Anti-Jacobin - History of Composition

History of Composition

The Anti-Jacobin consisted of 36 issues printed from November 20, 1797 until July 9, 1798. These 36 issues amounted to only 288 pages; however, the Anti-Jacobin is considered to be one of the most influential and effective periodicals published for both literature and politics. There are two significant stylistic features of the Anti-Jacobin that contributes to these positive remarks: the mass amount of factual material and the straightforward, brief nature that the material was presented in.

The Anti-Jacobin is believed to have originated from George Canning's involvement in peace negotiations with France in 1797 when he was the undersecretary of state for foreign affairs. The coup d'état caused these negotiations to end abruptly on September 4, 1797. This led Canning to revert his attention towards his home, England, where he decided to write a letter to George Ellis on October 19, 1797. This letter contained Canning’s proposal to write a periodical that was to include humour, good principles, and frank reasoning that would influence the public to side with the anti-Jacobins. With the help of fellow Tory Parliament members John Hookham Frere (Canning’s school friend) and George Ellis, Canning was able to commission the publication of the Anti-Jacobin to Wright. The anti-Jacobins established their headquarters in a vacated, secret house nearby Wright where they would congregate every Sunday before each new issue was released.

William Gifford, the editor of the periodical, had established his style by writing poems like the Baviad (1794) and Maeviad (1795), which satirized Robert Merry, a Jacobin writer, and the Della Cruscans Pitt, Jenkinson, Hammond, Baron Macdonald, and Marquis Wellesley were also contributors to the periodical.

The Anti-Jacobin satirized many famous poets, scientists, philosophers, politicians, explorers, pedagogues, and demagogues. “It was to its satire that it owed both its influence and its fame, and of this satire much was in verse, some of the most telling poems being from Canning’s pen,” (Marshall 179). These groups and individuals included: The French and their British allies, radicals, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Styles of poetry that were commonly mocked in the Anti-Jacobin were Orientalism, Gothic, Darwinian didactic couplets, German Drama, and sentimentalism.