SPIN Book Talk – Codsi, ‘The Spy Figure’, 17 Sep

I’m pleased to share details of our first SPIN event of the new academic year.

The book argues that literary authors who had initially supported the ideals of the French Revolution, became more coded and elliptical in their writing as a response to surveillance and repression in Britain in the 1790s. It shows that authors appropriated the tools of invisible state surveillance by using coded modes and methods, including pseudonymity, elision, satire, irony, innuendo, allegory and self-censorship, amongst others. These strategies were often used performatively to mock the spy figure and interrogate the encroaching culture of secrecy, silencing and suspicion; but also, as a precautionary measure to protect writers from laws against sedition and treason. Applying surveillance theory, the book provides accessible and illuminating readings of literary works by William Godwin, John Thelwall, Mary Robinson, Robert Bage, and William Blake.

Bio: Stephanie Codsi is a Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the poetry of William Blake, and on radical literature of the 1790s. She is interested in the intersections between Romanticism and the Gothic, on the Revolution Controversy, and how the culture of surveillance and suspicion affected radical literature in the decade of the 1790s.

The book is now published with Edinburgh UP, Sep 2026

Please do join us – request an invite by emailing secrecyresearch@gmail.com

Wishing everyone a successful 2026-2027 academic year.