COCKNEYISM

the writing or the qualities of the writing of the 19th-century English authors John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt. The term was used disparagingly by some contemporaries, especially the Scottish critic John Lockhart, in reference to the fact that these writers lived in, or were natives of, London, as the term cockney was a derogatory term for Londoners in general.