New Acquisitions of the Linton Archive: William James Linton – The Lover’s Stratagem and Other Tales (1848)

The work, featuring over 100 wood-engraved illustrations by its author and editor, drifts like a phantom through Linton’s bibliography. This compilation, consisting predominantly of his own poetic texts, is not recorded in any library and was described by F. B. Smith – otherwise a highly reliable biographer of Linton – as a collection of works by Heinrich Zschokke, the Swiss poet and Enlightenment politician, though in fact only the eponymous opening piece is by him. Other contributing authors, alongside Linton, include the English working-class poet Ebenezer Elliott, the German writer of romantic fantasy La Motte Fouqué, and the Scottish balladeer William Motherwell.

The Lover’s Stratagem is a significant transitional work that presents Linton – wood engraver, poet, and republican activist – at a moment of reorientation following the crushed revolutions of 1848, shortly before his retreat to the Lake District. The selection of texts reflects this sense of disillusionment – but also the attempt to narratively transcend republican thought, just a few years before he would, in Brantwood and under the banner of Mazzinian ideals, throw himself into another ultimately doomed world-revolutionary publishing project: The English Republic.

This probing and reorientation is also evident in the numerous wood engravings, which cover a remarkably wide stylistic spectrum – from theatrical narrative scenes and emblematic miniatures to finely detailed natural studies, aligning Linton closely with John Ruskin. These images also signal a growing impulse to explore nature as a political-poetic construct. The illustrations of The Lover’s Stratagem document the transition from the heroic expressivity of his early years to the more condensed visual poetry that would later characterize the publications of his New England private press, Appledore.