The Austens and student journalism of the 1780S and 90s.

Geng, Li-Ping

THE LATE 1780s saw the rise of student journalism in England; in a matter of a few years several periodicals sprang up, one after another, in a number of schools: the Microcosm (1786-1787) of Eton College, the Trifler (1788-1789) of St. Peter's College, the Flagellant (1792) of Westminster School, (1) Olla Podrida (1787-1788) of St. Mary Magdalen College, and the Loiterer (1789-1790) of St. John's College, these last two of Oxford University. Although these school and university publications were initially intended for local audiences, three of them were later collected into volumes, published and sold in more than one edition. These three--the Microcosm (short for Microcosmopolitan), Olla Podrida, and the Loiterer--represent the scope and depth of the student journalism vibrant at this time. (2) A close acquaintance with these periodicals, especially the Loiterer edited by James Austen, will add to our understanding not only of the popular sentiments in late eighteenth-century England but also of the Austen siblings who were beginning to test their literary prowess.

All three of the periodicals were run by amateurs, and none of them lasted long. The Microcosm was started by an Etonian called Gregory Griffin, who was helped by several of his fellow Etonians, many of whom later became senior officials in the Pitt government. (3) This weekly periodical began on 6 November 1786 and ended on 30 July 1787; it came out every Monday except during the winter vacation (between mid-December and mid-January); (4) in total, forty numbers were issued. Olla Podrida was projected and edited by a demy (5) named Thomas Monro at Magdalen College, with the assistance of many of his friends, including Bishop Horne, then the president of Magdalen. It ran every Saturday from 17 March 1787 to 12 January 1788, during which time forty-four numbers were issued. The Loiterer, edited by James Austen, who stayed as a Fellow at St. John's College after graduation, also appeared every Saturday. This weekly made its debut on 31 January 1789 and continued for almost fourteen months until its editor wound it up on 20 March 1790. In all sixty issues had been published.

The Loiterer, unlike the Microcosm and Olla Podrida before it, was from the very beginning decidedly more ambitious. Although its format is very similar to its two predecessors, its style is vastly superior. It is consistently elegant and relatively free from verbosity, if only because the twenty-four-year-old James Austen himself was the main contributor and because Henry Austen and probably Jane Austen participated. James Austen's literary talent was highly valued by Mrs. Austen, who praised her son as possessing "Classical knowledge, Literary Taste, and the power of Elegant Composition ... in the highest degree" (Austen Papers 265). This eldest son, as we know, wrote poetry, organized amateur theatrical performances at Steventon when home on vacations from Oxford, and wrote his own prologues and epilogues for the plays that the Austens staged at home. The Loiterer was praised by the Critical Review for its "easy and elegant style," its "faithful descriptions of life and manners," and for its editor's "judicious precepts and apposite examples." (6) This weekly was initially printed and sold--for threepence--at Oxford by a bookseller named C. S. Rann; but beginning with the fifth issue it was also sold in London by Egerton, who was to publish Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice during the early years of Regency, and in Birmingham by Pearson and Rollason. A month later two more booksellers joined in: W. Meyler of Bath, and Cowslade and Smart of Reading.

Since the beginning of the eighteenth century, periodicals had flourished to become a major form of literary publication. Not surprisingly, all three periodicals paid tribute, invariably in their initial issues, to the Spectator and the Rambler. However, emulation was not their aim. The editor of the Microcosm stated that there was no intention to "rival these illustrious Predecessors" (no. 1). They do not claim the high moral purpose that Addison and Steele and especially Johnson vigorously advocated. In fact, the goal is to entertain rather than instruct. The editor of the Microcosm informs the reader that "[m]y design is to amuse, and as far as I am able to instruct" (no. 1); the editor of Olla Podrida tells the reader that he is not going to conduct "dismal inquiries into the nature of truth and falsehood, to the apothegms of moralists, the discoveries of philosophers, or the disquisitions of the learned" (no. 1). He simply wants the reader to sit down and feed of the "olla podrida," literally a traditional Spanish and Latin-American dish of highly seasoned meat and vegetables.

This deliberately light-hearted approach represents a noticeable departure from the earlier models of the periodical, which strive to instruct as well as entertain. The Spectator, for example, "endeavours to Cultivate and Polish Human Life, by promoting Virtue and Knowledge, and by recommending whatsoever may be either Useful or Ornamental to Society" (1). The Rambler, which is serious in tone and weighty in thought, is committed to exorcising moral flaws and deviant fancies from the human species. In the last number (no. 208) of his Rambler, Johnson proudly owns that he has "never complied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled [his] readers to discuss the topick of the day," and that he has "allotted few papers to the idle sports of imagination" (316, 319). By contrast these amateur periodicals would appear to lack a steady moral purpose, for all they really want, according to the motto that James Austen adopts for each of his sixty issues, is to "Speak of us as we are."

Another departure from the earlier tradition, which is no less significant, is the change in physical format: from the half-sheet folio--with two or three columns on each page--of the Tatler and the Spectator to a more compact version of five to twelve pages of single columns. Admittedly, such typographical evolution, which gives weight to the single essay, had been in practice for some time (e.g., Johnson adopted this format in the middle of the century). The unanimous preference of these periodicals for the single-essay format, interspersed with the letter-to-the-editor ploy and other familiar devices, however, suggests that the trend may have become the norm for such publications by the late eighteenth century.

These periodicals, unlike their illustrious predecessors under the care of men of letters, were not intended to run for long. One obvious reason is the temporary status of the non-professional editors. A less obvious, though more likely, reason is that the editors of these periodicals might never have wanted to commit themselves to a long-term project in the first place. They might have simply counted on publishing enough material to collect and reprint, often in two volumes, as books. Since these periodicals were all published weekly, it would take on average about a year before sufficient issues could be gathered for book publication. In point of fact, all three periodicals were collected and published as books, with various degrees of success, as soon as the weekly ceased publication.

In 1790, only two years after it stopped publication, a two-volume collection of the Microcosm had already been released in a third edition. Olla Podrida, ceasing publication in early 1788, had seen a second London edition in two volumes by the end of the same year. This edition was reprinted in 1820 and then again in 1827. In both cases the pagination is continuous. As for the Loiterer, its editor announced just before the weekly came to a close: "Those Subscribers who wish to collect these Essays into volumes, may be furnished in the course of a few weeks with a Table of Contents, Errata, &c, by applying to Mess. Prince and Cooke; of whom may be had, compleat Sets, or single Numbers" (no. 60). The fact that James Austen had already thought of printing the table of contents--two separate ones in this case--and the errata--one for each volume--before the final issue came out is a clear indication of a "book" project long brewing in the mind of the editor. The Loiterer, however, was never collectively reprinted by James Austen, but it did attract the attention of two Irish booksellers, who published a "pirated" edition in Dublin in 1790 in the form of a book with continuous pagination. (7)

Topics in these three periodicals tend to cover a wide range; there are humorous pieces on boxing, jest, laughter, manners, drunkenness, epitaphs, translation, superstition (either Irish or Scottish), fashion, entertainment, the stock market, the urban expansion, and so on. Nevertheless, not all essays in these periodicals are light reading. Serious topics do appear from time to time, ranging from education, matrimony, publishing, electioneering, the conduct of Parliament, attitudes toward religion, commentaries on poetry, fiction, and discursive prose (by authors as diverse as Homer, Chaucer, Dryden, Pope, Addison and Steele, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and Johnson) to observations on Locke, Hume, Rousseau, the American War (i.e., of Independence), and the French Revolution to boot.

All three periodicals, for example, touch upon the war in North America, which had ended just a few years earlier. Without exception, the editorial commentaries show sympathy for the rebellious Americans and disapproval of the North ministry. An essay in the Loiterer, through the persona of a retired Scottish soldier, reveals the popular English sentiments toward the American War:

   My entrance into life was marked with the features of my
   character.--It was as a volunteer in a Highland regiment, raised in
   the course of the war to serve in North America. Thither I carried
   all the martial spirit that an enthusiastic ardor for the honor of
   that name and country which I believed to be a part of my
   existence, could inspire.--But there it was ! first learnt to doubt
   the propriety of those ideas that had hitherto regulated all my
   actions. In the Americans I saw a people illustrious without rank,
   united without subordination; and who in the equal claims of
   citizens sunk all the pride of distinction, while they exercised
   the virtues I believed inherent in it. (no. 41)

One of the Microcosm essays even makes a bold prophecy about the future of the United States:

   When the wounds of national dissention are healed, and that
   liberty, for which it has struggled against the authority of the
   Parent Country, is established on the firm basis of acknowledged
   constitutional rights, the Phoenomenon of an independent
   Transatlantic state may give the fatal blow to European Politics,
   and America perhaps arise the destined seat of a future Empire.
   (no. 5)

Although many of the essays discuss serious issues, their tone is jocular and their style relaxed. Rhetorical devices such as irony, mockery, satire, and even burlesque neutralize the ponderousness of the subject matter and turn the weeklies into entertaining social forums instead of austere moral pulpits. A good example is an anecdote concerning a grocer's revolutionary pamphlets. Recent studies by scholars in American history and transatlantic literature, focusing on the role that the English political pamphlets had played in the pre-Revolutionary debate as well as during the war itself, show that dissent pamphlets, such as Paine's "Common Sense" (1776) and Bishop Shipley's "Speech on the Bill for Altering the Charters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay" (1773), were widely read in the colony and frequently cited as justifications for the American resistance to the mother country's assault on colonial liberties. (8) This political phenomenon of exporting English liberal ideology to the colony is humorously observed by an author in Olla Podrida, who describes how he one day chanced upon "a large hogshead" at the grocer's, "filled with old pamphlets, most of them on subjects of liberty, nonconformity, and whiggism, which Tim [the grocer] was going to ship off for a Yankee shop-keeper in New-England" (no. 4). The author goes on: "Whatever sage politicians may have said to the contrary, it is not at all to be doubted, that the importation of this cargo spread the wild-fire of rebellion among the Bostonians, and was the sole cause of the late bloody and expensive war" (no. 4). Similarly, although the Bastille and state prisoners are mentioned in two of these periodicals, French manners rather than French politics prove to be the focus. An essay in Olla Podrida observes how "[t]he French imagine that England produces as much gold as the coast of Africa" and therefore try to cheat the visiting "monsieur John Bull" out of his money by inflating his bills (no. 36).

Literary criticism is a staple part of these periodicals, though its quality is uneven. It is often guilty of superficiality, yet it surprises the reader from time to time with flashes of wit and cogent argument. For example, Gregory Griffin, the editor of the Microcosm, chides Pope for "carry[ing] his regard for simplicity so far, as to shew himself guilty of inaccuracy and inattention" (no. 9). A case in point is the well-known couplet from The Rape of the Lock:

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,

And wretches hang that jurymen may dine. (3.21-22) Griffin comments, "That judges in England never sign a sentence is well known; and hunger, whatever effect it might have had on the jurymen of antient days, with those of modern times seems to operate rather as an incitement to mercy" (no. 9).

A significant portion of the literary criticism in these periodicals concerns the novel as a literary form. One suspects that the students then were generally well read in popular fiction (so Henry Tilney speaks more truly than he sounds in Northanger Abbey when he tells Catherine Morland what an avid novel reader he is). The assessment of the novel in the periodical essays is usually just and appropriate, rivaling in merit that in the earlier periodical tradition.

Dr. Johnson's evaluation of novels in his Rambler no. 4 is well known. As early as 1750, when the novel was still in its early stage of development, he commented on the difference between the new phenomenon and its predecessor, the traditional romance. Although keenly aware of the differences between the two competing forms of literary narrative, he seemed to lack the critical vocabulary to delineate them. Instead, he borrowed from the existing terminology of poetry and theatre, referring to the novel as "the comedy of romance" and judging it "by the rules of comic poetry" (19). By contrast, novel criticism in these periodicals seems more sophisticated by virtue of being precise, systematic, and theoretical, and therefore superior in general. One essay in the Microcosm points out that the two narrative forms share the same "characteristic of ... Fiction" though to "very different degrees":

   The Fiction of Romance is restricted by no fetters of reason, or of
   truth; but gives a loose to lawless imagination, and transgresses
   at will the bounds of time and place, of nature and possibility.
   The fiction of the other on the contrary is shackled with a
   thousand restraints; is checked in her most rapid progress by the
   barriers of reason; and bounded in her most excursive flights by
   the limits of probability. (no. 26)

After illustrating the difference in convention between the two literary phenomena with vivid examples, the author of the essay rhetorically characterizes what Ian Watt would affirm nearly two hundred years later:

   But where shall we find such a thorough knowledge of nature, such
   an insight into the human heart, as is displayed by our NOVELISTS;
   when, as an agreeable relief from the insipid sameness of polite
   insincerity, they condescend to pourtray in coarse colours, the
   workings of more genuine passions in the bosom of Dolly, the
   dairy-maid, or Hannah, the house-maid? (no. 26)

But the mature critical pieces in these periodicals go further than recognizing the prominent departure of the eighteenth-century novel from the earlier romances. They investigate, for example, the causes of the rise of sentimental fiction and are astute enough to expose its adverse effects. Some writers skillfully resort to irony and satire to deflate the sentimental fad. In the Loiterer essays, for example, James, Henry, and probably their younger sister Jane Austen consistently take issue with the sentimental fiction that had come to dominate the circulating library, feeding the frenzy of its predominantly female readership.

Henry Austen rightly blames the French influence for the rage of sentimental fiction in England: "What I here allude to, Sir, is, that excess of sentiment and susceptibility, which the works of the great Rousseau chiefly introduced, which every subsequent Novel has since foster'd, and which the voluptuous manners of the present age but too eagerly embrace" (no. 47). He also points out, tongue-in-cheek, the mercenary nature of such excessive sentimentality:

   Let her avoid love and friendship as she wishes to be admired and
   distinguished. For by these means she will always keep her own
   secrets and prefer her own Interest. No inconsiderate Affection
   will deter her from breaking a promise, or from sacrificing a
   previous to a more advantageous Engagement. No ridiculous principle
   of Consistency will draw a tear from her when parting from a Parent
   or a Friend. She will return the blessings of the one and the
   embrace of the other with a smile, and fly unreluctant to
   Dissipation and Frivolity. (no. 27)

Henry Austen's attitude here seems to anticipate his younger sister's "The Three Sisters," "Love and Freindship" and Lady Susan, as well as several of her novels.

But a remarkable essay, in the guise of an impudent letter "To the AUTHOR of the LOITERER," appears to bring the fledgling Jane Austen to the fore. Issue no. 9 of James Austen's weekly features a letter by a young lady named "Sophia Sentiment" that stands sentimental fiction on its head. Miss Sentiment urges the editor (James Austen of course) to publish more sentimental stuff, such as a "sentimental story about love and honour," or an "Eastern Tale full of Bashas and Hermits, Pyramids and Mosques," or at least "an allegory or dream":

   Let us hear no more of your Oxford Journals, your Homelys and
   Cockney: but send them about their business, and get a new set of
   correspondents, from among the young of both sexes, but
   particularly ours; and let us see some nice affecting stories,
   relating the misfortunes of two lovers, who died suddenly, just as
   they were going to church. Let the lover be killed in a duel, or
   lost at sea, or you may make him shoot himself, just as you please;
   and as for his mistress, she will of course go mad; or if you will,
   you may kill the lady, and let the lover run mad; only remember,
   whatever you do, that your hero and heroine must possess a great
   deal of feeling, and have very pretty names.

Sophia (meaning "wisdom" in Greek) is a pretty name but also an ironic one. Further, it is the name given to a protagonist, in Jane Austen's "Love and Freindship," who is "all Sensibility and Feeling," a heroine who is recognized as "most truly worthy of the Name" by the equally sentimental Laura, herself possessed of "[a] sensibility too tremblingly alive" (MW 78, 85).

The spirited playfulness and the cheeky style, consistent with what we see in juvenilia, seem to exclude James from the authorship. The letter's somewhat crude irony resembles very much that seen in Henry Austen's satirical contributions, but the charming temperament and feminine tone seem to point to the hand of Jane, who was more than capable of it at the precocious age of thirteen and who was at the time actively engaged elsewhere in mocking the rampant literary bias. The situation also reminds one of the frequent sardonic tableaux in Jane Austen's novels, hilarious and satirical at once. (9)

In the same vein, issue no. 15 of Olla Podrida derides "that great love of refinement and sentimentality which is daily gaining ground among the lower orders of our fellow-countrymen." The author is critical of "those rhapsodies of nonsense which are so liberally poured upon the public, under the title of Sentimental Novels, utterly subversive of common sense, and not very warm friends to common honesty." We might here recall Jane Austen's obnoxious and selfish sentimental heroines such as Laura and Sophia, who decide that the best way to punish the sensible yet unromantic Mr. Macdonald is to deprive him of his bank notes without his knowing it (MW 92-96), or Isabella Thorpe and Lucy Steele, who play their sentimental cards shamelessly for financial gain.

Just as they are up-to-date with the literary movements sweeping across the country, these periodicals also show themselves familiar with contemporary political and social problems, and they are remarkably vocal about them. Such heightened political and social consciousness and active involvement in current affairs represent another significant departure from earlier periodical traditions. George Horne's "On the Female Character" in Olla Podrida, for example, reveals what is probably a representative male attitude toward women at the time. Home was the president of Magdalen College, who was to be promoted by Lord North, the Chancellor of the University and the Prime Minister at the time, to the Deanery of Canterbury and later the Bishopric of Norwich. His candid discussion of the role of women represents a political paradox. On the one hand, Horne recognizes that women should enjoy equality with men and that the education of women is the key to achieving that equality. He thinks that women are as capable as men: "If ignorant, it is through want of instruction, not of capacity" (no. 44). However, Horne's recognition of women's equal status falls short of giving women the kind of equality that Mary Wollstonecraft would boldly champion a few years later. He wants women to focus on improving themselves morally and intellectually in order to preserve virtue at home and keep the husband and children safe from moral corruption. "Women," writes Home, "are not designed to govern the state, or to command armies; to plead in Westminster Hall, or to preach in the church; and therefore need not study the sciences leading to those several professions" (no. 44). Such a schizophrenic view of women is an early prototype of the high Victorian ideal of 'Angel in the House."

As for the issue of matrimony, James Austen seems to offer a dialectically balanced point of view in the typical Austenian style of wit and irony. On the one hand, he does not agree that one should marry entirely for love; he argues that "mutual Affection" causes "endless doubts, anxieties, and fears," that love marriages routinely produce large families "in a country which cannot already support half its inhabitants," and that never-ending marriages will surely doom the careers of civil lawyers at Doctors' Commons (no. 29). On the other hand, he thinks that one should not marry for money. He ridicules people of this inclination in a back-handed way by pretending to side with those for whom "[i]t is no matter how wide the tempers are separated, provided that the Estates join" (no. 29). In issue no. 44 James Austen relates the marriage experiences of two brothers as object lessons: one a landlord seeking a simple and virtuous wife in the daughter of one of his tenants; the other, the younger brother, determined to change his fortune by attaching himself to a "Lady Caroline Almeria Horatia Mackenzie." The outcome is that the older brother finds himself tormented by a foolish, vulgar, obstinate, and expensive vixen, whereas the younger discovers that he has merely gained "the privilege of being made miserable in the very best company."

The discussion of the three periodicals offers a glimpse of the student journalism in late eighteenth-century England. These publications, though following in many respects the early and middle eighteenth-century periodical traditions, contain sufficient new concepts and new contents to assert their unique literary contribution. It is especially interesting to observe how the two Austen brothers at Oxford voice their opinions and exhibit their literary styles. James Austen proclaims in the opening issue that the Loiterer will strive to be "clear and lively" and to exhibit "plainness and perspicuity" in this "enlightened" age. They have, possibly with their brilliant and aspiring sister in tow, done just that.

WORKS CITED

Austen, James, ed. The Loiterer. Ed. Li-Ping Geng. Ann Arbor: Scholars' Facsimiles, 2000.

Austen, Jane. Minor Works. Ed. R. W. Chapman. Oxford: OUP, 1988.

Austen Papers, 1704-1856. Ed. R. A. Austen-Leigh. [Colchester]: Spottiswoode, 1942.

Griffin, Gregory, ed. The Microcosm, A Periodical Work in Two Volumes. 3rd ed. Windsor, 1790.

Johnson, Samuel. The Rambler. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Vol. 5. Ed. W. J. Bate et al. New Haven: Yale UP, 1958-90.

Monro, Thomas, ed. Essays by Bishop Horne, the Rev. Thomas Monro, A.B., the Rev. Henry Kett, B.D., & c. & c. Forming the Collection Originally Entitled Olla Podrida. 2 vols. London, 1820.

Sabot, Peter, ed. Juvenilia. Cambridge: CUP, 2006. 356-62.

Smith, Paul H., comp. English Defenders of American Freedoms, 1774-1778. Washington: Library of Congress, 1972.

Steele, Richard, and Joseph Addison. The Spectator. 1711-12. London: Dent, 1945.

NOTES

(1.) This short-lived periodical was edited by Robert Southey after The Trifler had rejected one of his contributions. Southey was privately expelled from the Westminster school in 1792 for a protest in his periodical against excessive flogging. A copy has survived in the British Library with Southey's autograph on the title page.

(2.) The Microcosm was mentioned in no. 9 of the Loiterer, and Olla Podrida in nos. 9 and 13.

(3.) The contributors include, among others, George Canning, who later became an M.P., Treasurer of the Navy, and Foreign Secretary; and Robert Percy Smith, who later became an M.P. and Advocate-General of Bengal.

(4.) No. 6 was issued on 11 December 1786, no. 7 on 15 January 1787. Another irregularity is that a double issue--nos. 37 and 38--was issued on Monday, 23 July 1787.

(5.) A foundation scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford: so called because such a scholar originally received half the allowance of a fellow.

(6.) The Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature 70 (1790): 376, 375.

(7.) The "pirated" edition was printed by William Porter for P. Byrne and W. Jones. Strictly speaking, it was an unauthorized but legal edition as Ireland was yet to become part of Great Britain.

(8.) For more such documents and their significance see Smith.

(9.) In all the Loiterer essays by the Austens as well as Jane Austen's juvenilia and her novels, the intrinsic qualities are remarkably consistent. It is also possible that Jane wrote the early version of the letter to the editor and then James, the Editor, did his duty. Peter Sabor offers a scrupulous summary of the various views on the authorship of the humorous piece in his excellent Cambridge edition of Austen's Juvenilia (356-62).

Li-Ping Geng received his Ph.D. from Toronto and is an instructor of English at Beijing Foreign Studies University. He edited James Austen's The Loiterer (2000) and Ethel Wilson's Swamp Angel (2005), authored Progressive States of Mind: Dialectical Elements in the Novels of Jane Austen (2006), and is currently editing Henry Mackenzie's novels.