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.

Shedding fresh light on Wordsworth's contested relationship with an England that changed dramatically over the course of his career, James Garrett places the poet's lifelong attempt to control his literary representation within the context of national ideas of self-determination represented by the national census, national survey, and national museum. Garrett provides historical background on the origins of these three institutions, which were initiated in Britain near the turn of the nineteenth century, and shows how their development converged with Wordsworth's own as a writer. The result is a new narrative for Wordsworth studies that re-integrates the early, middle, and late periods of the poet's career. Detailed critical discussions of Wordsworth's poetry, including works that are not typically accorded significant attention, force us to reconsider the usual view of Wordsworth as a fading middle-aged poet withdrawing into the hills. Rather, Wordsworth's ceaseless reworking of earlier poems and the flurry of new publications between 1814 and 1820 reveal Wordsworth as an engaged public figure attempting to 'write the nation' and position himself as the nation's poet.

A surprise-filled biography of a radical young poet whose fiery intellect revolutionized English poetry. Based on new research in government archives in England and France, school and university records, and intimate letters, THE HIDDEN WORDSWORTH is a warts-and-all account of the renowned poet as a youth, who lived a life even Byron would have envied. Photos.

This edition presents and fully contextualizes an archive of letters that reveal the creative and personal significance of the friendship between William Wordsworth and Sir George Beaumont. Spanning twenty-six years, this inter-familial correspondence comprises discussion of literature and painting, gardening and theatre, politics and religion, grief, hope, and aspiration.

Although "romantic science" may sound like a paradox, much of the romance surrounding modern science—the mad scientist, the intuitive genius, the utopian transformation of nature—originated in the Romantic period. Romantic Science traces the literary and cultural politics surrounding the formation of the modern scientific disciplines emerging from eighteenth-century natural history. Revealing how scientific concerns were literary concerns in the Romantic period, the contributors uncover the vital role that new discoveries in earth, plant, and animal sciences played in the period's literary culture. As Thomas Pennant put it in 1772, "Natural History is, at present, the favourite science over all Europe, and the progress which has been made in it will distinguish and characterise the eighteenth century in the annals of literature." As they examine the social and literary ramifications of a particular branch or object of natural history, the contributors to this volume historicize our present intellectual landscape by reimagining and redrawing the disciplinary boundaries between literature and science. Contributors include Alan Bewell, Rachel Crawford, Noah Heringman, Theresa M. Kelley, Amy Mae King, Lydia H. Liu, Anne K. Mellor, Stuart Peterfreund, and Catherine E. Ross.

A detailed treatment of Switzerland in British literature, the book shows how a republican myth contributed to Romanticism and liberalism.