Log in

Radical Translations

  • Date
  • False: false attribution such as false place of imprint or false date
  • Fictional place: false imprint contains a fictional, invented place of imprint or date
  • Form: type or genre of writing.
  • Female
  • Male
  • Language
  • Noble: person was born noble.
  • Place
  • Role: the main role of a person or organization in relation to a resource.
  • Subject: content, theme, or topic of a work.
  • Uncertainty: information could not be verified.

Desmond: A Novel

Contributions

Charlotte Smith
author
George Robinson
publisher

Related resources

has translation
Desmond, ou L'amant philanthrope translation

Held by

Notes

'Desmond', Smith's most politically engaged and uncompromising novel, was placed with George Robinson (who also published Paine and Godwin) after being rejected by her usual publisher, Thomas Cadell, possibly for its radical politics and intervention in the Revolution debate. She renewed her association with Cadell in 1794.

Letter to Thomas Cadell sent just before her departure to France (7 Sept 1791): "The Novel which I have begun is meant to convey in the form of Letters & under the illusion of a Love story, the present state of France not however at all in the style of Miss Williams. I hope to be at home within a month with my two little Volumes finish'd. You declin'd the purchase of them I think, because some circumstances in regard to the Printing of Celestina had given you uneasiness which you was [sic] determined not to hazard again".

In her preface, she writes, "I have given to my imaginary characters the arguments I have heard on both sides; and if those in favour of one party have evidently the advantage, it is not owing to my partial representation but to the predominant power of truth and reason, which can neither be altered or concealed". While her central protagonist argues against Burke's 'Reflections on the Revolution in France', praises Paine's 'The Rights of Man' and defends the French Revolution throughout the novel.

Originally called 'The Wandering Lover', Smith changed its title to the less incongruous 'Desmond' on the advice of her friend and patron, William Hayley. Its radicalism was widely acknowledged by reviewers, with a rumour suggesting that she had been "bribed to [write it] by the democratic party". In an act that confirmed its political resonance, Smith was toasted by the expatriate British Club on 18 November 1792 as one of "the Women of Great Britain… who have distinguished themselves by their writings in favour of the French Revolution". The other was Helen Maria Williams.

The epistolary and historical novel, set between June 1790 and February 1792, contains a "free translation of parts of a little pamphlet", 'Histoire d'un malheureux vassal de Bretagne écrite par lui-même', in Letter XIV. The 60-page pamphlet denouncing feudal abuses can be found for sale online but not on Gallica, "publié par A.F.D.B." (1790, Paris: Chez les marchands des nouveautés).

See Katherine Astbury, 'Narrative responses to the trauma of the French Revolution' (2017) and the appendix to Stuart Curran, ed., 'The Works of Charlotte Smith', Vol.V (2005); also JoEllen DeLucia, 'Radcliffe, George Robinson and Eighteenth-Century Print Culture: Beyond the Circulating Library', Women's Writing, 22:3 (2015), p.292; Amy Garnai, 'A letter from Charlotte Smith to the Publisher George Robinson', 18th Century Fiction, vol.19, no.4 (Summer 2007); and Gary Kelly, 'The English Jacobin Novel, 1780-1805'.