Rethinking British Romantic History, 1770-1845 brings together a team of leading scholars to examine the interactions between history and literature in the Romantic period, focusing on practical as well as theoretical interconnections between the two genres and disciplines.

Innovatively extending counterfactual thought experiments from history and the social sciences to literary historiography, criticism and theory, Counterfactual Romanticism reveals the ways in which the shapes of Romanticism are conditioned by that which did not come to pass. Exploring various modalities of counterfactual speculation and inquiry across a range of Romantic-period authors, genres and concerns, this collection offers a radical new purchase on literary history, on the relationship between history and fiction, and on our historicist methods to date – and thus on the Romanticisms we (think we) have inherited. Counterfactual Romanticism provides a ground-breaking method of re-reading literary pasts and our own reading presents; in the process, literary production, texts and reading practices are unfossilised and defamiliarised.

The Romantic period coincided with revolutionary transformations of traditional political and human rights discourses, as well as witnessing rapid advances in technology and a primitivist return to nature. As a broad global movement, Romanticism strongly impacted on the literature and arts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in ways that are still being debated and negotiated today. Examining the poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, and the arts of the period, this book considers: Important propositions and landmark ideas in the Romantic period; Key debates and critical approaches to Romantic studies; New and revisionary approaches to Romantic literature and art; The ways in which Romantic writing interacts with broader trends in history, politics, and aesthetics; European and Global Romanticism; The legacies of Romanticism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Containing useful, reader-friendly features such as explanatory case studies, chapter summaries, and suggestions for further reading, this clear and engaging book is an invaluable resource for anyone who intends to study and research the complexity and diversity of the Romantic period, as well as the historical conditions which produced it.

This book offers a major reassessment of John Clare’s poetry and his position in the Romantic canon. Alert to Clare’s knowledge of the work of his Romantic contemporaries and near contemporaries, it puts forward the first extended series of comparisons of Clare’s poetry with texts we now think of as defining the period – in particular poems by Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and John Keats. It makes fully evident Clare’s original contribution to the aesthetic culture of the age by analysing how he explores a wide range of concerns and preoccupations which are central to, and especially privileged in, Romantic-period poetics, including ‘fancy’, the sublime, childhood, ruins, joy, ‘poesy’, and a love lyric marked by a peculiar self-consciousness about sincere expression. At the heart of this book is the claim that the hitherto under-scrutinised subjective stances, transcendent modes, and abstract qualities of Clare’s lyric poetry situate him firmly within, and as fundamentally part of, Romanticism, at the same time as his writing constitutes a distinctive contribution to one of the most fascinating eras of English literature.

The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism offers a comprehensive guide to the literature and thought of the Romantic period, and an overview of the latest research on this topic. Written by a team of international experts, the Handbook analyses all aspects of the Romantic movement, pinpointing its different historical phases and analysing the intellectual and political currents which shaped them. It gives particular attention to devolutionary trends, exploring the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish strands in 'British' Romanticism and assessing the impact of the constitutional changes that brought into being the 'United Kingdom' at a time of revolutionary turbulence and international conflict. It also gives extensive coverage to the publishing and reception history of Romantic writing, highlighting the role of readers, reviewers, publishers, and institutions in shaping Romantic literary culture and transmitting its ideas and values. Divided into ten sections, each containing four or five chapters, the Handbook covers key themes and concepts in Romantic studies as well as less chartered topics such as freedom of speech, literature and drugs, Romantic oratory, and literary uses of dialect. All the major male and female Romantic authors are included along with numerous lesser-known writers, the emphasis throughout being on the diversity of Romantic writing and the complexities and internal divisions of the culture that sustained it. The volume strikes a balance between familiarity and novelty to provide an accessible guide to current thinking and a conceptual reorganization of this fast-moving field.

This book features a collection of essays, shedding subversively new light on Romanticism and its canon of big-six, white, male Romantics by focusing on marginalised, forgotten and lost writers and their long-neglected works. Probing the realms of literary and cultural lostness, this book identifies different strata of oblivion and shows how densely the net of contacts and rivalries was woven around the ostensibly monolithic stars of the Romantic age. It reveals how the lost poets inspired the production of anthologised poetry, that they served as indispensable muses, sidekicks and interlocutors of the big six and that their relevance for the literary scene has been continuously underrated. This is also surprisingly true for some creators of famous one-hit wonders (Frankenstein, The Vampyre) who were suddenly rocketed to fame or notoriety, but could not help seeing their other works of fiction turning into abortive flops.

Charts Scottish Romanticism's significant contribution to the making of collective memory in the transatlantic worldOffers an in-depth examination of Scottish Romantic literary ideas on memory and their influence among various cultures in the British Atlantic, broken down into distinct writing modes (memorials, travel memoir, slave narrative, colonial policy paper, emigrant fiction) and contexts (pre- and post-Revolution America, French-Canadian cultural nationalism, the slavery debate, immigration and colonial settlement).Looks at familiar Scottish writers (Walter Scott, John Galt) in new ways, while introducing less familiar ones (Anne Grant, Thomas Pringle).Brings Scottish Romantic literary studies into new engagements with other fields (such as transatlantic and memory studies).Opens up new dialogues between Scottish literature and culture and other literatures and cultures (for example, French-Canadian, Black Diaspora, Indigenous).Scots, who were at the vanguard of British colonial expansion in North America in the Romantic period, believed that their own nation had undergone an unprecedented transformation in only a short span of time. Scottish writers became preoccupied with collective memory, its powerful role in shaping group identity as well as its delicate fragility. McNeil reveals why we must add collective memory to the list of significant contributions Scots made to a culture of modernity.