Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part One: The ‘Mental Exercises’: List of Members and Scribes’ Rota
- Members’ Agreement
- On Study
- On Honour
- On Argument
- On Imagination and Judgement
- Hope
- On General Character
- On the Pleasures and Uses of the Imagination
- On Politeness
- Agis
- The Charms of Sleep
- Friendship & Charity
- An Ode to the PASS
- Garreteer's Epistle
- A Mathematical Love Letter
- On seeing a Rose in the Possession of a Lady at the SMHPABNASL
- On Courage
- Irritus to the Manager
- Marriage is Honourable in All
- Friendship
- On Mind and the Duty of Improving It
- A word for Page 73
- On the Early Introduction of Females to Society
- Memoranda
- On prematurely Forming Opinion of Characters
- On the Death of the Princess Charlotte
- Affectation
- On Conscious Approbation
- The Origin of a Critic—A Fable
- Reflections on Death
- On Avarice
- On Tradesmen
- On Laws
- On the Changes of the mind
- On Marriage
- On Calumny
- Letter to the Secretary
- Enigma
- On Marriage
- Effeminacy & Luxury
- A Brother's Letter to Mr. Deeble
- Junius & Tullia
- A Ramble to Melincourt
- On Triflers
- 139th Psalm
- Infancy
- At a Village on the Dunchurch Road
- Part Two: Contexts: Faraday and Self–Education Faraday, from the Correspondence (1812–16)
- Faraday, from Observations on the Means of Obtaining Knowledge (1817)
- Faraday, from ‘Observations on the Inertia of the Mind’ (1818)
- Faraday's indexes to eighteenth-century periodicals
- Faraday, from ‘Observations on Mental Education’ (1854)
- The Improvement of the Mind: Isaac Watts, from The Improvement of the Mind (1741)
- Samuel Johnson, from The Rambler (1751)
- Thomas Williams, from The Moral Tendencies of Knowledge (1815)
- Isaac Taylor, from Self-Cultivation Recommended: Or, Hints to a Youth Leaving School (1817)
- From The Black Dwarf (1819)
- Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein (1818)
- Henry Brougham, from Practical Observations upon the Education of the People (1825)
- The Pleasures of the Imagination: Joseph Addison, from The Spectator (1712)
- Mark Akenside, from The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)
- Index
From The Black Dwarf (1819)
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part One: The ‘Mental Exercises’: List of Members and Scribes’ Rota
- Members’ Agreement
- On Study
- On Honour
- On Argument
- On Imagination and Judgement
- Hope
- On General Character
- On the Pleasures and Uses of the Imagination
- On Politeness
- Agis
- The Charms of Sleep
- Friendship & Charity
- An Ode to the PASS
- Garreteer's Epistle
- A Mathematical Love Letter
- On seeing a Rose in the Possession of a Lady at the SMHPABNASL
- On Courage
- Irritus to the Manager
- Marriage is Honourable in All
- Friendship
- On Mind and the Duty of Improving It
- A word for Page 73
- On the Early Introduction of Females to Society
- Memoranda
- On prematurely Forming Opinion of Characters
- On the Death of the Princess Charlotte
- Affectation
- On Conscious Approbation
- The Origin of a Critic—A Fable
- Reflections on Death
- On Avarice
- On Tradesmen
- On Laws
- On the Changes of the mind
- On Marriage
- On Calumny
- Letter to the Secretary
- Enigma
- On Marriage
- Effeminacy & Luxury
- A Brother's Letter to Mr. Deeble
- Junius & Tullia
- A Ramble to Melincourt
- On Triflers
- 139th Psalm
- Infancy
- At a Village on the Dunchurch Road
- Part Two: Contexts: Faraday and Self–Education Faraday, from the Correspondence (1812–16)
- Faraday, from Observations on the Means of Obtaining Knowledge (1817)
- Faraday, from ‘Observations on the Inertia of the Mind’ (1818)
- Faraday's indexes to eighteenth-century periodicals
- Faraday, from ‘Observations on Mental Education’ (1854)
- The Improvement of the Mind: Isaac Watts, from The Improvement of the Mind (1741)
- Samuel Johnson, from The Rambler (1751)
- Thomas Williams, from The Moral Tendencies of Knowledge (1815)
- Isaac Taylor, from Self-Cultivation Recommended: Or, Hints to a Youth Leaving School (1817)
- From The Black Dwarf (1819)
- Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein (1818)
- Henry Brougham, from Practical Observations upon the Education of the People (1825)
- The Pleasures of the Imagination: Joseph Addison, from The Spectator (1712)
- Mark Akenside, from The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)
- Index
Summary
[In contrast with the moderate voices of Williams and Taylor above, and the reformist Brougham below, Thomas Wooler's The Black Dwarf sees popular education as inevitably leading to radical social change. Running from 1817 to 1824,The Black Dwarf was one of several important radical periodicals of the time; as Kevin Gilmartin notes, it was ‘filled with the rhetoric of improvement,’ which it used to powerfully ‘oppositional’ ends. Wooler, like the CPS member and radical publisher William Hone, was a victim of repressive legislation against the press; in 1817 he was prosecuted twice for seditious libel. He won one trial and successfully appealed against the guilty verdict in the other, but was tried again in 1819 on political grounds, and was this time convicted and jailed. The passage below, which was published during the final months of the essay-circle's existence, pictures popular education as part of a conflict with the armed forces of the state; both the rhetoric and the premises of Wooler's claims would probably have horrified Faraday and his friends, since they reflect the antagonistic model of the class politics of education and popular enlightenment which the essay-circle does its best to ignore.]
The progress of public opinion is now unimpeded. The heartless enemies of reform content themselves with holding their entrenchments, in the forlorn hope of defending the citadel of corruption from our assaults. Defeated in the field, notwithstanding the glitter of the bayonets in their centre, and embarrassed in their finances, they dare not venture to cope with us openly any longer. By all the petty artifices congenial to little and malignant minds, they still endeavour to irritate, and to injure: and in some instances they still succeed. […] Their agents are actively on the watch for a sortie upon any supposed defenceless friend of freedom; but for open, honest warfare with us they have no further stomach. They scowl at us with the angry glare of a toothless tiger—‘willing to wound, but yet afraid to strike’. In the meanwhile, KNOWLEDGE, the TRUE FORCE, is rapidly embodying the energies of reason. Thousands of enquirers throng to the means and opportunity of instruction; and the thirst for information is too strong to receive any serious check.
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- Michael Faraday’s Mental ExercisesAn Artisan Essay-Circle in Regency London, pp. 224 - 225Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2008