Convivial Scenes on the Strand, 1823

Adopting an associational and wandering approach, this article reconstructs some of the scenes and figures which might have been encountered by a visitor to the Strand in 1823. These include William Blake, in Fountain Court, or William Godwin near the church of St Clement’s, visited that year by his daughter Mary Shelley, with whom he attended an adaptation of her novel Frankenstein on a nearby stage. The scene depicted here around the Strand in 1823 also includes buskers and their crowding audiences, which are in turn presented as members of delightful scenes available in a burgeoning reproduced literature. Less visible perhaps are the agitating radicals meeting in pubs and back rooms and those drawn inside the cultural institutions in the area. The core inquiry here is into education, that is to say, what constitutes an education, how and to who does it circulate, and what is to come of it? Is it to be found in the old academic institutions, in the newly founded ones, such as the Juvenile Library or the London Mechanics’ Institution? Or, more radically, does it rise up on the streets, in the pubs and the popular theatres, or is it perhaps, something that will be stored up in back rooms waiting for a future into which it can finally be released? Who are its recipients? What is the past and future of a radical vernacular education?