism as a link between the works of Keats and the early works of Dickens. 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. Introduction: the Cockney moment; 1. Leigh Hunt, John Keats and the suburbs; 2. William Hazlitt and the Periodical Press; 3. Liber Amoris and lodging houses; 4. Pierce Egan and life in London; 5. Charles Lamb and the alchemy of the streets; 6. John Martin, John Soane and Cockney art; 7. B. R. Haydon and debtors' prisons; 8. Charles Dickens and Cockney adventures. 'The venturesomeness of the book is in keeping with its subject, and the study often finds original ways to get topography and text to shed light on one another.' London Review of Books 'Challenges us to reconsider our prejudices about the prejudicial slur, 'Cockney' and to accord it the gravity of a significant genre.' The Times Literary Supplement '… a fresh, wonderfully interesting, lucidly written book. Dart's style is a model of accessibility and is unceasingly engaging. He is a fine writer and [this book] is a testament to his wide-ranging abilities as a researcher and critic. This book reaches further into the Victorian period than the title suggests and is superb reading for anyone interested in Romantic and Victorian period cultures …an affectionate, interesting and generative study of Cockneyism, and how it engages with, among other things, architecture, art, city planning, fashion, literature, politics and suburban gardens. Dart's achievement is that he extends debates on Cockneyism out of the tight timeframe of 1812–20, that previous academic studies have largely held them in and, in doing so, expands the cultural spheres that Cockneys engaged with.' Journal of Victorian Culture 'Romanticists are familiar with the Cockney School attacks on the Leigh Hunt circle mounted by J. G. Lockhart in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine beginning in 1817. Gregory Dart offers a fine-grained analysis of deployments of the term 'Cockney' after the attacks, and in so doing manages to cover a remarkable