Lady Caroline Lamb , among Lord Byron's many lovers, stands out - vilified, portrayed as a self-destructive nymphomaniac - her true story has never been told. Now, Paul Douglass provides the first unbiased treatment of a woman whose passions and independence were incompatible with the age in which she lived. Taking into account a traumatic childhood, Douglass explores Lamb's so-called 'erotomania' and tendency towards drug abuse and madness - problems she and Byron had in common. In this portrait, she emerges as a person who sacrificed much for the welfare of a sick child, and became an artist in her own right. Douglass illuminates her novels and poetry, her literary friendships, and the lifelong support of her husband and her publisher, John Murray.

Offers the works of Lady Caroline Lamb (1785-1828), the late Romantic-era novelist most famous for her affair with Lord Byron. Presenting Lamb's works in a scholarly format, this book situates her literary achievements within the context of her Whig allegiances, her sense of noblesse oblige and her promotion of aristocratic reform.

English Fiction of the Romantic Period 1789-1830 is the first comprehensive historical survey of fiction from that period for many decades. It combines a clear awareness of the period's social history with recent developments in literary criticism, theory and history, and explains the astounding variety of forms in Romantic fiction in terms of the various cultural, political, social, regional and gender conflicts of the time. It provides a broad-ranging survey from the major authors and works through to the sub-genres of the period. Jan Austin and Sir Alter Scott are discussed alongside the Gothic Romance, political and feminist fiction, social satire and regional, rural and historical novels. It also provides a comparison of the methods of distribution and marketing and the availability of books then and now; examines cheap popular fiction and children's fiction, and considers the recent debate about the place of prose fiction in a Romantic literature hitherto dominated by poetry.

The selections from 132 authors in this anthology represent gender, social class, and racial and national origin as inclusively as possible, providing both greater context for canonical works and a sense of the era’s richness and diversity. In terms of genre, poetry, non-fiction prose, philosophy, educational writing, and prose fiction are included. Geographically, America, Canada, Australia, India, and Africa are represented along with Britain, emphasizing Romantic literature as a world literature. Biographical headnotes, explanatory footnotes, and an extensive bibliography clarify and illuminate the texts for readers.