Spy Figure in British Radical Literature, 1790–1804

Stephanie Codsi is a Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the poetry of William Blake, and on radical literature of the 1790s. She is interested in the intersections between Romanticism and the Gothic, on the Revolution Controversy, and how the culture of surveillance and suspicion affected radical literature in the decade of the 1790s.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsIntroduction1. ‘Truth is a libel’: The Revolution Controversy: Sincerity and Coded Language2. ‘Every key-hole is an informer’: John Thelwall’s Lecture on Spies and Informers (1794), and his Comic Ballads3. Spies, Sincerity and Narrative Power in William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794)4. ‘Hush, walls have ears’: French Spies and Performed Sincerity in Robert Bage’s Hermsprong (1796)5. Mary Robinson’s Radical Satire: Mimicry, Pseudonyms and The Sylphid’s ‘invisible spy’ (1799–1800)6. William Blake: The Spy on the Medway, ‘Satan’s watch-fiends’ and ‘the voice of honest indignation’ (1790–1804)ConclusionBibliographyIndex