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Course Syllabus
Assigned reading for summer:
James Boswell, Life of Johnson
Section I: England in the 1850s and 1860s: The Scottish Network
[This section focuses on the 1750s and 1760s. In it we introduce the primary
figures of the Turk’s Head Club and explain their relation to each other. We
address the following themes: The Club, Englishness, the tension between wealth
(patronage) and literary labor (the print market), the tension between the Scots
network and the various forms of English association, the beginnings of the
modern disciplines]
September 8: Introduction (K & M)
James Boswell, Life of Johnson
[Themes: Positioning the Club, introduction of the Club members, overview of
1750s and 1760s, wealth and patronage, Englishness, disciplinarity, Jones as
Persian scholar, the Scots network]
September 15: Literary Life in Eighteenth-Century London: Booksellers, the Turk’s
Head Club, and Writing and Publishing (Kevin)
Slide show of faces and places, based largely on one of the co-founders of the Club, Sir
Joshua Reynolds
James Boswell, Life of Johnson (continued)
[Themes: Print culture, the strains and stresses of the patronage system]
Reading assignment: find every reference in Life of Johnson to printing, the
writing trade, and the labor of composition
September 22: Johnson as a Writer (Mary)
James Boswell, Life of Johnson (complete)
Samuel Johnson, “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” the “Preface” to The Dictionary of the
English Language (selections handed out in class), the “Preface” to Johnson’s edition of
Shakespeare (selections handed out in class)
[Themes: the standardization of the English language, translation, canon
formation, poetic imitation, Neo-Augustan literature]
September 29: Touring Scotland, Writing Up Commerce (Mary)
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Samuel Johnson, Journey to the Western Islands (Google Books)
David Hume, “Of Commerce” (handout)
Mary Poovey, Genres of the Credit Economy (selections in handout)
[Themes: Johnson on Scotland and the limits of Englishness, the fallout of the
’45 and the beginnings of political economy]
October 6: Writing the History of Empire (Mary)
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (selections Google Books)
[Themes: The idea of Rome, London and Rome, the Roman Empire and the
English Empire, Britain as the new Rome, fears about decline]
October 13: Writing Law into Empire (Kevin)
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (selections)
[Themes: historiography; progress vs decline]
Assignment: Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Introduction
(Avalon Project Website: avalon.law.yale.edu)
October 20: Performances of Justice (reading) (Kevin and Mary)
Mary Poovey, Making a Social Body, chapter 1 (handout)
James Brooke-Smith, Institutions of Literature: Literary Knowledge in the Public Sphere,
chapter 1 (posted on Blackboard under Documents)
[Themes: Parliamentary statesmanship, the East India Company, financing war,
legislating colonialism, the economics of colonialism, relevant theoretical
terms—naturalization, crisis, stabilization, domains, hybrid, classification]
Note: This session marks the end of Section I (The Club) and the beginning of
Section II (The Country). Just as Section I focused on Samuel Johnson, London,
and the Turk’s Head Club, Section II focuses on Shelburne, Bowood, the East
India Company, and Britain’s relation to her colonies. This section focuses on
the 1770s and 1780s.
Section II: The Country and the Colonies
October 27: Domain 1: Public Finance (Kevin)
Treaty of Paris 1763 (Avalon Project website, Yale University: avalon.law.yale.edu)
Treaty of Paris 1783 (Avalon Project website)
[The second of these two treaties was personally negotiated by Shelburne, and, in
conjunction with his work on the first, Shelburne met Benjamin Franklin and
employed Adam Smith to advise him on colonial matters (including free trade)].
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Richard Price, Two Tracts on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the War with America, and the
Debts and Finances of the Kingdom
[Themes: Shelburne and his advisers, public debt, patronage and the Civil List,
subsidies to the East India Company, financing war, monetary theories, currency
debates, usury]
November 3: Public Finance (continued) (Kevin)
Richard Price, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (Google Books)
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (selections) (Google Books)
[Themes: Price on finance and civil liberty; Burke’s attack on the Bowood Circle
(which included Price, as Shelburne’s advisor on finance and public debt, Adam
Smith, as the advisor on colonial policy and political economy, and Jeremy
Bentham, as advisor on political and legal theory); property and finance under
France’s Ancien Regime]
November 10: Domain 2: Political Economy (Mary)
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapter 1, Book II, chapters 1-4, Book IV
(all), Book V, chapter 3 (Google Books and Library of Liberty on-line collection:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/)
[Themes: “wealth,” the genre of political economy, the “invisible hand”]
November 17: Domain 2: Political Economy (continued) (Kevin)
Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence (selections) (Library of Liberty:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/))
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (selections) (Library of Liberty:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/)
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book III, chapter 7 (Google Books and Library of
Liberty: http://oll.libertyfund.org/)
[Themes: the “Adam Smith problem” and how it has been resolved in 2 different
“markets,” the Indian colonies vs the American colonies]
November 24: Thanksgiving (No Class)
December 1: Domain 3: Law and Jurisprudence (Kevin)
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Introduction (Avalon
Project website)
Jeremy Bentham, Fragment on Government (Google Books—note: this is the last item on
p. 2 of the Bentham bookshelf; also available in Library of Liberty:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/)
[Themes: British universities and the law, Blackstone as teacher, Chambers and
Jones as Oxford students, Bentham’s attack on Blackstone and his relationship
with Shelburne]
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Group presentations of projects on works by authors related to the Club and to
Bowood (Sir William Jones, the Junius Letters, Joseph Priestley, William
Chambers)
December 8: Domain 3: Law and Jurisprudence (continued) (Kevin and Mary)
Jeremy Bentham, Letter on Usury (Library of Liberty: http://oll.libertyfund.org/; note:
this is in volume 3 of Bentham’s collected works)
[Themes: Impey, Burke and the Hastings’ impeachment trials, legislation
concerning East India Company, India House and Parliamentary debates over the
Company, publication of the Laws of Manu]
Group presentations (continued)