Chapter 3 discusses Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s “philosophical draft” The Closed Commercial State (1800) and its blueprint for a world system of centrally directed, self-sufficient national economies that abandon commercial and political connections but remain interrelated through state-supervised intellectual exchanges. I argue that although not explicitly labeled as Weltliteratur, this design of cultural cooperation among otherwise insular national states is a paradigmatic configuration of world literature that offers an alternative economy of circulation in the form of planning. After outlining the mechanisms driving intercultural circulation in this model, the chapter examines how its underlying cosmopolitan universalism morphs into patriotic cosmopolitanism (and eventually collapses into a sense of German superiority) in Fichte’s later philosophy. I also argue that this design cast a long shadow in the twentieth century as it prefigured the most potent counter-system of “capitalist world literature”, the command economy of socialist internationalism in the Soviet Republic of Letters.

The emergence of British punk in the mid-1970s led to a reimagining of the fanzine, home-made magazines self-published and self-distributed to fellow ‘fans’ within a particular cultural milieu. Where fanzines had previously been carefully collated and geared towards disseminating information, punk’s fanzines were produced speedily and irreverently. In line with the cultural critique inherent to punk, fanzines such as Sniffin’ Glue and London’s Outrage began to develop literary and visual discourses locating ‘the new wave’ within a wider socio-cultural and political context. Expositions on punk’s meaning and the media-generated moral panic that ensued following the Sex Pistols’ infamously foul-mouthed television appearance in December 1976 soon led to formative political analyses on everything from racism and commodification to anarchy and gender relations. By the early 1980s, anarchist punkzines engaged with a variety of political causes (e.g. CND) and recognisably feminist and socialist analyses found space between record and gig reviews. This chapter examines a selection of punk-related fanzines to argue that the medium provided space for young people (overwhelmingly teenagers) to test and cultivate political ideas and, in the process, develop a distinct genre of writing informed by punk’s impulse to simultaneously destroy and create.

Chapter 2 takes up Goethe’s distinction between a higher and a lower layer of world literature (discussed in the previous chapter) and argues that in complementing the transnational distribution of cultural mediocrity through markets, Goethe envisioned a more elevated sphere organized along a decidedly non-market form of exchange, that is, gifting. I examine Goethe’s correspondence with his translator Thomas Carlyle as a circuitry of world-literary gifting marked by the to-and-fro movement of tangible (books, journals, manuscripts, jewelry, drawings, interior decoration, etc.) and intangible gifts (tribute, reward, cooperation, guidance). Their nexus, I argue, was emblematic of the transition from the ethos of generous sharing in the republic of letters to world literature as a forum interconnecting outstanding representatives of various national literatures. Contributing to the material diffusion of texts and channelling symbolic economies of prestige, their acts of gift-giving prefigured Carlyle’s conception of hero-worship, and the “significant geography” circumscribed by the movement of gifts between Weimar and Scotland morphed into an imperialistic vision of a Teutonic (British-German) world literature.

This chapter examines the vocational odyssey of the second-generation humanist Giovanni Conversini, as he attempts to match his father’s lofty social status in his pursuit of a literary and teaching career. It focuses on his autobiographical account of his numerous occupations and two marriages (Rationarium vite); his attempt to gain an appointment with his uncle, a cardinal in the Papal Court (Dialogue Between Giovanni and a Letter); his experience in the Paduan court (De primo eius introitus ad aulam); and his major theoretical statement on life choice (Dragmalogia de eligibili vite genere).

The Introduction tackles biases and lacunae in recent discussions about the effects of economic globalization on the world-literary circulation of texts. I highlight three arguments (Ph. Cheah, A. Mufti, E. Apter) that dismiss world literature as a procedure of exchange for surrendering to “neoliberal global capitalism” and confront them with the observation that even the critique of this systemic correlation loses sight of spaces other than that of the Euro-Atlantic world system (D. Ganguly, F. Orsini). Against this background, the Introduction claims that the political economy of world literature offers a more complex picture even within the confines of European capitalist modernity if we recognize the diversity of economic discourses surrounding its early theories. First, I attempt to historicize and diversify the notion of “the economy” by addressing semantic oscillations in the notions of ecology, circulation, and commerce. Then I outline the five “designs of circulation” the individual chapters will address and make preliminary suggestions about their pre-, non-, or anti-capitalist elements.

Newspaper obituaries of political figures are a distinctive, deeply British genre of political writing, yet one rarely examined. These obituaries trace the rise and fall of British newsprint around the turn of the millennium, a time when newspapers gained new freedoms in technology and politics, briefly flourishing before the internet signalled their decline. Traditionally, obituary writers were anonymous, though by the 1980s, an ‘obituarial turn’ reshaped the genre, widening its scope to include a broader range of lives and details. Obituaries began to embrace anecdotes, highlighting personal quirks and scandals, and thus reflected a broader shift in mores. A central paradox defines the genre: though obituaries appear authoritative in respected newspapers, they are subject to the editorial biases of the day. Shifts in editorship and political climates can reshape reputations, subtly influencing public memory. In the print era, obituaries seemed permanent, existing as clippings and archives. However, the digital age has transformed them: limitless online space has made their reach wider but less impactful. Today, obituaries serve not only as end-points but as starting points for biographical reflections on political lives.

Chapter 1 revisits Goethe’s endorsement of a “free trade of sentiments and ideas” in the light of the free trade discourses of his age. First, I dissect these discourses’ complexity and doctrinal incoherence in eighteenth-nineteenth-century British, French, and German political economy. Then I explore the ambivalences in Goethe’s vague suggestion about a free trade world literature by addressing his peculiar attitude to commerce, his reminiscences of the administrative economics of Cameralism based on the heritage of the self-sustaining Aristotelian household, his aversions to modern finance, and his nostalgia for the medieval trade fair. Based on these decidedly antiquated considerations informing his understanding of the mediums, sites, and agents of commercial and intellectual exchange, I suggest that as opposed to Marx’s approach to world literature as an offspring of modern industrial capitalism, Goethe’s views were bound up with pre-modern merchant capitalism.

Social scientists’ writing, in general, is directed at their academic peers. Not all social scientists seek wider forms of influence, but between the early 1960s and the late 1980s those that did so had access to a mass-circulation weekly, New Society, designed specifically, in the words of its long-time editor Paul Barker, to ‘bridge the gap between thinkers and policy makers’. Our chapter examines how social scientists conceptualised writing as a practice in Britain between the 1960s and the 1980s, asking how they understood the challenge of writing to influence a non-specialist audience – whether that be Barker’s policymakers or the wider public. To do so, we draw on two main sources: the UK Data Archive’s ‘Pioneers of Social Research’ interview collection, and the pages of New Society (1962–88) itself. We use the ‘Pioneer’ interviews to explore why social scientists were drawn to write for New Society and how they viewed such writing, and we offer case studies of three frequent New Society contributors: the planner Peter Hall, and the sociologists Ann Oakley and Ray Pahl. We ask what techniques each social thinker developed to popularize their ideas and examine how their contributions interacted with the broad format of New Society.

This chapter examines the ‘parliamentary novel’, a genre developed in the mid nineteenth century by Benjamin Disraeli and Anthony Trollope, as more Britons gained the right to vote. These novels often served to educate new voters about the virtues of the parliamentary system, portraying statesmen as noble figures and reinforcing traditional parliamentary ideals for an industrial society. The chapter surveys this genre, focusing on authors with first-hand experience in Parliament or close connections to MPs. It traces the genre’s evolution, particularly its post-1945 transformation from respected literature to what Gerald Kaufman labelled ‘trash’. While considering broader works by authors like Jeffrey Archer and Michael Dobbs, the chapter centres on Maurice Edelman and Edwina Currie. The motives behind these novels varied, but male authors in the genre’s classic period typically aimed to celebrate Parliament. However, as female authors emerged in the 1990s, they shifted the genre’s focus from glorifying male heroes to critiquing both these figures and Parliament itself, reflecting a growing scepticism towards male-dominated politics and altering the genre’s original celebratory purpose.

The introduction situates political writing and publishing as vital tools in articulating, disseminating, and shaping political movements and ideas in modern Britain. It explores the diversity of political genres, from elite forms such as parliamentary novels and newspaper obituaries to grassroots expressions such as punk fanzines and coalfield women’s writing. It highlights how ‘high political’ and subaltern voices respectively engaged with political writing, sometimes to reinforce dominant narratives and at other times to challenge or subvert them. It examines the gendered politics of authorship, particularly how women and marginalised groups used writing to claim authority and reshape the boundaries of political discourse. Attention is given to the role of literature and publishing in mediating the intersections of culture and politics, from fascist propaganda and socialist poetry to the intellectual infrastructure of devolved Scotland and Northern Ireland. By contextualizing political writing within broader historical and cultural transformations, the introduction positions the chapters of the book as a series of ‘core samples’ that reveal the relationships between genre, ideology, and activism.