As we saw in the last chapter, “the printer's argument” in Bell's cluster of publications on politeness warned Americans to be on their guard against seductive but duplicitous aristocratic European manners, and stood against what has been described as “the refinement of America” in favor of a new society governed by simplicity, philanthropy, and the politeness of the heart. The printer's argument to which we now turn looked backwards and forwards too. Bell's reprints of Pratt's Emma Corbet [sic] (1782, 1783) and of Mackenzie's Man of Feeling (1782) belonged to a cluster of literary as well as discursive publications that bore on questions of conduct in war. Bell used these reprints of wholly or partly transatlantic stories not only to tout the “manly” and patriotic character of the soldier during the Revolutionary war as a man of valor, sensibility and principle, but also to model the “new man” and “new woman” who would be needed for the peace.

REFRAMING EMMA CORBETT

In Britain, in 1780, a glance at Pratt's title – Emma Corbett; or, the Miseries of Civil War; founded on some recent Circumstances which happened in America – would have told prospective readers that this was a pro-­American novel. Loyal addresses to George III, which supported coercing the colonies into proper submission, spoke of the conflict as an “unnatural rebellion”; opponents of government policy, who petitioned for conciliation and peace, described it as an “unnatural civil war.”