Focusing on the writing of John Thelwall, Thomas Paine, Helen Maria Williams, William Godwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth, he Majesty of the People examines how theories about the role of the intellectual or the writer were developed as part of the 1790s' contestation of the concept of the majesty of the people.

• Introduction


• Part I: The Political Existence of the People


• 1: The Right of Resistance and the People out of Doors


• 2: Assembling the people: John Thelwall and the London Corresponding Society


• Part II: The Sovereignty of Justice


• 3: An American in Paris: Thomas Paine and the politics of the outsider


• 4: I am the people, myself': Embodying the People and the Letters of Helen Maria Williams


• 5: William Godwin and the Passive Multitude


• Part III: Redeeming the People


• 6: Vox Populi, Vox Dei: Coleridge's Apologetic Voice of the Peopl


• 7: Wordsworth and the People as Original Power


• Afterword

Georgina Green is a research fellow at the University of York, currently working on the Leverhulme funded project 'Networks of Improvement 1760-1840'.