Fugitive print: Robert Southey and S. T. Coleridge’s devil-ballad

Rix, Robert William 2023. Fugitive print: Robert Southey and S. T. Coleridge’s devil-ballad. Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780-1840 (24) , pp. 149-171. 10.18573/romtext.64

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Abstract

The article examines the print history of Robert Southey and S. T. Coleridge’s co-written but anonymously published ‘The Devil’s Thoughts’ (1799). Over more than three decades, the ballad was transcribed, reprinted, and imitated. Most notably, an illustrated edition of 1830—erroneously ascribed to the classical scholar Richard Porson—enjoyed much popularity in the market for print, allegedly selling fifteen-thousand copies. The satirical poem aims its barbs at lucrative but immoral professions (lawyers, apothecaries, and booksellers), but government policies on prisons and support for war with France are also criticised. The article aims to discuss the poetical and political reasons why the two poets were reluctant to acknowledge the authorship of the satire. Examining the ballad’s various reproductions provides an illuminating case study of how nineteenth-century print culture could exploit popular texts that were placed in the public domain. The discussion will be divided into three sections. The first section will examine the poem’s genesis and unpack its most significant allusions in the context of contemporary print satire. The second section will document the reproduction trajectory of a Romantic-period poem that was dispossessed for most of its popular lifespan. The final section will critically examine how entrepreneurs in the book market cashed in on the popularity of the illustrated version (1830) by publishing several derivative compositions in hasty succession.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Cardiff University Press
ISSN:	1748-0116
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	14 November 2023
Date of Acceptance:	16 September 2019
Last Modified:	14 Nov 2023 10:53
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/163894

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