Printing like a post-colonialist: The Irish piracy of Sir Charles Grandison

Why is it necessary, in Ireland, any more than in Prussian Silesia, a conquered province, that a Roman catholic must be looked upon as an enemy to the government that protects him? I too well know from history what may be said. But what an additional strength would unanimity bestow upon both islands, could both sides meet in love and trust? What wisdom in the measure of sending to America batallions of brave and hardy Highlanders! (Barbauld 5: 187-88)

Writing while still immersed in revisions of Grandison, Richardson argues here for a Grandisonian truce between England and Ireland in terms that barely conceal such an agreement's underlying aggression. This transformation of the Irish into imperial cannon fodder exposes the utility of English tolerance to the pursuit of imperial acquisitions and-because it reveals the nature of Grandisonian tolerance so clearly-calls into question the mid-century English novel's role in civilizing English culture.

1 Grandison's influence on Jane Austen and subsequent novelists has been forgotten and rediscovered a number of times in the past fifty years. See Barker 146-72. That we neglect it now says more about modem sensibility than about the novel's impact in its own time.

2 I'm indebted to Warner's unpublished conference paper "The Institutionalization of Authorship" for this analogy and for setting out the connections between copyright regulations and politics that laid the groundwork for this chapter. See also Warner's Licensing Entertainment, where he suggests that Richardson's anti-piracy pamphlet "aligns an author's property in his text with the sentimental heroine's property in her body" (283n3).

3 See Fysh 100-23 for a discussion of the piracy that focuses on normative ethical values rather than political relationships. Chung's Samuel Richardson's New Nation does not deal with the Irish piracy. See Cole 72-74 and Pollard 88-90 for recent historical accounts of the piracy.

4 Grandisonian tolerance draws on cosmopolitan Enlightenment models while still proclaiming the centrality of Protestantism. It assumes an English center that "endures," "suffers," and "allows" difference. See Johnson. For a discussion that reveals both the similarities and differences between Grandison's position and a cosmopolitan one, see Schlereth 73-96.

5 For eighteenth-century reactions to Grandison's publication, see Three Criticisms, particularly "Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa and Pamela" and "A Candid Examination of the History of Sir Charles Grandison." For contemporary critical responses, see among others, Doody, Harris, Gwilliam, and Marks. For a work that focuses on Grandison's Englishness, see Chung.

6 I describe Cambridge's library as newly national because it had become one of the national depository libraries with the copyright act of 1710. For a discussion of the holdings of the library and a reference to Grandison, see Oates 65.

7 Doody suggests that Grandison could be seen as "part of a concerted effort of a whole society to make an adjustment to a kind of communal life other than that of the small self-contained unit," noting as well that Grandison Hall represented "in miniature English life, its tradition and future" (349). More recently, Sabor has remarked that Sir Charles Grandison "firmly