A press for poetry, poetics, broadsides, ephemerides, theory, and scurrilities, based at the University of Sheffield.
The name is taken from the Sheffield Society for Constitutional Information, established in 1791, and suppressed in short order. The Society for Constitutional Information was one of the “most active and zealous of the Radical Societies” (Simon Maccoby, English Radicalism), whilst Albert Goodwin calls it “probably the first British working-class reform association of any consequence” (The Friends of Liberty). The society was established primarily to agitate for parliamentary reform, influenced by Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, but also sought the reform of taxation and for cheaper food. In 1793 the poet and reformist James Montgomery received a visitor, who delivered “a rhyming Catalogue of Scurrilities upon my Youth, Person, Occupation, &c and having found me guilty of Rhyme and Treason, (two damning Sins) he threatens, in big bombastic Language, to toss me in a Blanket, to make my scrawling Muse give up the Ghost.” For more see James Michael Daly’s dissertation, From Sheffield to Raleigh: a Radical Publishing Network in the Age of Revolution (http://shura.shu.ac.uk/4075/)
Edited by Sam Ladkin, Fabienne Collignon and Bob Mckay
The name is taken from the Sheffield Society for Constitutional Information, established in 1791, and suppressed in short order. The Society for Constitutional Information was one of the “most active and zealous of the Radical Societies” (Simon Maccoby, English Radicalism), whilst Albert Goodwin calls it “probably the first British working-class reform association of any consequence” (The Friends of Liberty). The society was established primarily to agitate for parliamentary reform, influenced by Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, but also sought the reform of taxation and for cheaper food. In 1793 the poet and reformist James Montgomery received a visitor, who delivered “a rhyming Catalogue of Scurrilities upon my Youth, Person, Occupation, &c and having found me guilty of Rhyme and Treason, (two damning Sins) he threatens, in big bombastic Language, to toss me in a Blanket, to make my scrawling Muse give up the Ghost.” For more see James Michael Daly’s dissertation, From Sheffield to Raleigh: a Radical Publishing Network in the Age of Revolution (http://shura.shu.ac.uk/4075/)
Edited by Sam Ladkin, Fabienne Collignon and Bob Mckay