About the Book
It is high treason in British law to 'imagine' the king's death. But after the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, everyone in Britain must have found themselves imagining that the same fate might befall George III. How easy was it to distinguish between fantasising about the death of George and 'imagining' it, in the legal sense of 'intending' or 'designing'? John Barrell examines this question in the context of the political trials of the mid-1790s and the
controversies they generated. He shows how the law of treason was adapted in the years following Louis's death to punish what was acknowledged to be a 'modern' form of treason unheard of when the law had been
framed. The result, he argues, was the invention of a new, an imaginary, a 'figurative' treason, by which the question of who was imagining the king's death, the supposed traitors or those who charged them with treason, became inescapable.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Part One: Sad Stories
The Last Interview
'When Kings Are Hurled From Their Thrones'
Part Two: The Invention of Modern Treason
Convention and Conspiracy
The British Convention
The Trial of Thomas Walker
Secret Committees
The Arming of the L.C.S.
Parliament and Prejudication
The Trials of Watt and Downie
The Charge to the Grand Jury
The Trial of Thomas Hardy
The Trials of Tooke and Thelwall
'A Conspiracy without Conspirators'
Part Three: Alarms and Diversions
The Pop-Gun Plot
Traitor or Lunatic: The Arrest of Richard Brothers
Part Four: Phantoms of Imagination
The Treasonable Practices Act
King Killing
Epilogue: 'Fire, Famine, And Slaughter'
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
John Barrell is Professor of English and Co-Director, Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York
Review :
`Barrell's grasp of legal argument and distortion, his detailed reconstruction of the activities of the reformers and those who sought to restrain them, and his literary eye for ambiguity and rhetorical play make the book a magnificent achievement.'
The Times Higher Education Supplement, December 7 2001
`The detail is meticulous and the account magisterial.'
The Times Higher Education Supplement, December 7 2001
`the story he tells us is not a literary one of conflicting discourses, language, or rhetorics, but a powerful and persuasive account which reveals the increasingly deadly political purposes and intents which motivated the prosecutions in the name of the defence of the established order.'
Mark Philip, Oriel College Oxford, September 2001
a tour de force of interdisciplinary work ... On historical grounds alone, the book is a major contribution to the scholarly literature on the 1790s. Mark Philip, Oriel College, Oxford, September 2001
`innovative ... John Barrell ... offers a fascinating and impressive analysis of imagination. The attractive and lively style engages the reader while clarifying a complex, sophisticated thesis. Barrell elegantly weaves his analysis into a comprehensive narrative, and anyone investigating the 1790s will find this book rewarding.'
Lisa Steffen, EHR, April 2001
`Perhaps the most atonishing aspect of this astonishing work is Barrell's legal expertise, but that may simply reflect the fact tha his other gifts, as cultural, political, and art historian, are already familiar. One effect of the new combination is a rather exhilarating sense of gaining a passe-partout to both extremes of the period's conflicting discourses, from the periwigged legalese of learned judges and commentators to the scurrilous populist
iconography of catoonists and satirists ... Imagining the King's Death is a virtuoso performance, and, if the metaphor were not so inapposite in such a context, one might be tempted to call it a crowning
achievement.'
Nicola Trott
`It is beyond doubt that Barrell knows more than anyone else alive (and possibly dead) about the treason trials of the early 1790s. Page after page, the phenomenal scrupulosity and tenacity of the presentation reveals itself: there can scarcely be a document of the period that has not been consulted and quarried.'
Nicola Trott
`a fascinating rumination on the meanings of words used in the treason trials of the 1790s.'
W.A.Speck, History Today, Vol 51, 5, May 2001
`In this major study, John Barrell has looked more closely than any previous scholar at the language used in many ... public debates.'
H.T. Dickinson, TLS 12.01.01.
`In exploring these debates, Barrell is careful to see the issues involved from both sides ... this is a work of the finest scholarship ... deeply researched, rigorously argued and beautifully written ... handsomely produced.'
H.T. Dickinson, TLS 12.01.01.
`a superb bibliography and a very useful index. What makes it a work of such distinction, however, is its originality.'
H.T. Dickinson, TLS 12.01.01.
`I cannot think of anyone else who could have written this study and who could have wrung so much of value and interest from a detailed study of figurative treason and fantasies of regicide.'
H.T. Dickinson, TLS 12.01.01.
`Historians of all kinds will learn from John Barrell's efforts that they have much to learn from such a detailed, rigorous and sophisticated reading of vitally important political texts.'
H.T. Dickinson, TLS 12.01.01.
`No sign of publishers' 'dumbing down' here and God bless them for it. Professor Barrell has repaid them with a work that is formidably scholarly but compulsively readable, meticulously researched ... and subtly argued.'
Jeffrey Richards, Reviews in History.
`begins with a lucid and instructive consideration of language.'
Jeffrey Richards, Reviews in History.
`Professor Barrell has given us what is probably a definitive analysis of the debates, legal arguments, pamphlets and literary squibs surrounding the treason debate.'
Jeffrey Richards, Reviews in History.
`Barrell, a literary scholar and art historian known for putting politics back into painting, landscape and poetry, shows himself to be a first-class historian. The Archival sources and range of contemporary printed sources on which he bases his study are impressive. In addition, his training as a literary scholar serves him well as a reader of legal texts.'
James Epstein, London Review of Books, 7th Sept. 2000.
