Judith Thompson, editor. John Thelwall's The Peripatetic (1793).(Book review)

Publication: Studies in Romanticism

Publication Date: 22-SEP-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Boston University

Judith Thompson, editor. John Thelwall's The Peripatetic (1793). Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001. Pp. 447. Introduction and appendices. $39.95 cloth.

Students of romanticism, revolution, and democracy have been presented a valuable tool in this overdue scholarly edition of John Thelwall's The Peripatetic. In terms of biography alone Thelwall is by any standard one of the most fascinating personages in political-literary history. Tried and acquitted for high treason in 1794, he was a key theorist, organizer, and probably the greatest orator of the movement for radical democratic reform in 1790's England. Moreover he was a poet, sentimental novelist, and clear influence upon important aspects of the work of both William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

For two centuries he has remained a footnote to these romantics, but nonetheless an extraordinarily fascinating footnote. Thelwall and Coleridge carried on a mutually admiring correspondence for some time, and Thelwall's experiences and writings clearly influenced the famed romantic poets, especially Wordsworth, whose Excursion shows remarkable similarities to the thematic structure of The Peripatetic. Thelwall's attendance at a dinner party held by Wordsworth soon after he took up residence at Alfoxden in 1797 may very well have caused Wordsworth and Dorothy to lose their inexpensive lease on the lovely mansion that...

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