Pamela Buck’s Objects of Liberty: British Women Writers and Revolutionary Souvenirs puts forward an important argument about the revolutionary souvenir as a memorial object that women of the past used to establish political power and agency. Buck argues that British women writing about the French Revolution and Napoleonic era strategically used souvenirs in their work “to circulate revolutionary ideas and engage in the masculine realm of political debate” (1). Because women of that time had limited options for political participation, Buck argues that collecting and circulating souvenirs connected to world events gave them an important opportunity to contribute to conversations about national identity and to challenge dominant narratives of empire and war.
By devoting each chapter to a particular travel writer, Buck chronologically traces the development of the use of the revolutionary souvenir in works from Helen Maria Williams, Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine and Martha Wilmot, and Charlotte Eaton. The conclusion considers the lasting influence of souvenirs in the political realm through Mary Shelley’s vision of a post-Napoleonic Europe made up of free and independent nations. The major contribution of this book is to show British women’s involvement in the politics of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era by analyzing their use of souvenirs to circulate revolutionary ideas and affect political thought. Defining the souvenir as “a particular type of material thing whose personal and political value makes it a lasting memorial object” (8), Buck productively combines a literary methodology with new materialism to reveal the material and memorial power of souvenirs as “objects of liberty” (9).
The first two chapters reveal the souvenir strategies used by Williams and Wollstonecraft. The first chapter argues that Williams “employs sentimental objects,” such as Bastille keepsakes and a portrait snuffbox, in her Letters from France (1790–96) “as souvenirs to create sympathy for revolutionary ideas and encourage reform in Britain” (16). In chapter 2, Buck considers how Wollstonecraft “used the souvenir conceptually” in An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (1794) “to reveal political illusions that undermined the Revolution’s progress” (45). I found Buck’s exploration of Wollstonecraft’s visualization of the Terror as a raree-show—a small box with peep holes to view a miniaturized scene—compelling. Saying this, however, I would have liked here, and throughout the book, consideration of the differences between these figurative souvenirs and the quite literal souvenir objects the writers brought home or described. Because much of a souvenir’s value stems from the physical proof it provides that one was there, this clarification would have further strengthened Buck’s argument for the significance of revolutionary souvenirs. Buck ends the chapter with an illuminating comparison between the two writers’ views on whether women’s use of jewelry as a revolutionary souvenir abetted or undermined their political involvement. Scholars of Williams and Wollstonecraft will find exciting new angles to contemplate in this new materialist reading of their writings on the Revolution.
Chapter 3 explores the revolutionary souvenirs of the Anglo-Irish Wilmot sisters in their manuscript travel accounts. The dual argument of this chapter is that “Catherine Wilmot engages in Britain’s resistance to Napoleon and creates a unified national identity through the collecting of curiosities in her journal” (76), while Martha Wilmot describes exchanging objects of female sociability with Princess Ekaterina Dashkova (a key figure in the Russian Enlightenment) “to encourage an alliance between Britain and Russia against France” (78). Buck has written previously on the Wilmots’ souvenirs (“From Russia with Love: Souvenirs and Political Alliance in Martha Wilmot’s The Russian Journals,” in Eighteenth-Century Thing Theory in a Global Context: From Consumerism to Celebrity Culture, ed. Ileana Baird and Christina Ionescu [2013], 133–48; “Collecting an Empire: The Napoleonic Louvre and the Cabinet of Curiosities in Catherine Wilmot’s An Irish Peer on the Continent,” Prose Studies 33, no. 3 [2011]: 188–99), but this chapter brings these reflections together and introduces new material to provide a full picture of their views on political relations between Britain, Ireland, France, and Russia. Scholars of museum studies and Napoleon will be intrigued by Catherine Wilmot’s historic impression of Napoleonic France and the newly formed Louvre against the pillaged churches of Italy. Scholars of nationalism will be interested in the perspective of the development of Britain, Ireland, France, and Russia provided by the Wilmots’ souvenir narratives.
In chapter 4, Buck considers battlefield relics through Scottish travel writer Eaton’s Narrative of a Residence in Belgium (1817). This chapter argues that “Eaton uses Waterloo souvenirs in her writings to redefine patriotism and advocate for a more inclusive national identity” (107). Here, Buck considers Eaton’s conceptual use of the panorama and its souvenir key to celebrate the British victory at Waterloo, as well as her use of relics to strengthen national identity through honoring the Scottish Highland regiments. Through analyzing Eaton’s souvenirs, Buck reveals the role this extremely popular travel writer—ten editions of her book were released as a travel guide—played in shaping Britain’s national history. This chapter is significant for the picture it provides of battlefield souvenir culture and for its gendered exploration of how war is memorialized, with Buck considering Eaton’s focus on tragedy despite military triumph in the context of women’s roles as “memory keepers” (125). To conclude the book, Buck looks at how Mary Shelley wrote of the memorial repurposing of miniature figurines of Napoleon and revolutionaries to encourage support for German independence and democracy in Europe in Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844).
Overall, Objects of Liberty provides a valuable look into the material culture of revolutionary souvenirs in Britain and France from 1790 to 1817. Considering a range of souvenirs, from miniature Bastilles and tricolor cockades to weapons and human remains from Waterloo, for the first time this book brings these memorial objects together in their historical setting. But Buck goes beyond description, combining her literary methodology with the theoretical framework of new materialism to bring out the complex meanings these circulating objects had as revolutionary souvenirs. Buck’s literary methodology allows her to provide an in-depth analysis of the narratives the women attached to their souvenirs, while the theoretical framework of new materialism allows her to combine this with an examination of the influence a souvenir object’s material qualities had on the narratives. Buck productively uses these approaches together to bring into sharp focus the “lively forces at work around and within us” (9); that is, the ways in which the souvenirs invoked in women’s writing shaped British views of the French Revolution and its aftermath.
