Ann Blainey’s work, first published in 1985, provides a sensitive study of Leigh Hunt and the literary climate that influenced his life, and fills a large gap in literary biography. Blainey brings a perceptive eye to a generally embittered man whose chaotic life seemed a tragic failure. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

First published in 1975. Southey first made his reputation, when he was a very young man, as a poet. Although he is now remembered primary for his poetry, this title reveals how he excelled in many other genres as well. Examination of Southey’s life reveals an attractive and humane personality, at ease among his books, his family and a wide and impressive range of friends, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Landor and Scott. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

First published in 1992. Beyond Romanticism represents a substantial challenge to traditional views of the Romantic period and provides a sustained critique of ‘Romantic ideology’. The debates with which it engages had previously been under-represented in the study of Romanticism, where the claims of history had never had quite the same status as they have had in other periods, and where confidence in poetic literary value remains high.

Individual essays examine the philosophical underpinnings of Romantic discourse; they survey analogous and competing discourses of the...

First published in 1998. The Romantic Era was a time when society, religion and other beliefs, and science were all in flux. The idea that the universe was a great clock, and that men were little clocks, all built by a divine watchmaker, was giving way to a more dynamic and pantheistic way of thinking. A new language was invented for chemistry, replacing metaphor with algebra; and scientific illustration came to play the role of a visual language, deeply involved with theory. A scientific community came gradually into being as the 19th century wore on. The papers which compose this book...

First published in 1981. This book aims to show Romanticism as a response to certain questions – in literature, art, religion, philosophy and politics – that were being asked increasingly towards the end of the eighteenth century. The essays focus on growth and change (in society and the individual), nature, feeling and reason, and subjectivism – examining how these questions arose, why they were felt to be important and the kinds of answers that, consciously or unconsciously, the Romantics provided. This title will be of interest to students of literature, history and philosophy....