Mark Philp

"A collection in eight volumes of the novels and memoirs of William Godwin, one of the foremost philosophers and radical thinkers of his age. There is a general introduction covering Godwin's life and literary works and each volume is prefaced by a scholarly introduction."--Provided by publisher.

"The long war with Revolutionary France had a fundamental impact on British political culture. The most dramatic example of this is the mass mobilization of the British people in response to French invasion threats throughout the last years of the century but, most spectacularly, in the period of 1803-05, after the collapse of the Peace of Amiens, and the massing of invasion fleet by Napoleon." "By bringing together historians of Britain and France to examine the dynamics of the conflict between the two nations in this period, this book measures its impact on their domestic political cultures, and its effect on their perceptions of each other. In so doing it will encourage scholars to examine in more detail aspects of popular mobilization which have hitherto been largely ignored, such as the resurgence of loyalism in 1803, and to see contributions in the light of the dual contexts of domestic political conflict and their war with each other. The book contributes both new detail to our understanding of the period and a better overall understanding of the complex place that each nation came to occupy in the consciousness of the other."--Jacket.

Shows how the development of 'modern democracy' was the result of common trends developing throughout the United States, France, Britain, and Ireland, forming the subject of parallel re-imaginings rather than the invention of one place that diffused elsewhere.

"Between 1789 and 1815, Britain faced a surge of challenges brought about by the French Revolution. Growing tensions with France, then the outbreak of war, exacerbated domestic political controversy, giving rise to new forms of political protest, to which the government responded with ever-increasing severity. Reforming Ideas in Britain brings together a series of essays to provide a vibrant historiography of Britain's political thought and movements during the 1790s and beyond. Challenging traditional perceptions of the period, Philp prompts us to reconsider the weight of various ideas, interpretations and explanations of British politics and language; showing us instead that this dynamic world of popular politics was at once more chaotic, innovative and open-minded than historians have typically perceived it to be. This is an essential interdisciplinary text for scholars of history, political theory and romanticism that offers a fresh perspective on radicalism, loyalism and republicanism in Britain during the French Revolution"--

Mediterranean states are often thought to have 'democratised' only in the post-war era, as authoritarian regimes were successively overthrown. On its eastern and southern shores, the process is still contested. Re-imagining Democracy looks back to an earlier era, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and argues it was this era when some modern version of 'democracy' in the region first began. 0By the 1860s, representative regimes had been established throughout southern Europe, and representation was also the subject of experiment and debate in Ottoman territories. Talk of democracy, its merits and limitations, accompanied much of this experimentation - though there was no agreement as to whether or how it could be given stable political form. 0Re-imagining Democracy assembles experts in the history of the Mediterranean, who have been exploring these themes collaboratively, to compare and contrast experiences in this region, so that they can be set alongside better-known debates and experiments in North Atlantic states. States in the region all experienced some form of subordination to northern 'great powers'. In this context, their inhabitants had to grapple with broader changes in ideas about state and society while struggling to achieve and maintain meaningful self-rule at the level of the polity, and self-respect at the level of culture. 0Innes and Philip highlight new research and ideas about a region whose experiences during the 'age of revolutions' are at best patchily known and understood, as well as to expand understanding of the complex and variegated history of democracy as an idea and set of practices.