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  • Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

    Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution


‘Knowledge is Power’. This Baconian motto marks the founding of the London Mechanics’ Institution in 1823, and the frontispiece of the Mechanic’s Magazine: ‘ours and for us’. This issue of 19 brings together experts of the radical traditions crystallizing in the mechanics’ institution movement of the 1820s with students, staff, emeriti, and alumni of Birkbeck English. We revisit the early history of what has become Birkbeck, University of London and harness our literary approaches to reconstruct traditions and early networks of radical thinking through the figures of John Thelwall and Francis Place, the relationship between physical gatherings and print, the Mechanics’ Magazine and the Westminster Review, tracing the overlaps between periodical writing and Anna Birkbeck’s album, politics and poetics. We identify the place and function of literature as an engine of useful knowledge; a mode of engagement, invention, and speculative thinking that fuels and complements scientific observation and discovery; an emerging domain of the creative imagination operating in the tension between power and knowledge in 1823. To trace the genealogies and cross-disciplinary openings of English as a subject for adult education made up of the traditions of the mechanics’ institution movement, extra-mural studies, and university education, is to identify the disciplinary change that goes with the restructuring of the faculties. We take up discontinuity as a mode of self-reflection, noting the appearance and disappearance of literature as a subject of mechanics’ education in 1823 as a dialectical image for 2023 and beyond, a prompt for critical disciplinarity that urges renewed thinking to reinvent literature’s present and future among the disciplines.

Cover image: Shortshanks [Robert Seymour], The March of Intellect (c. 1828) (detail), hand-coloured etching. British Museum. Wikimedia Commons.

Editors: Luisa Calè (Guest Editor)

Introduction


‘Knowledge is Power’: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

‘Knowledge is Power’: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

Luisa Calè

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

Mechanics’ Institution Networks


‘Operations and cooperations’: John Thelwall, George Birkbeck, and the Movement for Public Education in Britain

‘Operations and cooperations’: John Thelwall, George Birkbeck, and the Movement for Public Education in Britain

Judith Thompson

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

From Magazine to Meeting: Francis Place, the Crown and Anchor Tavern, and the Founding of the London Mechanics’ Institution

From Magazine to Meeting: Francis Place, the Crown and Anchor Tavern, and the Founding of the London Mechanics’ Institution

Ian Newman

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

Utilitarians, Educators, Poets: The Beginnings of the Westminster Review and the London Mechanics’ Institution

Utilitarians, Educators, Poets: The Beginnings of the Westminster Review and the London Mechanics’ Institution

Hilary Fraser

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

Illuminating Knowledge: The London Mechanics’ Institution and the Diorama

Illuminating Knowledge: The London Mechanics’ Institution and the Diorama

John Plunkett

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

In our Time: Adult Education and Birkbeck: Extra-Mural — An Experiment 1988–2009

In our Time: Adult Education and Birkbeck: Extra-Mural — An Experiment 1988–2009

Laurel Brake

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

In our Time: A Timeline of Adult Education, from the Mechanics’ Movement to Birkbeck

In our Time: A Timeline of Adult Education, from the Mechanics’ Movement to Birkbeck

Robyn Jakeman and Laurel Brake

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

From Anna Birkbeck’s Album


Geology, the Imagination, and Speculative Writing: Gideon Mantell’s Fossil Poetry in Anna Birkbeck’s Album

Geology, the Imagination, and Speculative Writing: Gideon Mantell’s Fossil Poetry in Anna Birkbeck’s Album

David McAllister

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

L.E.L. in and out of the Birkbeck Album: Poetics and Politics

L.E.L. in and out of the Birkbeck Album: Poetics and Politics

Isobel Armstrong

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

Lady Caroline Lamb and Miss Elizabeth Spence: Limits of Femininity in Early Nineteenth-Century Salon and Album Culture

Lady Caroline Lamb and Miss Elizabeth Spence: Limits of Femininity in Early Nineteenth-Century Salon and Album Culture

Zoe Baron and Beatrice Mossman

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

‘A flower of an exile’: International Political Networks in Anna Birkbeck’s Album

‘A flower of an exile’: International Political Networks in Anna Birkbeck’s Album

Emi Del Bene

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

1823–2023


Convivial Scenes on the Strand, 1823

Convivial Scenes on the Strand, 1823

Esther Leslie

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

The Critical Edge of Learning

The Critical Edge of Learning

Jacqueline Rose

2024-11-12 Issue 36 • 2024 • 1823–2023: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution