Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

'Will you write in my album?' Many Romantic poets were asked this question by women who collected contributions in their manuscript books. Those who obliged included Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, and Lamb, but also Felicia Hemans, Amelia Opie, and Sara Coleridge. Album Verses and Romantic Literary Culture presents the first critical and cultural history of this forgotten phenomenon. It asks a series of questions. Where did 1820s 'albo-mania' come from, and why was it satirized as a women's 'mania'? What was the relation between visitors' books associated with great institutions and country houses, personal albums belonging to individuals, and the poetry written in both? What caused albums' re-gendering from earlier friendship books kept by male students and gentlemen on the Grand Tour to a 'feminized' practice identified mainly with young women? When albums were central to women's culture, why were so many published album poems by men? How did amateur and professional poets engage differently with albums? What does album culture's privileging of 'original poetry' have to say about attitudes towards creativity and poetic practice in the age of print? This volume recovers a distinctive subgenre of occasional poetry composed to be read in manuscript, with its own characteristic formal features, conventions, themes, and cultural significance. Unique albums examined include that kept at the Grande Chartreuse, those owned by Regency socialite Lady Sarah Jersey, and those kept by Lake poets' daughters. As Album Verses and Romantic Literary Culture shows, album poetry reflects changing attitudes to identity, gender, class, politics, poetry, family dynamics, and social relations in the Romantic period.

These two journals provide a unique picture of daily life with Wordsworth, his friendship with Coleridge, and the composition of his poems. They also offer wonderfully vivid descriptions of the landscape and people of Grasmere and Alfoxden in Somerset, which inspired Wordsworth and have enchanted generations of readers. This edition includes full explanatory notes on the people and places Dorothy writes about.

The keynote lectures in this collection are those by Dame Gillian Beer on Darwin and Romanticism, Richard Cronin on Wordsworth and the Periodical Press, Paul H. Fry on Wordsworth, Coleridge and the topos of Labour, Claire Lamont on the Romantic Cottage, and Nicholas Roe on Keats and the Elgin marbles (with five illustrations). In the conference papers, Jamie Baxendine writes on Intimations, James Castell on Peter Bell, Lexi Drayton on the Gypsy figure in Tintern Abbey and associated poems and painting, Mark Sandy on 'the circulation of grief', Chris Simons on Wordsworth and his patrons, Emily Stanback on medical taxonomy, Heidi Thomson on Sara Coleridge's editing of Biographia Literaria, and Saeko Yoshikawa on Sara Hutchinson (the younger)'s Journals of 1850.