Americomania and the French Revolution Debate in Britain, 1789-1802: Paperback edition

Wil Verhoeven

Research output: Book/ReportBook

Original languageEnglish
PublisherCambridge University Press
Number of pages387
ISBN (Print)978-1-107-04019-9
Publication statusPublished - 2015

Bibliographical note

“Wil Verhoeven makes a strong and original argument, that the idea of ‘America’ played a central, neglected role in Britain’s debate on the French Revolution in the 1790s. Despite the loss of the colonies in the American Revolution, America continued to loom large in the British national imaginary. Verhoeven’s readings of familiar and obscure texts are consistently rewarding. His analyses of the new world degeneracy thesis of Buffon et al.; the ‘progressive agrarianism’ of Crevecoeur, Jefferson, and Imlay; and the Jacobin novel are fresh and insightful; and his rehabilitation of the anti-Jacobin novel brings to the fore a neglected but ‘historically significant body of social critique.’ No previous writer has put these texts into conversation, and the interpretative results are striking. The debate over the French Revolution will never look quite the same.” – Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia “fluent and consistently thought-provoking . . . a highly innovative attempt to relate practice and principle in respect to the American dimension of the French Revolution” – Mark Garnett, Lancaster University, U.K., Global Discourse For further details, see: http://http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/history-ideas-and-intellectual-history/americomania-and-french-revolution-debate-britain-17891802 Gilbert Imlay: Citizen of the World . Monograph biography. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008. xiv + 300pp. “This deeply researched, richly contextual study is essential reading not just for scholars of the Godwin-Wollstonecraft circle, but for all those interested in the revolutionary upheavals of the late eighteenth century.” – Pamela Clemit, Durham University, Keats-Shelley Journal Reviewed in: Times Literary Supplement , 25 April 2008; William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Series 66:2; Journal of the Early Republic 29:2; Early American Literature 49:1; Keats-Shelley Journal 56; Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 52

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