‘Knowledge is Power’: Literature, Invention, Radical Thinking at the London Mechanics’ Institution

On the occasion of the bicentenary of the London Mechanics’ Institution, this introduction goes back to the Baconian motto ‘Knowledge is Power’ adopted by the early proponents of mechanics’ education to reconstruct the place and function of literature in mechanic invention, practical education, and useful knowledge, against the backdrop of its emergence as an autonomous discipline of the creative imagination. Analysis of different published versions of George Birkbeck’s speech on the laying of the first stone of the lecture room in December 1824 reveals the precarious status of literature in the mechanics’ ‘Temple of Reason’ under construction: foregrounded in one version, excluded from another. Why? This intervention explores what is at stake in its inclusion or exclusion then and now, in the current predicament of the arts and humanities locally, nationally, and internationally.