When the first issue of The Liberal was published on 10 October 1822, the periodical was largely dismissed by the British press as a political project conceived by well-known and controversial figures (L. Hunt, P.B. Shelley, Lord Byron, W. Hazlitt, and Mary Shelley). They were all members of the so-called “Pisan circle”, an Anglo-Italian community of liberal writers aspiring to cultural and social reform. Even though The Liberal was addressed to an English public, it was entirely conceived in Italy, a country which had become a symbolic as well as a geographical space, playing a crucial role in defining the journal’s aims and themes. This collection of essays examines the short and difficult life of the periodical, reassessing its cultural politics, its relationship to Italy, the controversial British reception, and its relevance to Romantic (and indeed contemporary) debates on Liberalism.
