Authors’ Networks

The eighteenth century was a period of enormous literary growth in both countries, with the rise of the novel in Britain and the development of national literature in Denmark. British cultural terrain shifted with the arrival of such influential novels as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (2011/1719), Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740). Novels diverged from earlier forms with their recognition of the variety of human experience, their use of the first-person perspective to directly explore the mind of the protagonist, their depictions of individual people in particular situations (rather than universal figures), and their realistic character-driven plots about everyday events that varied from the themes of classic tales (Watt Reference Watt2000, 12–21, 60).

By the late eighteenth-century, radical and conservative networks of authors inhabited a world of coffee houses, debating societies, and bookstores, and spent their time reflecting upon the issues of the day. William Godwin and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, were philosophers and novelists at the center of the Radical circle.Footnote ² Wollstonecraft’s 2022/Reference Wollstonecraft1790 essay, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (defending Paine against Edmund Burke), constituted a stunning endorsement of natural rights. The playwright, novelist, and poet Thomas Holcroft helped Thomas Paine to publish The Rights of Man and was imprisoned for treason for his political activities. The Whig/Radical circle included many Dissenters, who constituted only around 7 percent of the population but were over-represented in intellectual networks (Keen Reference Keen1999, 38). Radicalism lived on among romantic writers, such as Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley.

Within more conservative circles, Burke (a conservative Whig) questioned Paine’s philosophy of natural law and rights, casting it as deeply disruptive to the organic order. In the 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke argued in favor of the traditional privileges enjoyed by the church and the landed gentry in (Burke Reference Burke2007), while also disparaging “political Men of Letters” who “pretended to a great zeal for the poor” but only sought to gratify their own aspirations (Burke Reference Burke2007, 210; Keen Reference Keen1999, 44). Authors such as Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, Sarah Trimmer, and Hannah More sympathized with Burke’s concerns. Later Romanticist writers with conservative or Tory leanings included Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth (the poets began with Radical politics but grew more conservative with time). Anglicans were over-represented among conservative thinkers.

Both radicals and conservatives regarded literature as a tool in the political transformation of society, although they disagreed about the advisability of political change. For radical thinkers, novels, poems, and plays were a valuable means of fostering exchange among men of letters, and allowed writers to promulgate their views in the public sphere. Percy Shelley described “poets as unacknowledged legislators” (Keen Reference Keen1999, 27–8). Godwin noted in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), “Few engines can be more powerful, and at the same time more salutatory in their tendency, than literature…the human mind is strongly infected with prejudice and mistake…the effectual way of extirpating these prejudices and mistakes seems to be literature” (cited in Keen Reference Keen1999, 28). An anonymous Analytic Review author explained that literature would “dispel those clouds of ignorance…by giving men rational ideas of the nature of society…and under the auspices of freedom general prosperity will arise” (Keen Reference Keen1999, 33).

Conservatives, meanwhile, feared that literature would upset the existing balance of power. In Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe (1798), John Robinson created fake news about the conspiratorial aspects of literature. Robinson argued that literature was being used by the Order of the Illuminati to threaten political and religious order, and he produced the following letter, which he claimed was written by a political strategist for the Illuminati:

Authors’ Narratives about Education

In Britain, writers’ narratives about schooling resonated with policy makers’ early choices in developing an education system, especially on issues of the timing of the creation of a public system, access to workers, differentiation of programs, pedagogical methods, and the role for the state. First, Britain’s slowness in developing a public education system is not surprising, given that the earliest novelists pay scant attention to schooling. Dissenter Daniel Defoe largely ignores education in his journalistic writings, satires, and fictional works (Marshall Reference Marshall2007, 556, 561). In a rare comment on education, Defoe advocates for the education only of leaders, who require functional knowledge in their work (Merrett Reference Merrett2013, 261). In Robinson Crusoe (Defoe Reference Defoe2011/1719, 1–2), the eponymous protagonist receives from his father some schooling through “house-education and a country free school,” but his skills development, finally achieved on the island, is overwhelmingly achieved through trial by error. Anglican Henry Fielding joined Defoe in his disregard for education. His novel Tom Jones ridicules the most educated characters, who spend their time disputing fine intellectual distinctions (Fielding Reference Fielding1749, 66). Jonathan Swift’s anti-utopian Gulliver’s Travels treats education in similar fashion. Schools are absent in the societies visited by Gulliver and the most functional society works because its nonhuman inhabitants are virtuous by nature and lack moral choice (Fitting Reference Fitting1996, 97–8).

By the late eighteenth century, Enlightenment-inspired Radical authors endorsed schooling (for at least the middle class and often for the working class as well) as a means of cultivating cognitive reasoning. Wollstonecraft wrote Original Stories from Real Life to teach children to reason and Anna Barbauld’s children’s books provided scientific learning to both boys and girls (Fyfe Reference Fyfe2000, 458–60). In Wollstonecraft’s Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, the ill-fated Jemima – raped by her master and forced into poverty – is transformed through reading, taken up “to beguile the tediousness of solitude, and to gratify an inquisitive, active mind” (Wollstonecraft Reference Wollstonecraft1798, 30). Jemima reflects that “prejudices, caught up by chance, are obstinately maintained by the poor, to the exclusion of improvement; they have not time to reason or reflect” (Wollstonecraft Reference Wollstonecraft1798, 32).

Anglican Tories sought education to cultivate traditional moral values. Robert Raikes began the Sunday school movement in 1780 to accomplish a “Reformation of Manners,” creating schools that served three-fourths of working-class children by 1851 and became particularly important in communities with intensive child labor (Snell Reference Snell1999, 130, 126). Trimmer sought to restrict education to religious topics rather than to further “the ornamental parts of education” and she viewed science as inappropriate for young children (Fyfe Reference Fyfe2000, 460). In 1787, Trimmer advocated for Houses of Industry for the able-bodied poor and even sought residential schools where girls as young as five years old could learn spinning and other skills. The schools, Trimmer hoped, would attract young gentlewomen benefactors and eliminate the need for government funding (Trimmer Reference Trimmer1801, 69–70). Hannah More felt that theatre constituted a “school for virtue,” and wrote plays that she hoped would improve national morals (Mellor Reference Mellor2002, 46).

Romantic writers such as Coleridge and Wordsworth viewed education as a mechanism for the cultivation of self and literature as a catalyst for emotional growth. These writers held more positive views of childhood than earlier authors, who had considered boys to be depraved savages requiring corporal punishment to become productive members of society (Brantlinger Reference Brantlinger1998; Parille Reference Parille2011, 25).

Some authors felt that expanding middle-class educational opportunities was crucial to building political stability. Burke, for example, maintained that educating public officials could protect against repeating the horrors of the French National Assembly (Burke Reference Burke2007/1790, 39). Coleridge argued that a “Clerisy” composed of the sages from the various professions was necessary to national welfare, and that education was necessary to train the Clerisy. Coleridge also sought middle-class education as a means of strengthening the “body politic, the shaping and informing spirit, which educing or eliciting the latent man in all the natives of the soil, trains them up to be citizens of the country, free subjects of the realm” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1839, 49). Yet he emphasized that a “preliminary to an efficient education of the laboring classes” is “a more manly discipline of the intellect on the part of the learned themselves” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1839, 242).

A second education policy choice that was debated among writers was the question of how much access should be extended to workers and women, and this was a source of contention among British elites. Debates over education for workers transpired in the shadow of the French Revolution. Radicals like Thomas Paine, Thomas Holcroft, and William Godwin sought education for all children as a matter of individual rights; whereas, conservatives feared that teaching the masses to read would inspire workers to revolt and that social supports would encourage the poor to multiply and to drain societal resources (Brantlinger Reference Brantlinger1998; Malthus Reference Malthus1809/1797).

Radical writers sought equal rights to education for women. Wollstonecraft, for instance, argued in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman that women must be educated to become rational and moral human beings; furthermore, uneducated women “will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice” (Wollstonecraft Reference Wollstonecraft1792, loc. 105). Conservative thinkers took a decidedly different view. Hanna More (1799), for instance, argued that some limited literacy training should be extended to women in order to encourage their capacities for virtue and faith, but warned against female engagement in the public sphere. In a letter to Hugh James Rose on December 11, 1828, Wordsworth expressed his fear that educating girls would interfere with their future responsibilities: “What are you to do with these girls? what demand is there for the ability that they may have prematurely acquired? Will they not be indisposed to bend to any kind of hard labour or drudgery?” (Wordsworth/Knight 1907, 182).

Radicals pushed to extend educational access to the working classes and to roll back the widespread fears of mass literacy that had been prevalent in the 1700s (Stone Reference Stone1969). In Maria, Wollstonecraft (Reference Wollstonecraft1798, loc 638) lamented that the “book of knowledge is closely clasped” against laborers and that curiosity “seldom moves on the stagnate lake of ignorance.” Wollstonecraft envisioned a national education system constructed around day schools and considered launching her own school in 1784, but lacked sufficient funds (Wollstonecraft January 1784).

Yet even some Radical political economists were influenced by Thomas Malthus’s (Reference Malthus1809/1797) argument that social investments in the poor would backfire. According to Malthus’s thinking, a rise in the means of subsistence would inevitably lead to overpopulation, unless population growth was limited by checks such as moral restraint (late marriage), vice (prostitution), and misery (starvation). Therefore, poor supports would only exacerbate poverty (Malthus Reference Malthus1809/1797, 27–8). Malthus was puzzled by the well-being of the Norwegian population (and low rates of mortality), despite the Danish government’s efforts to increase population growth. Malthus attributed Norway’s success to a higher average age of marriage, but he was also impressed that Norwegians (alone in the world) had thought through the problems of surplus labor and were more concerned about the happiness of the working class than elsewhere (Malthus Reference Malthus1809/1797, 326).

While critics denounced Malthusian pessimism, there was a strange convergence of the left and right on concerns about overpopulation and excessive reproduction among the lower classes. For example, Thomas Holcroft supported worker education, in part, because he feared that more direct social benefits would be misused by the lower classes. In his 1794–7 novel, Hugh Trevor, he wrote that “The poor are so misled…that, by relieving these most urgent wants we are in danger of teaching them idleness, drunkness, and servility (Holcroft Reference Holcroft2019/1794, loc 4970). Mary Shelley’s monster in Frankenstein longs for wife and hearth; yet his creator fears that the monster’s progeny would threaten mankind. Malthusian overpopulation became a powerful literary meme even for those such as Charles Dickens who are sympathetic to the working class (Steinlight Reference Steinlight2018, 7–8, 22).

Tories (and some Whigs) resisted rights-based arguments for expanding worker education and they worried that education would only make the poor more dissatisfied (Roberts Reference Roberts1979, 2–6; Doheny Reference Doheny1991, 336). When Samuel Whitbread (Whig MP) proposed the Parochial Schools bill in Parliament in 1807, David Giddy (Tory MP) responded that “giving education to the labouring classes of the poor…[would] be prejudicial to their morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants…it would render them insolent to their superiors” (Gillard Reference Gillard2018, Chapter 5, no page). Wordsworth strongly opposed Radical MP Henry Brougham’s proposals for national education and became increasingly pessimistic about educating the poor, maintaining instead that schooling should concentrate on elites (Wordsworth/Knight 1907, 180). In a letter to Francis Wrangham, Wordsworth argued that the benefits of elite education would ultimately filter down to the poor (Wordsworth/Knight 1907, 180). In another undated letter (to an unknown source), Wordsworth noted that “Mechanics’ Institutes make discontented spirits and insubordinate and presumptuous workmen” (Wordsworth/Knight 1907, 191). Coleridge was more open to offering some education to the poor as a means of political improvement and hoped that doing so would lift them out of their base condition. “The poor man’s curiosity remains unabated…and, as by the enormous expense he is precluded from having a weekly newspaper at his home, he flies to the Ale-house for the perusal. There he contracts habits of drunkenness and sloth” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1796, IV).

A third educational policy choice that writers wrote about was the choice of pedagogical methods. British educators were more attached to fixed curricula and structured learning than Danish ones, many of whom preferred the use of experiential methods to educate youth. British authors on both the left and right celebrated a curriculum-based education and valued a classical, humanistic education for the upper class. Godwin on the left viewed the study of art and science, freed from practical application, as the mark of a liberal man. “There are two ways in which any art or science may be useful to a man. The first is the direct use, and the only one comprehended by the vulgar…But the man who is not of the vulgar, and who understands these things in a more generous and liberal way, finds a nobler use in these things which is the indirect use” (MS. ABINGER c. 29 (fols 46). Dep. B. 229/9. No date). The narrator in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein regrets that he is self-educated and wishes for a friend “to endeavor to regulate my mind” (Shelley Reference Shelley2015/1818, 11). Frankenstein himself regrets not systematically studying modern science and instead seeking refuge in ancient texts: “My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality; and I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life” (Shelley Reference Shelley2015/1818, 22).

The conservative Samuel Johnson favored the rote memorization of Latin and viewed flogging as an appropriate inspiration to diligence, as when he wrote, “There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end, they lose at the other” (Damrosch Reference Damrosch2019, 14). In “The Education of Children,” Coleridge worries that novel reading “is especially injurious to the growth of the imagination, the judgment, and the morals, especially to the latter, because it excites mere feelings without at the same time administering an impulse to action” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge2011).

Granted, some writers during this period expressed appreciation for experiential learning, although not for the working class. Coleridge and Wordsworth sought a strong experiential component to education that would root the individual in the natural world. In Coleridge’s poem, “Frost at Midnight,” a father hopes that his infant son will be educated as a “child of nature.” In “The Tables Turned,” Wordsworth refers to Books as “a dull and endless strife” and calls upon the reader to “Let Nature be your teacher” (see also Cordner Reference Cordner2016). Wollstonecraft thought experiential discovery could increase receptivity to new ideas (Sapiro Reference Sapiro1992, 238–47). Emphasizing the dangers of an insufficiently experiential mode of learning, Byron ridiculed the moralistic and overly abstract education imposed on Don Juan by Juan’s pedantic mother:

A final education policy choice that writers considered was the question of what roles the government and non-state providers should each play in providing schooling. Some Radicals such as Jeremy Bentham favored secular education for all that was controlled by the state (Bentham Reference Bentham1818, 52). Yet most authors and intellectuals doubted whether the government would be capable of administering an effective education system. Additionally, the abuse of state power was a powerful theme in British novels from this era. In William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794), upper-class characters use the power of the law against working-class characters. A brutish squire named Tyrell destroys his tenant farmer, Hawkins, simply because Hawkins refuses to place his son in service with Tyrell. Hawkins avoids seeking recourse from the law, “being of opinion that law was better adapted for a weapon of tyranny in the hands of the rich, than for a shield to protect the humbler part of the community” (Godwin Reference Godwin2013/1794, 75). Hawkins is eventually hanged for a crime he did not commit, bringing the narrator to reflect that “Wealth and despotism easily know how to engage those laws as the coadjutors of their oppression, which were perhaps at first intended [witless and miserable precaution!] for the safeguards of the poor” (Godwin Reference Godwin2013/1794, 75).

Authors in Episodes of School Reform: The Voluntary Church Societies

Authors were not mere bystanders in skirmishes over education reform, nor did they always play an indirect role. Some used their narratives to contribute to a cultural climate for reform, but otherwise stayed at arms-length from political proceedings. But others mobilized the weapons of their trade directly to sway policy outcomes, and in so doing helped to generate a more positive attitude toward the education of a larger cross-section of British children.

In particular, British writers used their influence to help shape the two church-affiliated school societies, the British and Foreign School Society and the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor. The former was dominated by Dissenters and Whigs and adopted Joseph Lancaster’s model of pedagogy, while the latter was organized by the Church of England and favored the principles of Andrew Bell. Both school models were limited in scope, as educators sought to balance goals of giving young workers sufficient education for their moral development but not so much as to inspire political activism (Foakes Reference Foakes1989, 197). Some politicians subsequently sought to expand mass, state-sanctioned education before 1870; however, they met with failure. Lord Brougham proposed an 1820 Parish Schools Bill that called upon manufacturers to fund and the church to administer schools. John Roebuck proposed a universal education bill in 1833 that stipulated compulsory attendance and included subsidies for poor parents; however, these measures did not pass (Evans Reference Evans1985, 28).

Joseph Lancaster started founding schools for the poor in 1798, adopting his “monitorial model” to save money given his limited resources and the huge potential demand. In lieu of books, Lancaster instructed students to copy information from large placards at the front of the class and, in this way, they would memorize tablets in different subjects. Teachers would break up large classes into smaller groups and ask older children to train younger ones. Raised platforms in classrooms maximized surveillance and seating arrangements rewarded student performance (Kaestle Reference Kaestle1973; Foakes Reference Foakes1989, 197–204). Historians have both praised Lancaster’s social goals and criticized the schools. Some view the school design and its attendant practices as mechanisms for social control. Others view Lancaster as an idealist, who developed creative techniques to achieve his educational goals with very few resources (indeed, he would soon go into debt), and to address the needs of a large number of students (Kaestle Reference Kaestle1973; Doheny Reference Doheny1991, 328–31; Salmon Reference Salmon1932).

In 1808, to help build schools based on Lancaster’s model, Joseph Fox founded the Royal Lancasterian Society, an organization that would later evolve into the British and Foreign School Society.Footnote ³ Lancaster himself participated in the initial creation of the society, but his personal problems, particularly his troubled finances, led to him being kicked out of the society and subsequently emigrating to the United States (Curtis Reference Curtis2016, 677).

The Lancaster schools drew considerable support from writers of Radical, Whig, and Dissenting persuasions. Lord Byron, for instance, was on the board of the British and Foreign School society (British and Foreign School Society 1814). Bentham, too, was impressed by the schools’ efficiency, and noted, “In the new-invented system of instruction, all join in beholding an instrument of matchless and never-before-imagined efficiency” (Bentham Reference Bentham1818, 52–3). Dissenters supported the Lancaster schools because they feared that the competing National schools would force people to espouse doctrines that they did not believe in so that their children might be educated (Taylor Reference Taylor1979). Bentham described this as the “exclusion of one part of the community of the poor from the benefits of education – compelling the other part to come within the pale of the church domination” (Bentham Reference Bentham1818, 52).

Fiction writers and intellectuals defended Lancaster against their fellow writers who were sympathetic to the competing National Society. Although Trimmer died before the National Society was formed in support of Bell’s model, she was a particularly vitriolic critic of Lancaster and a lightning rod for radical counterattacks. An anonymous review of Trimmer’s work in The Edinburgh Review took issue with her assertion that “ever since the establishment of the Protestant Church, the education of the poor has been a national concern.” The review countered that “There is no Protestant country in the world where the education of the poor has been so grossly and infamously neglected as in England.” The author ridiculed Trimmer’s claim that Lancaster schools would produce social mobility and that “Boys accustomed to consider themselves the nobles of the school, may, in their future lives…aspire to be nobles of the land, and to take place of the hereditary nobility.” Instead, the author suggested, the schools would only make the students better tradesmen and mechanics: “for the safety of the titled orders, we had no fear” (The Edinburgh Review 1806, 178, 182). In a similarly pitiless review of Trimmer’s History of England, William Godwin suggested that it was “sacrilege to load the memories of children with…absurdities, incoherences, and contradictions” and pointed out “a few of the extraordinary hallucinations with which this little book abounds” (Godwin Reference Godwin1809).

Andrew Bell presented his own school model in a 1797 pamphlet entitled “An Experiment in Education Made at the Male Asylum of Madras.” The two approaches shared many commonalities but differed sharply in certain respects. Lancaster, for instance, stipulated punishments for inattention (e.g. a log tied around a boy’s neck as a makeshift pillory) whereas Bell emphasized incentives for educational attainment. Moreover, whereas the Lancaster schools were nonsectarian, the Bell model was affirmatively Anglican (Foakes Reference Foakes1989, 190–1, 204).

Inspired by the Bell model, a group of High Church Anglicans formed the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales on October 16, 1811. Joshua Watson (wine merchant and nephew-in-law to the Archbishop of Salisbury, Charles Daubeny), John Bowles (William Pitt’s conservative pamphleteer during the French Revolution), and H.H. Norris (High Church clerical leader) were the de facto founders of the society, but the Archbishop of Canterbury became the society’s first president. According to its first report, the society planned to build schools for 1,000 children in London and to help local societies to increase educational opportunities (National Society 1812, 14–5). Although the National Society largely provided schools for the middle class, it claimed as its primary purpose “to instruct and educate the Poor in suitable Learning, works of Industry, and the Principles of the Christian Religion according to the Established Church” (National Society 1812, 7). The society also had strong political ambitions: “THAT the National Religion should be made the Foundation of NATIONAL EDUCATION, and should be the first and chief thing taught to the Poor” (National Society 1812, 5). Society members worried about the current “indifference to Religion” and “neglect of the regular performance of sacred duties” (National Society 1812, 18).

Christopher Wordsworth (William’s youngest brother) and George Coleridge (brother of Samuel Taylor Coleridge) were both vice presidents of the National Society, close friends of Joshua Watson, and important agents in the outreach operations of the society. Christopher Wordsworth had been part of the Hackney Phalanx, a club for high church Tories, and became executor of Watson’s will (National Society 1812, 95–162). As head of public outreach for the organization, Watson (together with Norris and Bowles) began a letter-writing campaign immediately after the formation of the society (Churton Reference Churton1861, 106). The Society also spread the word through two journalistic venues, “The Scholar Armed” and “The British Critic” (owned by Watson and Norris). Watson created district committees to increase revenue and outreach; and Christopher Wordsworth developed these local-level units, by building on the district committees for the extant Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The district committees enabled the organizers to reach the furthest corners of the realm with their message (Churton Reference Churton1861, 95–6).

Christopher Wordsworth was particularly keen to frame the work of the National Society in less partisan terms, as is revealed in his letter to Joshua Watson on April 20, 1815: “We have, ‘members of the Established Church,’ ‘well-affected to Church and State,’ ‘the friends of the Church,’ ‘all friends of the Established Church,’ and ‘members of the Established Church,’ again repeated…there is a great deal too much of all this…the times do and will force us, on occasion, to talk and think of Establishment and Dissenters, and Test-laws, &c., but too much and too painfully…Inopportune talk shews confusion and alarm, and weakness” (Churton Reference Churton1861, 131). Wordsworth wrote tracts in simple language to be distributed to the poor and raised money through the clergy, rather than seeking it through Parliamentary grants (Churton Reference Churton1861, 132–3, 191).

The National Society drew considerable support from writers. Sarah Trimmer (who died before the National Society was formed) was an early supporter of Bell, and contrasted the Lancaster and Bell models in an 1805 pamphlet entitled “Comparative View of the New Plan of Education promulgated by Mr. Joseph Lancaster.” Trimmer accused Lancaster of plagiarizing Bell and compared his religious views to those of the Jacobins and the Illuminati (Pachori Reference Pachori1983, 26–28). Subscribers to the National Society included Hannah More and James Trimmer (son of Sarah, now deceased) (National Society 1812, 95–162).

The poets Coleridge and Wordsworth had close connections to the society through their brothers but were also enormously important in their own right (Prior Reference Prior2014). Although Coleridge and Wordsworth toyed with revolutionary thought in the 1790s, the poets became more conservative with age. In a letter to Miss Cruikshank dated September 1807, Coleridge claimed that his principles had always been “decidedly anti-Jacobin and anti-revolutionary” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1956, Vol. 3, 27). In a letter to Andrew Bell on May 17, 1808, Coleridge declared himself to be “a zealous subject, and a convinced and fervent son of the Church of England” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1956, #706, 105–6).

Coleridge’s romantic notions of individual self-discovery brought him to advocate for a Christian, classical education for gentlemen; however, he thought that the Bell system would teach fundamentals and work well for lower-class children. Coleridge also believed that Bell espoused a gentler approach to education than Lancaster (Pachori Reference Pachori1983, 26–34). Coleridge praised Bell’s Madras school (which became the model for Bell’s monitorial method); for example, Coleridge wrote on 15th April 1808: “Oh dear Dr. Bell, you are a great man! Never, never permit minds so inferior to your own…to induce you to pare away an atom of what you know to be right…yours is for the world – for all mankind” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1956, #694, Vol. III, 88–9).

In 1807, the Royal Institution invited Coleridge to give a series of lectures, and Coleridge initially planned to speak about poetry (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1956, Vol. III, 655–7). But on reflection, he decided to address education instead and he used the lecture as an opportunity to introduce Bell to leading figures in London society such as William Godwin and Sir George and Lady Beaumont (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1956, #692, Vol III. 86; Coleridge Reference Coleridge1956, #693, 86–7). Yet both Coleridge and Bell were widely criticized in the aftermath by Lancaster supporters. Two hours before the lecture, an unidentified Quaker associate brought Lancaster to be introduced to Coleridge. Coleridge begged off, stating that he needed to prepare mentally for his talk, and in response, the Quaker threatened Coleridge with bodily injury. A few days earlier, one of “Lancaster’s zealots” similarly had admonished Coleridge to “Take care of yourself…or you may suffer for it,” according to a letter that Coleridge sent to Bell on May 17, 1808 (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1956, #706, 105–6). Coleridge concluded that the “Lancaster’s schools are a very dangerous attack on our civil and ecclesiastical establishments” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1956, #707, 106–7). In a letter to Bell on May 17, 1808, Coleridge worried that the lecture had exposed Bell to further criticism and promised Bell to “say the truth – namely, that neither directly nor indirectly had I ever had any the slightest impulse from you respecting Lancaster; that the lecture began wholly independent of you” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1956, #706, 105–6).

On November 30, 1811, shortly after the formation of the National Society, Coleridge wrote to Bell that his forthcoming publication, Friend, would be a tribute to Bell’s model. “The subject shall be treated fully, intrepidly, and by close deduction from settled first principles, in the first volume of the recommending Friend, which I hope to bring out early in the spring, on a quarterly or four-monthly plan” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1956, #842, 349).

Wordsworth also supported the National Society schools for the middle class and sharply criticized proposals for a national education system. But he was more pessimistic than Coleridge about working-class education. Writing to his brother, Wordsworth said, “The more I reflect upon the subject, the more I am convinced that positive instruction, even of a religious character, is much over-rated. The education of man, and above all of a Christian, is the education of duty, which is most forcibly taught by the business and concerns of life, of which, even for children, especially the children of the poor, booklearning is but a small part.” The extension of “intellectual culture” to this group by upper and middle-class reformers, he wrote, was “dangerous to the peace of society” (Wordsworth/Knight 1907, 193). In another letter, this time to Hugh James Rose on December 11, 1828, Wordsworth criticized parties “who think that sharpening of intellect and attainment of knowledge are things good in themselves, without reference to the circumstances under which the intellect is sharpened, or to the quality of the knowledge acquired” (Wordsworth/Knight 1907, 181). In an undated letter to Frances Wrangham, Wordsworth condemned the national education proposal:

Authors’ Networks

True novels, with realistic themes drawn from ordinary life and character-driven plots, were slower to develop in Denmark than in Britain; therefore, in the early eighteenth-century, plays continued to be the primary vehicle for story-telling. Danish plays of this era were satirical rather than soul-searching, social in both their execution and enjoyment, and included fable-like morals at the end, often warning against excessive individualism or rising above one’s station. That Danish writers largely produced plays and poems, as opposed to the psychological novels found in Britain, may well signify a different cultural sensibility; yet the difference in literary form may also have a political genesis. Ludvig Holberg was commissioned by King Frederik IV to create plays in the Danish language in order to build national identity (Payne Reference Payne1899, 386).

Ludvig Holberg, the “father of Danish literature,” was the leading protagonist in the campaign to build a national culture (Mortensen Reference Mortensen, Horne Kjældgaard and Julius Elf2002, 33). Born in Norway (then part of Denmark), Holberg was playwright, historian, and philosopher of the enlightenment. His novel, Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground, was perhaps Denmark’s earliest coming-of-age adventure story. Inspired by Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels, the novel was widely read in Latin and sheds insight into Holberg’s concerns about society, politics, and education (Fitting Reference Fitting1996, 99). Holberg was an inveterate traveler and set off to see the world at the age of nineteen; rather like his famous protagonist, Niels Klim, Holberg had many misadventures. When he ran out of money, he tried to escape from a German hotel in the spa town of Aachen without paying the bill. In a last-ditch effort to make money, Holberg offered French lessons in a rural village, despite his limited command of the language. This worked until a Dutchman arrived in town with the same idea. The two had a verbal shouting match in French on the village square, and according to Holberg, never has the language “been used so maladroitly” (Holberg Reference Holberg1965, 41–3).

Holberg’s contemporary, Christian Falster (headmaster of Ribe Cathedral School), also reflected on education in his satiric poems, such as “The Latin Reading Room” (“Den Latinske Skriver-Stue”) (Falster Reference Falster1915–1930). Erik Pontoppidan was commissioned by King Christian VI to produce a new text for Christian education, Truth unto Godliness (Sandhed til Gudfryktighed), after the expansion of Danish schools in 1739. Pontoppidan also presented views on education in his adventure story Menoza (Skarsten Reference Skarsten1981).

At the end of the eighteenth century, the Romanticism movement sweeping across Europe created a new network of authors and new forms of Danish literary culture. Romantic writers in Britain and Denmark differed in their historical sources of inspiration, and British writers referenced the individualistic consciousness of classical Greek writings. Danish Romantic authors, however, drew from old Nordic myths that bolstered national identities and from German philosophy, brought to Denmark by Henrik Steffens (a student of Schiller), who lectured about organic social unity, the harmony of the natural world, and education for a strong society (Leerssen Reference Leerssen2004; “Henrik Steffens” no date; Payne Reference Payne1900, 131–2).

The greatest poet of the period was Adam Oehlenschläger, who derived inspiration from Steffens, Holberg, and Nordic mythology and wrote about the deep interconnections between man and nature (Hanson Reference Hanson1993, 193–4). Oehlenschläger’s father read Holberg comedies aloud to provide family entertainment and Adam grew to love Nordic myths when he was offered a place in the Descendants’ School by the poet Edvard Storm. Oehlenschläger recalls that none of his teachers held expectations about his talents. When Storm observed Oehlenschläger and friends performing one of Adam’s childhood comedies, Storm noted, “Oh my dear child! You are a greater poet than Molière! It was unusual that he wrote a play in eight days, but you have already done this in one day.” Oehlenschläger observes that “Neither Storm or I thought that one day I would really become a poet…Don’t imagine, dear Oehlenschläger, he said once under a bad moon that you have genius because you write these verses! You can become a virtuous scholar, a nice businessman…but you will never be Edvard Storm” (Oehlenschläger 1974/Reference Oehlenschläger1830, 19).

The romantic writer network also included men such as Johannes Ewald (the first playwright to prominently feature Nordic myths) and Jens Baggesen (poet and comic writer). Knud Lyne Rahbek was a crucial leader in the network of authors at century’s turn. Rahbek was a playwright, novelist, and political magazine publisher (of The Danish Spectator or Den Danske Tilskuer and Minerva); he was a central figure at the Drejers Klub, the intellectual center of literary life; and he became head of the Royal Danish theatre (1809 to 1930). His home, Bakkahuset, became a leading salon in Copenhagen, where frequent visitors included Adam Oehlenschläger (Rahbek’s brother-in-law) and future leading writers such as Johann Ludvig Heiberg, H.C. Andersen, Bernhard Severin Ingemann, and Steen Steensen Blicher (Oehlenschläger Reference Oehlenschläger1974/1830, 112–23).

Romantic writers diverged from their enlightenment forbearers in emphasizing emotions and sentiments rather than rational cognition; yet they also reproduced familiar themes about society. Adam Oehlenschläger criticized Enlightenment writers’ disregard for beauty and insufficient attention to Middle Ages epics that revealed national character (Oehlenschläger Reference Oehlenschläger1974/1830, 126). Oehlenschläger felt that the Enlightenment had received exaggerated esteem in his youth (Elf and Kjældgaard 2002, 16). When Oehlenschläger published “The Life of Jesus Christ in the Annual Cycle of Nature” in 1805, Bishop Balle (the Danish Primate) accused Oehlenschläger of pantheism (Kirmmse Reference Kirmmse1977, 182). (For a discussion of enlightenment and romantic authors, see Bredsdorff et al. Reference Bredsdorff, Mai and Hansen2007.)

Authors’ Narratives about Education

Writers’ narratives about schooling from this period resonated with the early educational choices of Danish policy makers about the timing of a public system, access to workers, pedagogical methods, and recognition of a role for the state. First, Denmark’s very early development of a public education system makes sense in light of authors’ depictions of education as crucial to societal goals. Danish enlightenment and romantic authors shared with their British counterparts the belief that education would develop cognitive reasoning and nurture individual self-development. Yet Danish authors also believed that education was important to societal growth and perceived the individual as subservient to society. Thus, in Holberg’s Niels Klim, the self-satisfied, arrogant Klim is disappointed that the tree people of Potu do not recognize his individual talents and view him as an animal, who has “obtuse and miserable judgment – which we believe arises from its too hasty inferences.” Potu leaders decide to make Niels a footman (given his two legs), which greatly disappoints him (Holberg Reference Holberg1845/1741, Loc. 333). When Niels Klim asks for a better job, he is told that although he has talents, these do not give him the right to important offices when the collective requires him to provide other functions (Holberg Reference Holberg1845/1741, Loc. 807).

Oehlenschläger also stressed the importance of society and was guided in his thinking by the Nordic myths. While still at university in 1800, he wrote a prize-winning essay arguing that the myths supported the notion of organic society. He published an article entitled “Flowers from the Nordic Past” (“Blomster fra den nordiske Oldtid”) that packaged the treasures of Nordic myths for popular consumption. For Oehlenschläger, the Nordic myths were poetic renderings of the real history of the ancient Nordic people and offered glimpses into a nobler but now obscure era (Hanson Reference Hanson1993, 181, 184; Mai Reference Mai2010). In Hakon Jarl (Earl Hakon), Oehlenschläger’s most famous play recounting a Nordic saga about an earl who is desperate to become king and stops at nothing to achieve his goals, Hakon’s evil character is apparent in his excessive individualism, unrestrained ambition, and complete disregard for social norms. Hakon cannot stand praise for others, unlike a prior, widely celebrated, humble, and self-sacrificing ruler, Harald Graafeld, who “was a king!…who, laboring for his country’s weal, Threw off the purple mantle with its gold. And reign’d, in humble sheep-skins simply clad” (Oehlenschläger Reference Oehlenschläger1840/1805, 10). Hakon Jarl seeks to steal the daughter of Bergthor, who decries that “One’s daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, Are all alike in danger of this Jarl”? (38). Hakon is “haughty and imperious” and “encroaching on the people’s rights, He seized their [farmers’] goods, their heritage” (51). Hakon is “as afraid Of his own warriors as he is of” the enemy (93).

Second, writers provided support for expanding educational access to peasants and workers, as Danish writers depicted the “small people” in much more positive terms than did British writers. Holberg advocates for a free and educated peasantry in Niels Klim: in the subterranean utopia of Potu, respect is paid to those who contribute most to society, and social relations are characterized by a high degree of equality. Classes do not exist, but the most highly ranked individuals are “noted for virtue and industry.” No one should hold more than one position and their profession should be determined according to their abilities and societal need: “Everyone should know his own talents, and should impartially judge of his own merits and faults” (Holberg Reference Holberg1845/1741, Loc. 404). Laws once favored some classes to the exclusion of others, but this favoritism resulted in “frequent disturbances”; citizens resolved to end class distinctions because this would be “conducive to the general interest” (Loc. 446 to 457). Children are the greatest gift one may give to society: “He, who has the most numerous offspring, is regarded as the most deserving citizen” (Loc 460). “Therefore generation is quite as useful and desirable in this country as on the earth it is burdensome and dangerous” (Loc. 404). Malthusian concerns about overpopulation are absent in this literature.

The poet Thomas Thaarup (who served as tutor to Christian Ditlev Reventlow’s son) took up mantle of celebrating the peasant as an integral part of Danish society. Thaarup composed a cantata for Christian VII’s birthday in 1786, shortly after the coup transferring power to the crown prince and his advisers. A peasant chorus sang: “Oh fathers of the nation, listen to the complaint of bondage. Hear the serfs’ hope for your comfort. Smile against the dark, heavy days and make serfs glad and happy!” (Thaarup Reference Thaarup1822/1786, 287). Thaarup’s goal of elevating peasants was not “equality among the classes but benefits from equality within the classes. The man who fulfills his call of duty and who recognizes and loves the broader band that binds all people to each in his circle to work for the common good, that is our company’s man” (Bokkenheuser Reference Bokkenheuser1903, 169). Thaarup connected the fate of the peasant to essential nation-building goals, as when a peasant boy sings in his 1790 poetic play, The Harvest Festival (Høst Gildet):

Danish authors also deprecated class tensions that threatened the organic unity of society. Rahbek’s 1799 historical novel about the French Revolution, Camill and Constance, vividly portrays the horrors of deep social division in France and constitutes a cautionary tale for Denmark. At the end of the novel, Camill (in a moderate faction of the revolutionary wing) tries to save Constance’s older brother (who is loyal to the king), but the brother dies in Camill’s arms. Camill is heart-broken by the death of the brother of his beloved (Constance). But Camill feels some hope in that the two sides are headed toward reconciliation and he joins in the collective cheer, “Long live the nation!” (Bakkehusmuseet 1804).

Although Adam Oehlenschäger was no democrat, he considered educating the peasants to be a prerequisite to a future democratic transition. He wrote, “Genuine liberality seems to me to consist in trying to clear the way for the uncultivated to achieve the same intellectual heights, but without giving them all the power which is naturally and properly possessed by enlightened opinion” (Kirmmse Reference Kirmmse1977, 195, ff 41). Hakon Jarl captures Oehlenschläger’s views on class. The evil Hakon prefers to rely on slaves rather than on his own people, and this offends Scandinavian sensibilities (Oehlenschläger 1840/Reference Oehlenschläger1805, 105). When Hakon attempts to seize the throne, the peasants rebel and choose an alternative king at the Thing (113,170).

Danish authors also minimized religious cleavages. Erik Pontoppidan (Pietist and Court Pastor of Copenhagen) worried that the radical Pietist movement could threaten the state church and preached religious tolerance (Skarsten Reference Skarsten1981, 34–5). Pontoppidan’s adventure story, Menoza, recounts the world travels of an Indian prince in search of true Christianity. Prince Menoza feels kinship with the British Methodists, whom he views as social paragons and who pursue noble work, visiting the sick and raising alms for the poor. Upon his return home, Menoza recognizes that no religion is perfect and that tolerance is needed to unify the children of God (Skarsten Reference Skarsten1981, 33–43). Citizens in Holberg’s Niels Klim are also allowed to experience religion in their own way: “all agree in worshiping a superior being…Each one is permitted to think and worship as he pleases…He, who with severity condemned others, was himself in danger of being condemned” (Holberg Reference Holberg1845/1741, Loc. 423).

A third choice for education system development concerns pedagogical methods, and Danish authors praised experiential learning and practical education. Reformers were influenced by educational philosophers such as the teachings of Basedow; yet Basedow himself drew inspiration from Holberg, who lays out his educational philosophy in plays produced for the Danish public in the 1720s. In Ludvig Holberg’s Erasmus Montanus (1722), Rasmus Berg, a Latin scholar, is an arrogant, pretentious prig, who speaks in fake Latin words, insults the community, and belittles his farmer parents, who have sacrificed for their son’s education. On a rare visit home, Rasmus “sat still and stared at the moon and the stars with such a rapt expression that he fell off the wagon three times and nearly broke his neck from sheer learning” (Holberg Reference Holberg1914/1722, 43). Younger brother Jacob questions Rasmus’s claims of superiority: “You scholars spend the time disputing whether the earth is round, square or eight-cornered, and we study how to keep the earth in repair” (71). Rasmus is eventually brought into line by a wise lieutenant: “you go off a sensible fellow and come back entirely deranged, arouse the whole village, advance strange opinions, and defend them with stubbornness. If that is to be the fruit of studies, then one ought to wish that there never had been any books…a learned man ought particularly to be distinguished from others in that he is more temperate, modest, and considerate in his speech than the uneducated. For true philosophy teaches us that we ought to restrain and quiet disagreements” (78).

Holberg, joined by Falster and Pontoppidan, favored the study of Danish language and literature over Latin. Holberg criticized universities’ obsession with formalism, Latin disputations, (often foreign) metaphysics, and medieval logic (Campbell Reference Campbell1918, 98–100). This can be seen in Holberg’s novel, in which Niels Klim encounters the stupidity of philosophical obsession when he travels to the “philosophical-land,” inhabited only by philosophers and scientists, and discovers poverty and decrepitude. The inhabitants have no time to attend to the necessities of life, claiming to have “higher and nobler things in their heads: they are now speculating about the shortest road to the sun.” “In the streets, philosophers and swine are mingled together, and both classes being alike filthy, they are only to be distinguished from each other by form.” This insensibility “convinced me that intelligence resulting from methodical and practical study is preferable to the torpid insanity incident to much learning” (Holberg Reference Holberg1845/1741, Loc. 645–55). Klim runs away when he discovers that the doctors of medicine intend to dissect him (Loc. 683). Likewise, in his poem, “The Latin Writing Room,” Falster pokes fun at the deadly boredom of young Latin students and ridicules the pompous, drunken scholars who become professional students, bring poverty on themselves, beg for money, and attack in Latin those who refuse them (Falster Reference Falster1720–42).

A final choice for education system development concerned the question of how to balance government versus non-state entities in providing schooling. Danish authors played a crucial role in bolstering the legitimacy of the absolute monarch – depicting government institutions as fair and affirming the state’s role in education – even as they advocated for the greater liberalism associated with the enlightenment and questioned the hegemony of dominant church values. Holberg believed that a strong state, in the form of a benevolent dictatorship, was necessary to govern the largely ignorant citizens (Holm Reference Holm and Hakon Rossel1994). Once again, Niels Klim’s Journey under the Earth captures Holberg’s views of ideal government and just laws. A female judge is chosen for “her superior virtue and talent.” The lawyers have sheep skins “to remind them of the attributes of their calling – innocence, faithfulness, and sedateness.” The absolute monarchy is hereditary, but “all the other officers of government should be subject to the will of the people, all of whom should be allowed to vote, who could read and write” (Holberg Reference Holberg1845/1741, Loc. 446). The king “must be accurately acquainted with the opinions of his subjects, and must strive to keep union among them” (Loc. 474). When reform is necessary, “deliberation must be used; to banish at once, and in a mass, old and rooted faults, would be like prescribing laxative and restringent medicines at the same time to an invalid” (Loc. 485).

Oehlenschläger, too, defended the Danish monarchy as a necessary institution to prevent political cleavages in society and worried that excessive liberalism could disrupt the natural order: “Republican egalitarianism,” he wrote, “easily goes too far, so that in the end there is no difference between merit and lack of merit, because envy has been allowed too much free play” (Quoted in Kirmmse Reference Kirmmse1977, 194). Yet he also disliked hereditary nobility and wrote “I have for my entire life had a strong feeling for human rights” (Oehlenschläger Reference Oehlenschläger1850, vol. II, 121.)

Authors in Episodes of School Reform