Portraits of Fashionable Society (And Poets)
[BROWN, Thomas, pseud.].
Brighton; or, the Steyne. A satirical Novel. In three Volumes … London: Printed for the Author. Sold by Sherwood, Neely, and Jones … 1818.
3 vols., 12mo.; some mild foxing, wanting half-title in volume I, but a good copy in contemporary half calf and marbled boards, somewhat rubbed.
First edition, a ‘novel’ heavily interspersed with disguised character sketches. The main plot, such as it is, centres on Lord Heathermount and a ‘beautiful incognita’, but everywhere they turn they bump into the notables of the day, from the Prince Regent’s close circle to the Lake Poets.
A sketch of ‘Mr Manuel the Poet’, who ‘has written and said so much, that the inconsistencies of his writings and opinion have acquired a notoriety’, points to Robert Southey (Don Manuel Espriella was the ostensible author of his Letters from England, 1809), and is followed by a parody of ‘the style of simplicity of the lake bards’: ‘There was a little maid, / And she was afraid …’. ‘In spite, however, of this puerile style, and of his calling lyric some of his compositions which merit not the name, and some epic which possesses only the name; yet, certainly, some of his poetical morceaux prove that he has felt the true inspiration’.
Elsewhere, we encounter ‘Mr. L.––– H–––’ (Leigh Hunt, ‘This poet … is the brother of the Examiner, a fiery democrat [John Hunt]’), ‘Lord Coalman’ (the playwright George Colman), ‘Lord Victory’ (Nelson, sadly maligned for ‘the connexion which he formed with a certain lady’), and the ‘Rt. Hon. George Antijacobin’ (Canning).
The author also published the similar Bath, a Satirical novel, with Portraits in the same year, but is otherwise unknown and unidentified.
Garside, Raven and Schöwerling 1818: 23.