Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print features work that does not fit comfortably within established boundaries -whether between periods or between disciplines. Uniquely, it combines efforts to engage the power and materiality of print with explorations of gender, race, and class. By attending as well to intersections of literature with the visual arts, medicine, law, and science, the series enables a largescale rethinking of the origins of modernity.
Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt and Charles Dickens all worked as parliamentary reporters, but their experiences in the press gallery have not received much scrutiny. Nikki Hessell's study is the first work to consider all four of these canonical writers as gallery reporters, providing a detailed picture of this intriguing episode in their careers. Hessell challenges preconceived notions about the role that emergent literary genius played in their success as reporters, arguing instead that they were consummate gallery professionals who adapted themselves to the journalistic standards of their day. That professional background fed in to their creative work in unexpected ways. By drawing on a wealth of evidence in letters, diaries and the press, this study provides fresh insights into the ways in which four great writers learnt the craft of journalism and brought those lessons to bear on their career as literary authors.
Building on research by David Erdman, this essay seeks to re-examine Coleridge’s parliamentary reports of 1800 within the context of contemporary reporting practices. A comparison of Coleridge’s accounts of his trips to the House of Commons with standard accounts of parliamentary reporting and its norms shows that Coleridge was given special license by the editor of the Morning Post, Daniel Stuart. While David Erdman focused on the length and accuracy of the reports as a basis for his claim that Coleridge was a superior parliamentary correspondent, this essay argues that it is the space granted to Coleridge’s reports in the Morning Post and the freedom he was afforded as a journalist that demonstrates the importance of his contributions to parliamentary coverage
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