Regency Radical: Selected Writings of William Hone (review)

William Hone (1780-1842) has become an important figure in Romantic-era literary studies, but he wrote neither novels, stories, plays, nor familiar essays. He is now best-known for his three trials in 1817 for blasphemy - parodying parts of the Book of Common Prayer. He became famous for his brilliant self-defence and acquittal, the published trial transcripts selling in the many thousands. Romantic-era writing that is taken seriously also includes satire, and Hone is one of the most accomplished Romantic satirists. Hone's best satires are the collaborative works with the illustrator and caricaturist George Cruikshank (1792-1878). We can now give Hone the attention he deserves because narrowly belletristic notions of the literary have given way to a more inclusive canon with explicitly political interests. Jerome McGann's The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse (1993) includes the Hone-Cruikshank masterpiece The Political House That Jack Built (1819), an inclusion remarkable for what it says about literary history and the assumptions underpinning it. Hone has been the object of numerous literary scholars' attention, especially Marcus Wood (1994), Joss Marsh (1998), and Kyle Grimes, whose superb website, 'The William Hone BioText' includes numerous Hone e-texts and important commentary on Hone.

In this, the first comprehensive selection of Hone's writings, David A. Kent and D.R. Ewen expand our understanding of this inventive writer and major figure in the reform movement of the Regency period. Illustrated with over sixty woodcuts by Cruikshank, this book reveals Hone's engagement with such issues as parliamentary reform, religious liberty, reform of asylums, and freedom of the press. Hone's status as a Regency radical was established vividly by E.P. Thompson, whose The Making of the English Working Class (1963) depicted the defiant heroism of the reformist writer in the memorable context of a broadly based social movement. Hone is a perfect figure to illustrate the pertinence of a cultural-studies approach to Romantic-era writing because his oeuvre comprises such a rich and multilayered social text.

Kent and Ewen begin their book with a helpful introduction and chronology. By following the notes in the introduction one learns what is current in Hone studies, but the authors have also provided a carefully conceived 'Selected Bibliography' at the book's end for the most relevant scholarship on radicalism, satire, and the history of reform. Their book is organized into four parts, each of which is clearly introduced. The first section on Hone's three trials has the satires for which he was prosecuted in 1817, as well as trial transcripts. It is delightful to read how Hone establishes rapport with his first jury by complaining how the government caused him dangerous constipation as it forbade him to relieve himself when he made his urgent request. There is a spontaneity, humour, passion, and unpredictable drama in these trials that provide pleasurable reading.

The four complete Hone-Cruikshank reformist satires that make up the second part are beautifully reproduced: The Political House That Jack Built (1819), The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder (1820), 'Non Mi Ricordo!' (1820), and The Political Showman - At Home! (1821). These are some of the most entertaining examples of Romantic-era political art that one will ever encounter. Dealing with the Peterloo Massacre, the Queen Caroline Affair, and political corruption, these texts undermine aristocratic culture at various levels, including the level of visual representation.

The third section provides a selection from Hone's antiquarian writings - The Every-Day Book (1825-26), The Table Book (1827), and The Year Book (1832). A folklorist avant la lettre, Hone collected popular customs, practices, and legends that he himself knew and that he acquired from others. Rather than seeming to be antithetical to his reformist writings, these antiquarian works represent another kind of resistance to both aristocratic and emergent capitalist culture.

The final section of letters gives us a colourful picture of Hone the man in his life-world, dealing with bankruptcy and other...