Comments on: Synthesizers

By: Gavin Robinson

Gavin Robinson — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:11:21 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to comment. Nick at Mercurius Politicus posted about the pamphlet in more detail.

And I didn’t notice before that your third comment got stuck in the spam queue. I’ve written about some of Brian Manning’s books in other posts. I really liked The English People, but wasn’t so impressed with The Far Left, particularly because it had so little to say about gender. It’s unfortunate that the revisionists made Marxism such a dirty word. Although I think they were right to point out some of the limitations of the vulgar Marxist models used by Hill and Manning and destroy the master narrative of progress from feudalism to capitalism, there’s still a lot that Marxism can teach us about ideological hegemony. Revisionism has left us with too narrow a definition of politics and ideology, which as well as making the 1640s look less revolutionary contributes to the false objectivity/neutrality of trying to keep Marxism, feminism etc out of history because they’re “political bias” while denying that their attempts to defend the status quo and their own privileges are also deeply political.

By: Norah Carlin

Norah Carlin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 08:35:22 +0000

I also omitted to read the rest of your comments on my book before posting about the illustration! I am very interested in the revolution and have written other things on it – but I was commissioned to write this book by the Historical Association as a text for ‘first year students’ and I tried to guide readers through the maze of then-current arguments about the causes of the civil war. I had moved on from the early ‘International Socialism’ article that called me a hard-liner but I still think Hill was inconsistent in his historical materialism. As I wrote this book I began to see the real importance of the ‘middling sort’ on the ground in town, country and church, an importance highlighted much earlier, of course, by my late friend and mentor Brian Manning. I hope you got round to reading some of his books too.

By: Norah Carlin

Norah Carlin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 08:27:22 +0000

Sorry, i didn’t notice that someone had already posted the title! Thanks to that person for giving me the record.

By: Norah Carlin

Norah Carlin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 08:25:45 +0000

It is very remiss of me not to have kept a record of the pamphlet that cartoon came from. As I remember, I had seen a small reproduction of it on the cover of another book, and told my Blackwell editor where it came from; Blackwell’s image research staff then found it and got permission from the BL, but the exact source was not stated on the cover.
If you would still like to find this, searching the Thomason Tracts is much easier now with EEBO (Early English Books Online) which most university libraries will give you access to, though I don’t have home access myself but I will try to remember to look this up the next time I am in the National Library here in Edinburgh. What you get on EEBO is the full visual image, not just the text, so the cartoon will appear on your screen as part of the title page. Since we have the year of publication it isn’t necessary to search the whole of the Thomason Tracts.
The British Library used to have photocopies of the Thomason bound volumes shelved in the Rare Books and Music Room, which meant that you could browse them, but from what it says on the BL website now I think they have moved them and you have to order a specific volume from the stacks. But the small pamphlets in the collection were bound in more or less chronological order, so the number of volumes to be searched would be quite limited.
I think the image was used again on another textbook about the Civil War which must have been about the time I left teaching in 2002, because I remember deciding not to buy it. (Of course, it may not give the source either!)
I wish I could find it again myself!

By: Gavin Robinson

Gavin Robinson — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:39:39 +0000

Excellent, thanks a lot. I’ll find it on EEBO easily enough.

By: Ivor Carr

Ivor Carr — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 07:47:21 +0000

Gavin, The woodcut from Carlin’s book comes from a pamphlet entitled “A Dialogue, or Rather a Parley betweene Prince Ruperts Dogge whose name is Puddle and Tobies Dog whose name is Pepper, &c.” dated by Thomason Feb 23 1642/3 and sometimes attributed to John Taylor. I’m afraid I can not at the moment locate the reference.