None of the letters in this volume has appeared in the original edition of the Letters, and most have never previously been published at all. They throw striking and unexpected new light on Wordsworth's imaginative and emotional life, his career as a poet, his activities and friendships, and his relationships within his own circle.

The Regency Revisited reconfigures Romantic Studies through a neglected timeframe. It demonstrates how politics and culture of the Regency years transformed literature. By co-opting authors, the Regency provoked opposition, and brought new genres and modes of writing to the fore. Key figures are Robert Southey and Leigh Hunt: The Regency Revisited shows their pivotal roles in transforming Romanticism. Austen and Byron also feature as authors who honed their satire in response to Regency culture. Other topics include Blake and popular art, Regency science (Humphry Davy), Moore and parlour songs, Cockney writing and Pierce Egan, and Anna Barbauld and the collecting and exhibiting that was so popular an aspect of Regency London.

Scott was the first British novelist to discover in landscape a literary as well as a pictoral medium, an insight which he exploits to powerful effect in his Scottish novels. Mr Reed's book breaks new ground by demonstrating the originality of Scott's landscapes, in which romantic nature takes its place in a realistic context of people, history, architecture and traditions. The author shows how, as poet and novelist, Scott explores the notion of place to a depth where it operates not merely as dramatic background but as a force which shapes and directs the minds of its inhabitants. This study adds a new dimension to the understanding of Scott's work.