{{short description, Group of 19th-century English poets and essayists The "Cockney School" refers to a group of poets and essayists writing in England in the second and third decades of the 19th century. The term came in the form of hostile

reviews A review is an evaluation of a publication, product, service, or company or a critical take on current affairs in literature, politics or culture. In addition to a critical evaluation, the review's author may assign the work a rating to indic ...

in ''

Blackwood's Magazine ''Blackwood's Magazine'' was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by publisher William Blackwood and originally called the ''Edinburgh Monthly Magazine'', but quickly relaunched as ''Blackwood's Edinb ...

'' in 1817. Its primary target was

Leigh Hunt James Henry Leigh Hunt (19 October 178428 August 1859), best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist and poet. Hunt co-founded '' The Examiner'', a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles. He was the centre ...

, but

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...

and

William Hazlitt William Hazlitt (10 April 177818 September 1830) was an English essayist, drama and literary criticism, literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history ...

were also included. Only Keats could properly be regarded as a

cockney Cockney is a dialect of the English language, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by Londoners with working-class and lower middle class roots. The term ''Cockney'' is also used as a demonym for a person from the East End, ...

. Hazlitt was not even born in London. John Scott died after a duel over the controversy. Leigh_Hunt

Each of the writers was derided for a slightly different quality. Keats, for example, was accused of "low diction" for rhyming "thorns/fawns" in "Sleep and Poetry" and other rhymes which suggested a

working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

speech. Hunt and Hazlitt were similarly vilified for their diction, but the criticisms were more ideological with them than with Keats.

John Wilson Croker John Wilson Croker (20 December 178010 August 1857) was an Anglo-Irish statesman and author. Life He was born in Galway, the only son of John Croker, the surveyor-general of customs and excise in Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College Dub ...

perpetuated the term "Cockney School" beyond the pages of ''Blackwood's'' in 1818 when he attacked Keats's '' Endymion'' in the ''

Quarterly Review The ''Quarterly Review'' was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by London publishing house John Murray. It ceased publication in 1967. It was referred to as ''The London Quarterly Review'', as reprinted by Leonard Scott, f ...

.'' John Wilson (Christopher North) and

John Gibson Lockhart John Gibson Lockhart (12 June 1794 – 25 November 1854) was a Scottish writer and editor. He is best known as the author of the seminal, and much-admired, seven-volume biography of his father-in-law Sir Walter Scott: ''Memoirs of the Life of Sir ...

had joined its staff in 1817. Lockhart shared in the caustic and aggressive articles that marked the early years of Blackwood, but his biographer

Andrew Lang Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a folkloristics, collector of folklore, folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectur ...

denied he was responsible for the virulent articles on

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth ...

and on "The Cockney School of Poetry" of Leigh Hunt, Keats and their friends. Lockhart has been accused of the later Blackwood article (August 1818) on Keats, but he did show appreciation of Coleridge and Wordsworth.

Background

The term, and the campaign against Hunt and the others, was not a question of

aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...

. It was, instead, an attack on the class background of the authors and their aspirations to the highest level of the literati, and it was, additionally, a reaction to the "Cockney" politics of the authors. The political, reformist agenda and the democratic ideology of Hunt and Hazlitt were offensive to the ''Blackwood's'' review staff, and the cultural and class background of the authors was introduced as a mechanism.

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was an English writer who is considered one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame durin ...

was accused of being similarly offensive politically, but the reviewers excused him for his

genius Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for the future, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabiliti ...

(and, of course, his high birth). The second generation of the

Romantic movement Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

was as politically and economically revolutionary as it was aesthetically challenging to the ''status quo,'' and the controversy and partial reviewers responsible for the creation of the "Cockney School" epithet foreground how offensive it was to the establishment that lower class persons might emerge. According to the 1907 ''Nuttall's Brief Encyclopedia,'' the term was revived in the 1890s by working class London poets, but, although this may have been ''en vogue'' at the turn of the twentieth century, the term is currently remembered for the Romantic reference only.

References

*Richardson, Alan. "Cockney School" in Preminger, Alex and T. V. F. Brogan, eds. ''The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.'' Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993. 221-222.

External links

* Selections from ''

'' on Wikisource, including the original "Cockney Poets" article by John Gibson Lockhart. British poetry Submovements of Romanticism