Editor’s Column Notices

Welcome to the second 2010 number of the BARS WEBSITE BARS Bulletin and Review. This issue contains an excellent range of reviews; a fitting way of www.bars.ac.uk marking the end of Simon Kovesi‘s tenure as Reviews Editor, a role that he has fulfilled Anyone wanting to place advertisements, or superbly for nine years. Although I have not with other requests regarding the website should worked with Simon for very long, I am contact our website editor, Padmini Ray Murray, enormously grateful for his efficiency, accuracy, either by email ([email protected]) and good humour. I am pleased to say that Dr or by post at the University of Stirling. David O‘Shaughnessy, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick, will be taking up this role and will undoubtedly do an excellent job. BARS MAILBASE This issue also contains details of the BARS 2011 Conference, ‗Enlightenment, Romanticism As a BARS member, you are entitled to receive & Nation‘, to be held at the University of the electronic BARS mailbase. This advertises Glasgow in July 2011. The deadline for abstracts calls for papers, events, resources and is 21 January 2011. publications relevant to Romantic Studies via I am pleased to announce that this issue email to over 350 members. If you would like to contains the first of a regular column written by join, or post a message on the mailbase, please Kathryn Barush, a doctoral student at Wadham contact Neil Ramsey, the co-ordinator, by email College, Oxford. Kathryn will be reviewing art ([email protected]) with your full name exhibitions likely to be of interest to BARS and email address. Information about the members. Images to accompany her article are mailbase, along with copies of archived available on the BARS website. messages, can be found on the mailbase website: The ‗Journals‘ and ‗Societies‘ sections have www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/bars.html been revised and updated. If you are involved in a journal or society relevant to Romantic studies, please get in touch if you wish me to include BARS MEMBERSHIP information, or to update your details. I‘d be delighted to hear from any member with BARS currently has more than 420 members. items for inclusion or comments on the Bulletin. Members can ask for notices to be placed on the mailbase, on the website, and in the Bulletin. The website has a page dedicated to new books David Higgins published by members, and you should let the Editor editor know if you would like your recent work to be listed. Similarly, if you are editing a collection of essays or a special issue of a journal, or working on a collaborative project, we can usually place notices calling for contributions on the website as well as in the Bulletin.

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The annual subscription for BARS possible overcrowding or clashes, BARS will membership is £15 (waged) and £5 assist by liaising between conferences (unwaged/postgraduate). Members receive distributed across the year, or across regions. copies of the BARS Bulletin and Review twice a BARS will actively solicit proposals. Proposals year and can join the electronic mailbase. are also invited for interdisciplinary conferences. Membership is necessary for attendance at BARS international conferences. For a membership form, please contact the BARS administrator, Louise Booth at: STEPHEN COPLEY [email protected] POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH It is now possible to check whether your subs AWARDS are up-to-date on the bars.ac.uk website. PayPal has been set up from the BARS website in the Postgraduates working in the area of Romantic ‗How to Join‘ section and is easy to use. The Studies are invited to apply for a Stephen charge for using this method of payment has Copley Postgraduate Research Award. The been included in the cost of membership, so, for BARS Executive Committee has established the those using PayPal, membership is £16 (waged) awards in order to support postgraduate research. or £6 (unwaged/postgraduate). They are intended to help fund expenses incurred through travel to libraries, archives, etc. necessary to the student‘s research, up to a BARS 2011 CONFERENCE maximum of £300. Application for the awards is competitive, and cannot be made retrospectively. The BARS 2011 conference will take place at Applicants must be members of BARS (to join, the University of Glasgow, 28-31 July 2011. see above). The names of recipients will be The full call for papers can be found in the announced in the BARS Bulletin and Review, ‗Events‘ section, below. and successful applicants will be asked to submit a short report to the BARS Executive Committee and to acknowledge BARS in their thesis and/or any publication arising from the BARS DAY CONFERENCES research trip. Congratulations to recent recipients of the BARS day conferences, in almost every case, bursary: Brian Haman (Warwick); Matthew are organised through the host institution. BARS Sangster (Royal Holloway); Rebecca Domke assists by advertising conferences, advising on (Glasgow); Susan Valladeres (Oxford); Harold the format, and giving early warnings of any Guizar (York); Terence Shih (Durham) likely clashes with other planned events in our Christina Davidson (Southampton); Bo-Yuan files. Part of the point of BARS is to act as a Huang (Warwick); Leanne Stokoe (Newcastle); supportive system nationally, and its Christina Dennis (University College Falmouth); involvement in planning would partly be to help Helen Stark (Newcastle). ensure that conferences are as evenly distributed Please send the following information in across regions as possible in the course of any support of your application: one year. BARS cannot underwrite day 1. Name, institutional affiliation, etc. conferences, but it can make a financial 2. Details of your PhD project, including the contribution of up to £100 to help the organising stage your research is at. department with costs. 3. Details of the research to be undertaken for Individuals or groups who would like to run a which you need support, and its relation to day conference are invited to contact Dr Angela your PhD. Wright ([email protected]). There will 4. Detailed costing of proposed research trip. be no maximum number, but, in the event of

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5. Details of current funding (AHRC award, The Charles Lamb Bulletin etc.). 6. Details of any other financial support for The Charles Lamb Bulletin is a peer-reviewed which you have applied in support of the trip. journal devoted to the study of Charles and 7. Name of supervisor/referee (with email Mary Lamb and their circle. It aims to promote address) to whom application can be made for Lamb scholarship and welcomes submissions in a supporting reference. the form of essays, reviews, and notes and Applications (preferably by e-mail) should be queries from established academics, new sent to: Prof. Jacqueline Labbe, Department of entrants to the field, and those who simply English and Comparative Literary Studies, admire the Lambs‘ writings. University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK; Essays submitted to the journal should be in [email protected] typescript, and be between 4000 and 7000 words The next deadline is 30 January 2011. in length. Preferably, submissions should be sent to the Editor as an email attachment in MS Word. Submissions should be double-spaced JOURNALS throughout, including quotations, and should follow MHRA style, with the single exception that the name of the publisher should be omitted The Byron Journal from citations. A full style-sheet is available on request. The Byron Journal is the world‘s leading For further information contact the Editor, refereed journal on the life, work and world of Stephen Burley, 2 Royal London Buildings, 644 Lord Byron. It is published twice annually by Old Kent Road, Southwark, London, SE15 1RX Liverpool University Press for the Byron ([email protected]); or the Reviews Society. The journal publishes scholarly articles Editor, Felicity James, School of English, and notes on all aspects of Byron‘s writings and University of Leicester, University Road, life, and on related topics, and includes news of Leicester, LE1 7RH ([email protected]). significant events and conferences in the Byron year. The journal also reviews all major works on the poet. John Clare Society Journal Send essays to the Academic Editor, Dr Alan Rawes, School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, The annual John Clare Society Journal University of Manchester, Lime Grove Building, welcomes submissions of critical essays, review Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL essays, notes and queries on John Clare and a ([email protected]). wide range of related topics. The JCSJ is fully Books for review should be sent to the and anonymously refereed, listed on ERIH, Reviews Editor, Professor Philip Shaw, indexed on the MLA Bibliography, and is Department of English, University of Leicester, available worldwide in hardcopy and electronic University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH. formats (via Gale and ProQuest, for example). For subscription details, please contact Sarah Essays should be presented according to the Preece, Marston Book Services Ltd, PO Box MHRA style guide, written in accessible 269, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4YN, Tel: English, and ideally between 5 and 6,000 words 01235 465 537 ([email protected]). long. The editor is happy to respond to any queries potential authors might have: Simon Kovesi, Editor, John Clare Society Journal, Dept English, Oxford Brookes University, OX3 0BP ([email protected]). Further details about the JCSJ: www.johnclare.info

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The Coleridge Bulletin interest such as local topography, family connections, and reminiscences of people and The Coleridge Bulletin is produced twice a year places. by the Friends of Coleridge, and publishes peer- Submissions should be sent as email reviewed articles on topics relating to Samuel attachments (preferably as Word documents) to Taylor Coleridge and his circle, reviews of the one of the Joint Editors. It would be helpful if latest works on Coleridge and Romanticism, and contributors could follow the Style Notes as set news of the wider activities of the Friends of out on the Journal page of the Museum website: Coleridge. The journal brings together essays by www.cowperandnewtonmuseum.org.uk established scholars and those who have more Joint Editors: Professor Vincent Newey, recently joined the field. Submissions by readers Church View Cottage, 54 Main Street, Cosby, outside the academy, particularly members of Leicester LE9 1UU (tel + 44(0)116 286 7751; the Friends of Coleridge, are also welcome. [email protected]). Two years after publication in print form, Tony Seward, 14 London Road, Stony Stratford, articles are made available online, exclusively to Milton Keynes MK11 1JL (tel + 44(0)1908 members of the Friends of Coleridge and 565260; [email protected]). institutional subscribers. Our online archive dates back to 1988, and as such comprises a significant scholarly resource. European Romantic Review For further details see: www.friendsofcoleridge.com/Coleridge- The European Romantic Review publishes Bulletin.htm innovative scholarship on the literature and Please address enquiries over submissions, culture of Europe, Great Britain, and the reviews, and institutional subscriptions, to the Americas during the period 1760-1840. Selected Editor, Graham Davidson, 87 Richmond Road, papers from the annual conference of the North Montpelier, Bristol BS6 5EP American Society for the Study of Romanticism ([email protected]). (NASSR) appear in one of the six issues published each year. Book reviews commissioned for issues 1 The Cowper and Newton Journal (February) and 4 (August) represent a cross section of concerns in Romantic-era studies. The Cowper and Newton Journal, a new They are distinguished by their depth of analysis, scholarly annual published by the Trustees of acquainting readers with the substance and The Cowper and Newton Museum, Olney, UK, significance of current criticism and scholarship is seeking submissions for its first issue, to be in the field. published in Spring 2011. In general, essays submitted should be The Journal accepts contributions on any topic between 8,000 and 12,000 words long or related to William Cowper, John Newton and approximately 22 to 33 double-spaced pages their circle but also embraces the wider milieu – typed with a Times New Roman 12-point font. literary, artistic, religious, historical, Please send the manuscript as an attachment in horticultural – of their contemporaries in the MS Word to [email protected]. One of eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the co-editors will acknowledge receipt and keeping with its museum origins, the Journal‘s communicate with the author about the review scope also covers material culture. process. Authors who are unable to e-mail may Each issue will contain articles, notes, and send an inquiry by post to Diane Long Hoeveler, reviews. The focus will be mainly on scholarly Department of English, P.O. Box 1881, research and criticism in the fields listed above, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53201, but it will also take in subjects of more general USA.

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Inquiries about book reviews may be Keats-Shelley Journal addressed to Benjamin Colbert, Centre for Transnational & Transcultural Research, The Keats-Shelley Journal is published (in print University of Wolverhampton, Millennium City form: ISSN 0453-4387) annually by the Keats- Building, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton, Shelley Association of America. It contains WV1 1LY, UK, or to [email protected] articles on John Keats, Percy Shelley, Mary Further information can be found on the Shelley, Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and their European Romantic Review homepage: circles of mutual influence and context--as well www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10509585.html. as news and notes, book reviews, and a current bibliography. Articles intended for publication should be The Hazlitt Review prepared according to The Chicago Manual of Style and sent (with SASE) to Jeanne Moskal, Editor, Department of English, Box 3520, The Hazlitt Review is a new international peer- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, reviewed journal, and the first to be entirely 27599-3520; submissions may also be sent by devoted to Hazlitt studies. The Review aims to email attachment to [email protected]. promote and maintain Hazlitt‘s standing in the The Keats-Shelley Journal considers for academy and to a wider readership, providing a review editions of and books about Keats, Byron, forum for new writing by established scholars as Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and their well as essays by more recent entrants. contemporaries (particularly those belonging to Submissions of 4000-7000 words and shorter their circle), as well as general studies in English reviews should follow the MHRA style. The Romantic literature and culture relevant to the editorial Board is pleased to consider less formal second generation poets. Please send a review items from Hazlitt‘s lay readership. Please e- copy to A. A. Markley, Book Review Editor, mail [email protected] or post proposals Keats-Shelley Journal, Department of English, to Uttara Natarajan, c/o Department of English Penn State University, Delaware County, 25 & Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths College, Yearsley Mill Road, Media, PA, 19063-5596. New Cross, London SE14 6NW. Address inquiries or information about new and Subscriptions, include membership of the forthcoming books to the above address or to Hazlitt Society and are £10 (individual); £15 [email protected]. (corporate). Overseas subscriptions: $24 (individual) or $35 (corporate). Cheques or postal orders made payable to the Hazlitt Society should be sent to Helen Hodgson, The Keats-Shelley Review Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. The Keats-Shelley Review is the journal of the The editor is Uttara Natarajan, and assistant Keats-Shelley Memorial Association, and a editors are Helen Hodgson and Michael McNay. long-established review of major literary and Further Details are available at The Hazlitt cultural significance, embracing Romanticism, Review website: English literature and Anglo-Italian relations. Its www.hwa.to/hazlitt/TheHazlittReview.htm unique and diverse scope includes Association news, prize-winning essays and contemporary poetry alongside peer-reviewed scholarly contributions, notes, and reviews. The Keats- Shelley Review is also the official journal of the Keats-Shelley House in Rome, which celebrates its centenary in 2009. The editor is Professor Nicholas Roe, of the School of English,

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University of St Andrews, KY16 9AR, email: Romantic Pedagogy Commons [email protected]. Friends of the Keats- Shelley Memorial Association receive The Romantic Pedagogy Commons (www.rc. Keats-Shelley Review as part of their annual umd.edu/pedagogies/commons/index.html) is an membership benefits. For information on other electronic journal dedicated to teaching benefits and how to join visit the KSMA website Romanticism and Romanticist issues. at www.keats-shelley.co.uk. For more information, please contact Professor Miriam L. Wallace ([email protected]) or Professor Patricia A. Matthew Romanticism ([email protected]).

Romanticism provides a forum for the flourishing diversity of Romantic studies today. Focusing on Romantic Textualities: Literature and the period 1750-1850, it publishes critical, Print Culture, 1780-1840 historical, textual and bibliographical essays prepared to the highest scholarly standards, Romantic Texualities is a fully peer-reviewed reflecting the full range of cxurrent academic journal and appears twice a year. The methodological and critical debate. With an journal carries three types of publication. extensive reviews section, Romanticism, 1. Articles. Articles we would be most interested constitutes a vital international arena for scholarly in publishing include those addressing Romantic debate in this liveliest field of literary studies. literary studies with an especial slant on book Visit the homepage of Romanticism history, textual and bibliographical studies, the (www.eup.ed.ac.uk/journals/Romanticism/) for literary marketplace and the publishing world full details about subscribing and contributing. and so forth. Please send articles (5,000-8,000 words) to the Editor ([email protected]). 2. Reports. We also supply reports on ongoing Romanticism and Victorianism on the research, in the form of author studies, snapshots Net of research, bibliographical checklists and so on. The Editors welcome contributions to This material is not peer-reviewed, but provides Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net at the a useful platform for scholars to disseminate following address: Michael Eberle-Sinatra, information about their collaborative or (Editor, Romanticism), Romanticism and individual research projects. Reports should be Victorianism the Net, Département d‘études sent to the Editor. anglaises, Université de Montréal, PO Box 6128, 3. Reviews. The journal carries reviews of Station Centre-ville, Montréal, Quebec H3C 3J7, recent publications relating to Romantic literary Canada. Dino Felluga, at Purdue University, is studies. In the first instance, publishers of Editor for Victorianism. The journal operates a suitable texts or potential contributors should peer review system. Essays and notes submitted contact the Reviews Editor to the journal should be in typescript, and 5,000- ([email protected]). 8,000 words in length (including notes). The All essays supplied for prospective publication script should be double-spaced throughout, and will be seriously considered, undergoing a must follow the MLA style sheet. Please supply process of assessment by members of the a stamped, addressed envelope or international Advisory Board. mail coupons if you wish your typescript to be The latest issue of Romantic Textualities is returned. Contributions are welcome from both available online (www.cf.ac.uk/encap/romtext). established scholars and graduate students.

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The Wordsworth Circle Native or Indigenous literature, art, and culture are welcome. We will consider proposals for We invite you to subscribe to The Wordsworth monographs, collaborative books, and edited Circle, a quarterly interdisciplinary learned collections. journal founded in 1970 to create a sense of For more information, including a list of community among critics and scholars of British, prospectus materials, please contact the European and American Romanticism. commissioning editor for the series: Ann Subscription includes membership of the Donahue. Wordsworth-Coleridge Association, which meets annually during the MLA convention. The idea of Romanticism in TWC is as Comprehensive Textual Edition of the extensive and eclectic as the scholars whose Works of Robert Burns work we encounter. We publish and review works in all areas of British, European and Oxford University Press is to produce a ten- American culture, including the poetry, drama, volume edition of the Works of Robert Burns novels, art, music, philosophy, theology, edited from the University of Glasgow. Gerry architecture, linguistics, history of science and Carruthers, head of Scottish Literature at the social sciences, intellectual history, cultural Glasgow, will be the general editor, and three of studies, literary theory and the performing arts. the early volumes will be edited by Nigel Leask Our rates are kept within the budget of (Prose Works), Kirsteen McCue (Songs for students – or within the budget of academics George Thomson) and Murray Pittock (Songs who may want to contribute a subscription to a for the Scottish Musical Museum). student: $25 (£20) for one year, $40 (£30) for The Edition will be supported by a two years, $60 (£45) for three years. distinguished international editorial advisory For more information please contact Marilyn board including Stephen Gill, Jerome McGann Gaull at The Editorial Institute at Boston and Ross Roy. For further information see: University, 143 Bay State Road #202 Boston, www.gla.ac.uk/robertburnsstudies Ma. 02215, USA, Phone: 617-353-6631 Fax. 617-353-6917 E-mail: [email protected] Rodopi Press: Dialogue

Rodopi Press Amsterdam / Atlanta announces a OTHER PUBLICATIONS new series of literary studies entitled Dialogue under the general editorship of Michael J. Meyer. Ashgate Series in Nineteenth-Century The series will offer new and experienced Transatlantic Studies scholars the opportunity to present alternative readings and approaches to classic texts (those which have received canonical acceptance in Series Editors: Kevin Hutchings and Julia M. either American or Continental Literature). As Wright the guest editor for the volume on Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of The Rights of The editors invite English language studies Woman, I have developed a list of different focusing on any area of the period ca. 1750– topics and approaches that have elicited in the 1900, including (but not limited to) innovative past a significant level of disagreement among works spanning transatlantic Romantic and critics. Victorian contexts. Manuscripts focusing on Ultimately, 6 or more essays will be selected European, African, US American, Canadian, from younger scholars or those with limited Caribbean, Central and South American, and publication and more recent PhD degrees as well

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as 6 or more from scholars who are considered SOCIETIES AND experts in the field. The latter scholars may write an essay that responds to the topics listed ORGANISATIONS or may be selected by the editor to respond to the paper of a younger scholar. The goal will be to pair the readings and to establish a dialogue Blake Society between the two contributors. Another possibility would be to share the senior scholar's The Blake Society was founded in 1985 at St response with an emerging scholar to establish a James‘s Church, Piccadilly, to honour and sort of Point / Counterpoint reaction. The major celebrate William Blake – engraver, poet, goal of the series would be not only to open the painter and prophet. It aims to attract everyone door to voices which are silenced by the with an interest in Blake. The Society provides a selective nature of academic presses but to focus for the study and appreciation of Blake in encourage new approaches and insights that will the London he knew. We publish a journal once both enliven the text and promote further a year. If you would like to join the Society, discussion of the work in question. please write to the Membership Secretary, The Emerging scholars will be defined by the Blake Society, St James‘s Church, 197 following criteria: MA ABD or recent PHD, Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL Instructor, lecturer or Assistant Professor status, ([email protected]). Please make publications limited to articles in journals and cheques payable to ‗The Blake Society‘ for the monographs and / or chapter studies; they will sum of £10 (or £5 unwaged). For more have 6 years or less from the awarding of a information about the society, please visit our doctoral degree. Experienced scholars will website (www.blakesociety.org.uk). demonstrate the following: teach at the Associate Prof level or above, have at least 7 years experience from the awarding of the PHD, Byron Society have published book-length studies, and are considered to be an authority or well-known Details of the London Byron Society can be commentator on the title or author. obtained from Maureen O‘Connor, ‗Bay Trees‘,

35 Blackbrook Road, Fareham, Hampshire DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: PO15 5DQ or the Byron Society website 31 December, 2010 (www.byronsociety.com). The London Byron Contact for further inquiries: Society is the original Byron society and parent Enit K. Steiner of many offspring, including the Newstead English Department Abbey Byron Society (whitelady@white- University of Zurich, lady.co.uk) and the International Byron Society Switzerland (internationalbyronsociety.org), which organises [email protected] a large, international annual conference (for full

details, please see the website).

John Clare Society

The John Clare Society has a large, active, academic and non-academic membership. It holds an annual festival in Helpston, academic conferences, educational initiatives, a range of public events, and publishes an annual scholarly

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journal, quarterly newsletters and occasional material for, and enquires about, Studies in editions and essay collections. Anyone Hogg and his World should be addressed to the interested in Clare is very welcome to join the Editor, Gill Hughes ([email protected]). society: (www.johnclare.org.uk/) or write to Sue Holgate, Membership Secretary, John Clare Society, 9 The Chase, Ely, Cambs CB6 3DR.. The Charles Lamb Society

The Charles Lamb Society was founded on 1 The Friends of Coleridge February 1935 at a meeting at Essex Hall in The Strand. Its first President was Sir Arthur Quiller- The Friends of Coleridge aim to foster interest in Couch. Today, the Society aims to advance the the life and works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge study of the life, works, and times of Charles and his circle, and to support Coleridge Cottage and Mary Lamb and their circle; to preserve for in Nether Stowey, Somerset, through co- the public a collection of Eliana (currently held operation with the National Trust. at the Guildhall Library, London); and to We publish the Coleridge Bulletin, sent to stimulate the Elian spirit of friendliness and members twice a year, host the biennial humour. Coleridge Summer Conference at Cannington, The Society holds a series of events each year and run an annual Study Weekend at Kilve, both in London. This includes a variety of lectures in North Somerset, close to the Quantock Hills. and talks, and a Charles Lamb Birthday Membership is open to anyone with an interest Luncheon. The Society also publishes the peer- in Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Please direct review journal, The Charles Lamb Bulletin. For enquiries to the Membership Secretary, Justin further information contact the Chairman, Nick Shepherd, The Coach House, Ford, Powell ([email protected]). Wivesliscombe, Somerset TR4 2RJ ([email protected]). Further details of our activities are available at Keats-Shelley Association of America www.friendsofcoleridge.com. The Keats-Shelley Association of America supports a range of activities related to James Hogg Society Romanticism, including conferences and awards, and members receive notices of special events The James Hogg Society exists to encourage the and opportunities. Students are given a low rate study of the life, writings and world of James with a verifying letter from an instructor. Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (1770-1835). In Advanced categories of support are also return for an annual subscription (currently £20, available for established scholars and others who or £10 for students, retired people, etc.) wish to contribute to the Association. For a full members receive the annual journal Studies in list of membership-dues categories and their Hogg and his World. Events include a dollar amounts write to Robert A. Hartley, conference held at two-yearly intervals, and Secretary, KSAA, Room 226, The New York members are entitled to a 25% discount on the Public Library, 476 Fifth Avenue, NY 10018- hardback volumes of the Stirling/South Carolina 2788, USA ([email protected]) Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg or go to the Association‘s website published by Edinburgh University Press, as (www.rc.umd.edu/ksaa/info/htm). well as to purchase the Society‘s own occasional publications at a reduced price. To join the Society please contact the Treasurer, Wendy Hunter ([email protected]). Offers of

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Keats-Shelley Memorial Association North East Postgraduate Forum for The Association was formed in 1903, with the the Long Eighteenth Century support of King Edward VII, King Vittorio Emmanuele III and President ‗Teddy‘ Roosevelt. A forum for graduate students and academic Apart from maintaining the Keats-Shelley staff with research interests in the literature, Memorial House in Rome, the Association is history and culture of the long eighteenth responsible for the upkeep of the graves of Keats century. Please come and join us. and Shelley in the non-Catholic Cemetery at 28 January 2011, 3-5pm, 121 Lipman Testaccio. Building, Northumbria University In Italy, we run a continuous outreach Fay Yao (Durham), Narrator and Narrative in programme for schools and other interested Keats‘s Lamia groups as well as individual tourists. In England, Sarah Haggarty (Newcastle), Giving into Waste: we work to promote the awareness of Romantic Bataille, Beckford, Blake poetry. 11 March 2011, 3-5pm, St. Chad’s College, We publish an annual review of scholarship Durham University and new writing on the Romantics. We organise Mark McNally (Durham), ‗My picture is my and sponsor various literary awards, readings stage and men and women my players---‘ and other events, which are also supported by William Hogarth- Artist Engraver 1694-1764 the Friends of the Association. Sasha Handley (Northumbria), Sleep and For further information about our activities Sociability in Eighteenth-Century England and about membership, please contact David 13 May 2011, 3-5pm, Research Beehive, Leigh-Hunt, Hon. Secretary, KSMA Registered Newcastle University Office, 1 Satchwell Walk, Leamington Spa, Pam Clemit (Durham) and Matthew Grenby Warwickshire CV32 4QE, Fax: 01926 335133, (Newcastle), Romantic Correspondence: or visit our website (www.keats-shelley.co.uk). Godwin‘s Letters and How to Edit Them. A special seminar to celebrate the publication of the first volume of the OUP edition of Godwin's North American Society for the Study letters of Romanticism

Anyone interested in becoming a member of the International Society for Travel North American Society for the Study of Writing Romanticism should contact Peter Melville,

NASSR Secretary Treasurer, Department of This society was founded in 2001 to promote the English, 2A48, The University of Winnipeg, 515 practice and study of travel writing across Portage Ave. Winnipeg, MB, R3B 2E9 Canada disciplines and across historical periods. Now ([email protected]). about 500 strong, we welcome practising travel Announcements for the NASSR newsletter writers as well as scholars from literary studies, should be sent to the same address. The NASSR history, anthropology and other disciplines. The website (http://publish.uwo.ca/~nassr) contains organisation sponsors a biennial conference and full information about NASSR conferences, a a monthly email newsletter comprised of calls membership form, the NASSR-L FAQ and other for papers, notices of recent publications and details about the society. profiles of library and electronic archives with

substantial holdings in travel materials. To join

the organisation and to receive the newsletter,

The Snapshot Traveller, contact Donald Ross

([email protected]), our Executive Secretary.

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Women’s Studies Group: 1558-1837 purpose-built space for workshops, seminars and intimate readings. The Women‘s Studies Group: 1558-1837 is a For more information, please contact Ann small, informal multi-disciplinary group formed Pease, Wordsworth Trust, Dove Cottage, to promote women‘s studies in the early modern Grasmere LA22 9SH, Tel: 015394 63512 period and the long eighteenth century. The ([email protected]) or visit the group meets in the Senate House of the Trust‘s website (www.wordsworth.org.uk). University of London roughly every other month and meetings feature two speakers. The papers are followed by supportive and informal discussion. Members and non-members, men and women, are invited to give papers. For further information please visit our website: (www.womensstudiesgroup.org.uk).

The Wordsworth Trust

The Wordsworth Trust is an independent charity established as a living memorial to the life and poetry of William Wordsworth and his contemporaries. Founded in 1891, the Trust holds and conserves one of the world‘s great literary and art collections including more than ninety per cent of Wordsworth‘s manuscripts and pictures by famous artists including J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, Joseph Wright of Derby and Edward Lear. The permanent display in the Wordsworth Museum illustrates the story of the poet‘s life with manuscripts, books and pictures. A programme of changing special exhibitions explores different Romantic themes. The Trust‘s website (www.wordsworth.org.uk) contains descriptions of the collections, a searchable database and details of the changing programme of events the Trust provides throughout the year. Research visits to the Jerwood Centre can be made by appointment, and are open to all those who have a research interest. Situated only a few yards from Dove Cottage, the building provides modern, high quality facilities for research, conservation and for academic talks and visits, as well as storing some of the 60,000 manuscripts, books, paintings, drawings and prints when they are not in display in the Wordsworth Museum. The Rotunda of the Jerwood Centre at The Wordsworth Trust is a

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writing by contrasting his Letters from England with the aesthetic travel writing of Gilpin; Conference Anthony Howell‘s ‗Southey and Itinerancy‘ looked at the romantics‘ mixed idealisation and fear of gypsies; and Carol Bolton brought some Report intriguing archival research to bear on John Barrow and his promotion of an expedition to find the source of the Niger. Meanwhile in a parallel session, Madeleine Callaghan‘s close Robert Southey and the Contexts of comparison of Southey‘s Curse of Kehama and Romanticism, Keswick 14-16 April Byron‘s The Giaour showed the similarities and 2010 differences between each poet‘s ‗controlling and R perceptive gaze‘, and, moving further east, Jeff

Nicholas used Australia as an unexpected Just a short walk from Greta Hall, beneath Southey-Byron link, by way of Botany Bay and Skiddaw in the magnificent Vale of Keswick, a former barouche of Byron‘s bequeathed to an the second biennial Southey Conference resisted old flame, who took it to Adelaide when she the temptations of perfect spring weather and emigrated. got down to business indoors. The conference Alan Vardy‘s plenary lecture on Sara, was opened by its organisers presenting their Coleridge‘s daughter, provided one of many ongoing Southey editorial projects: Tim Fulford moments where a speaker could gesture showed images of MS pages from Carmen familiarly to the left as he described Sara Triumphale; Lynda Pratt and Ian Packer growing up at Greta Hall under Southey‘s care, previewed their forthcoming second volume of renowned equally for her beauty and her brains, Southey‘s Letters; and Carol Bolton introduced and knowingly articulate on both counts. In a her projected edition of Southey‘s Letters from panel on controversy Stuart Andrews showed England. Each speaker in turn pointed out the Southey‘s print battles with the Catholic task of covering the encyclopaedic range of apologist Milner over the Dominicans‘ part in Southey‘s literary references. The conference the genocidal Albigensian crusade; Scott theme was evident: getting to grips with Southey Krawczyk reassessed the case for Southey‘s in any meaningful way starts with the realisation authorship of an anonymous review of that he is a compendium of the contexts of Barbauld‘s Eighteen Hundred and Eleven; and romanticism. Bill Speck showed what an influential figure The opening panel centred on 1790s Bristol: Southey became for the Victorians. Thus over Paul Cheshire traced Southey‘s wary interest in the course of one panel we moved from John Henderson as a proto-romantic cautionary Southey‘s gut level opposition to Catholicism to tale of blighted genius, and Mike Jay gave an learning how Thalaba was an inspirational exhilarating picture of Southey getting high on springboard for the Catholic convert John Henry nitrous oxide in the experiments at Thomas Newman. Beddoes‘ Pneumatic Institute. The West We then turned to art with a paper by Richard Country theme continued in the next panel: Tim Westall about the artists William and Richard Fulford‘s paper on Southey‘s interest in Westall and their connections with the Dartmoor legend plausibly revealed him as Romantics through portraiture, illustration and disseminator of the myth behind the Hound of landscapes. After a visit to Greta Hall, the the Baskervilles, and Lynda Pratt showed the conference resumed for a panel on Southey and depth of Southey‘s affiliation to Bristol and the Society: William Roberts brought his local Somerset landscape. knowledge and a sceptical climber‘s eye to In a panel on travel Kerri Andrews made acute romantic travel writing about the Lakes in observations about the style of Southey‘s travel general and Coleridge‘s boasted chimney

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descent of Broad Stand Scafell in particular; literature. Dahlia Porter used Jeffrey‘s criticism Daniel Robinson also served up a satisfying - that Thalaba was a verse patchwork stitched myth buster by returning to primary sources to from Southey‘s compendiously exotic reading - dispel the commonly held view of Mary to examine the problem of what she called Robinson and Southey as poetry editors at The Southey‘s ‗pointedly injudicious combinations‘. Morning Post. The conference closed with Michael O‘Neill‘s Michael Gamer‘s plenary lecture on ‗Laureate lecture ‗Romantic Narratives‘. Jeffrey‘s Policy‘ presented Southey as a ‗born amortizer‘. criticism of Thalaba was again used to show His immediate decision to turn his nominal how ‗involuntarily perceptive‘ a hostile critic salary to a life insurance investment reflected can be. For the second generation romantics the way he was calculating the present and Southey was both good to steal from and good future values of his copyright stock and to depart from – an ‗antithetical spur‘ for posthumous reputation. In a politics panel John Shelley‘s Alastor and Byron‘s Giaour. Gardner presented a paper on Southey and The range of papers over the conference William Hone, showing that Hone and his showed how Southey collected, admired, collaborator Cruikshank preceded Byron in evaluated and disparaged the contexts of parodying The Vision of Judgement and its romanticism with equal zest. Talking to people author. Chine Sonoi traced the contradictions in the intervals I learned how much active between Southey‘s position on abolitionism and promotion and encouragement the organisers his support for colonialism in Madoc. In the had put into assembling this group from four parallel session, Gavin Budge presented continents, and how this was part and parcel of Southey‘s cast of mind in a new mode, showing their ongoing work to put Southey on the map. how Southey used a medical model to view The success of this second conference is a sign political subversion as an infection to be of how well this work is gathering momentum, checked by the vaccination of education; Kurt and I look forward to the next one in 2012. Johnson showed in Curse of Kehama the tensions between Southey‘s anti-heathenism and Paul Cheshire his more sympathetic view of Hinduism inspired by William Jones. The question of where Southey really stands was taken to a problematic extreme when Joe Phelan introduced Vincenzo Monti‘s In Morte di Ugo Bass-Ville as an indisputable model for Southey‘s Vision of Judgement. It followed from this that William Taylor‘s ironical view of Southey‘s Vision as a covert anti-monarchical squib had to be taken seriously. Sam Ward showed how Southey‘s support of Montgomery after his Wanderer of Switzerland and other Poems fell victim to a savage Jeffrey review led to collaborative exchanges of draft poems between the two, and Maria Castanheira, a welcome visitor from Lisbon, traced the way Southey‘s initially frosty impression of Portugal warmed to what in 1815 he came to describe as an ‗intellectual naturalisation‘. Asya Rogova from St Petersburg, also brought out Southey as an internationally influential figure by presenting examples of his influence on Russian

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Century‘ Gallery which is part of a major, museum-wide £61 million redevelopment Fine Arts project and innovative new display strategy at the Ashmolean called ‗Crossing Cultures Crossing Time‘. This approach aims to highlight the strengths of the collection while ‘Ancient Footprints Everywhere’: simultaneously showcasing the history of ideas, The Ashmolean’s ‘Britain and Italy’ or ‗how civilisations developed as part of an Gallery interrelated world culture‘. The ‗Britain and R Italy‘ room is one small facet of the Prior to embarking on the Grand Tour, bags redevelopment, and will combine Roman packed and copy of Cicero close at hand, many antiquities, souvenirs, and a variety of paintings, eighteenth-century British travellers would often highlighting the commerce between have already experienced a taste of Italy. Italian and British artists around the time of the Country homes were hubs of armchair travel, Grand Tour. from the picturesque guidebooks in the library The new extension, designed by Rick Mather to the reduced copies of antiquities on the Architects, will be located to the north of mantelpiece. In the days before the holiday Cockerell‘s building and will contain thirty- slideshow, collecting pictures was a way for the nine new galleries, four temporary exhibition Grand Tourist to remember those balmy galleries, and conservation studios. The historic evenings on the Spanish Stairs while showing interior of the old building, bedecked with deep that they, too, were members of an educated red, damask-style fabric walls, wood-and-glass elite. Those who had not yet gone abroad could display cases and parquet flooring, recreates the vicariously experience the sights and sounds reception situation of a country home. This is through a Piranesi portal into a world where perhaps indicative of the shift from the modern and ancient met under the ruins of the obdurate reign of the white cube: in 2005, for Circus Agonalis, or via a bird‘s-eye view of the example, the Yale Centre for British Art in Colosseum. New Haven, Connecticut featured a An excellent representation of some of the reconstruction of Sir John Leicester‘s Tent pictures and cultural artefacts from the Tour Room in order to recreate the viewing situation now reside at the University of Oxford‘s that Gainsborough intended for his ‗Cottage Ashmolean Museum, long celebrated as a first- Door‘ painting. Like the original ‗boudoir a la class collection of collections. The Ashmolean Turque‘ (as it was described by a contemporary is distinguished as England‘s cardinal public estate agent) the reconstruction featured walls museum, officially founded in 1683. By the hung with fabric, electric lamps dimmed to the mid eighteenth century the collection contained light output of gas-lamps, mirrors, and treasures from Tradescant‘s Lambeth museum sumptuous seats from which to view the of curiosities (appropriately coined ‗The Ark‘), painting to, in the words of the Morning Herald, excellent natural history specimens (including a ‗every advantage‘. Like the Tent Room, which taxidermy dodo), and the Alfred Jewel. was nestled in the modernist masterpiece of a In 1845, architect Charles Robert Cockerell‘s gallery (the Yale Centre was designed by design for a new building to house the growing architect Louis Kahn), the Ashmolean will collection was realized. He integrated Greek attempt to blend old and new from gallery to structural details and an innovative surface gallery, incorporating dark walls and wooden polychromy along with other elements inspired floors from the Cockerell building to Mather‘s by the Vignola‘s Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola. spectacular new rooms. It is appropriate that Cockerell‘s historic By playing to the features of the listed building will be the home of the new David & building, the curators have achieved a holistic Margita Wheeler ‗Britain and Italy in the 18th space, where Cockerell‘s neo-classical structure

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and the objects within function as a historical their status as objects of art and instead museum of a museum, while creating a functioned as emissaries of cultural memory. dynamic interplay between fragments of The gallery showcases paintings (such as material culture and often narrative paintings Panini‘s ‗Capricci‘, or fantasies, depicting depicting aspects of the Tour. This is a picturesque ruins against panoramic backdrops) historically relevant display strategy, harkening alongside portable souvenirs collected from the back to the contemporary emphasis on the Grand Tour excursion. The visitor can see, for museum as a liminal space. In his ‗Sketches of example, Pompeo Batoni‘s portrait of David the Principle Picture-Galleries in England‘ Garrick acting the part of grand tourist and (1824), William Hazlitt, for example, wrote that connoisseur (as he points to a page of masks the museum visitor is ‗abstracted to another from an edition of Terence‘s Comedies) sphere… we live in time past, and seem displayed alongside some of the relics of identified with the permanent forms of things… material culture that are similar to what he and here is the mind‘s true home‘. The philosopher his contemporaries collected. A painting by William Godwin was amongst those who never Andrea Casali (1705 – 1784) depicts Sir made it to Rome, and yet vicariously Charles Frederick as scholar and antiquarian, experienced the Grand Tour through literature, drawing a coin or medal while the Pantheon to London exhibitions, and the museum of the the left and elaborate classical interior space antiquarian parlour. ‗How delightful must it be‘, leaves no question that Frederick is in Rome. he mused in his ‗Essay on Sepulchres‘ (1809), Other corresponding material souvenirs and ‗to wander among the scenes of Ancient Greece objects include the Fitzwilliam coin cabinet and and Rome! Is it possible for a man who has a spectacular collection of gems and plaster contemplated the history of these states, not to impressions (of the sort that Blake was be lifted out of himself, when he stands on the allegedly examining while working on his soil where Sophocles thought, and… Dante series). These gems often featured Themistocles and Aristedes contended for the miniature depictions of the sites of Rome and, palm of public virtue? I could not traverse the just like the modern equivalents, were portable area which was once the Roman forum, and not and popular – so much so that books like feel myself surrounded with the spirits…‘. Joseph Addison‘s Remarks on Several Parts of Godwin was hardly alone in his sublime Italy (1705) functioned as armchair-travel evocation of the Classical past, and the visual guides, pointing gentlemen towards coinage expressions of the same sentiment are well within their own collections as one way to represented in the Ashmolean‘s collection. vicariously voyage. Reduced copies of antique The ruins of Rome functioned as a site of sculpture (Thomas Banks‘s Pudicitia, for mourning for an irretrievable past on the one example) will be shown along with Canova‘s hand, and as picturesque props on the other – Ideal Head. Another prominent feature will be Byron called them a ‗chaos‘, and Bob Dylan Camponi‘s allegorical plate, ‗Truth Unveiled by put it succinctly when he sang, ‗Oh, the streets Time‘ which is the only example in the U.K. of of Rome / are filled with rubble / ancient an armorial service made specifically for a footprints are everywhere / You can almost Grand Tourist. The room further engages with think that you're seeing double / on a cold, dark the Museum‘s ‗Crossing Cultures Crossing night on the Spanish Stairs‘. This tension Time‘ theme by incorporating a variety of between the ancient and modern is expressed in original antiquities, such as an Attic red-figure Panini‘s ‗Ruins with a Sibyl and other Figures‘ bell krater and Etruscan buccero pottery. The (1720) where figures in modern and classical contemporary importance of these relics of dress are depicted amongst partially-submerged Rome have been much discussed – the scene antique sculpture, evoking both power and from Madame de Stael‘s Corinne comes to decline, sublimity and decay. Like the ruins mind, when the narrator muses on the themselves, souvenirs of the Tour transcended ‗indescribable emotion which… is continually

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revived in Rome and makes our thoughts find companionship in physical objects‘. The Ashmolean has succeeded in creating a Early Career and conceptual space relevant to the overarching concept of Britain and Italy while appropriately Postgraduate showcasing their rich and varied collection. The exhibition will doubtlessly appeal to Column Romantic scholars and 21st century armchair tourists alike - toting Cicero is optional.

Kathryn Barush University of Oxford Following the success of the last BARS Early Career and Postgraduate Conference, Romantic [Please note that images to accompany this Biographies: Writing Lives and Afterlives c. article are available on the ‗BARS Bulletin & 1770-1835, which took place at the Research Review‘ page on the BARS website.] Institute for the Humanities at Keele in 2009, we‘re keen to continue the biennial pattern of conferences begun with Romanticism and Heroism in Leeds in 2007. We‘re therefore pleased to announce that BARS‘ eighth Early Career and Postgraduate Conference will take place in London next year, auspiciously on Friday the 13th of May. Our hosts will be the Institute of English Studies at Senate House, located a couple of minutes from Russell Square Station and fifteen minutes on foot from King‘s Cross and Euston. The Institute has excellent conference facilities in the newly refurbished South Block, and we hope that the venue‘s location near major transport links to most parts of the country will enable postgraduates and early career scholars from universities across the UK and from beyond to attend. The title for the conference in 2011 will be Romantic Identities: Selves in Society, 1770- 1835. We‘ve chosen to run with a relatively broad theme and use a generous date range to define the period in order to make the conference accessible to doctoral students working on a wide range of projects, but we hope that the theme will gather clusters of shared interests and allow a range of discussions to develop on the vexed, plural nature of identities in literature and culture in the period. In engaging with these complex issues, we are fortunate to have the thoughtful and insightful guidance of John Whale, who has generously agreed to give a keynote address to bring the

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conference together, tentatively titled ‗Imperfect Sympathies in Regency Culture.‘ At previous conferences, as well as panel Events sessions the programme has included roundtables providing information on matters of interest to less experienced researchers and we intend to continue this practice in London. In FORTHCOMING attending events for graduates over the past couple of years, an issue that‘s been frequently CONFERENCES raised is the disjunction between the relative solitude and specificity of doctoral research and ENLIGHTENMENT, ROMANTICISM the increasingly collaborative and multivalent & NATION projects pursued by more senior scholars. To British Association for Romantic address this issue, the programme will include a th roundtable examining the processes involved in Studies 12 Biennial International working on large-scale academic projects, with Conference Sharon Ruston, who is lead investigator on the University of Glasgow LitSciMed programme and is currently working 28-31 July 2011 on a collected edition of the letters of Humphry www.glasgow.ac.uk/bars2011 Davy and his circle, and Simon Eliot, whose current projects include roles as General Editor CALL FOR PAPERS of The History of Oxford University Press and co-director of the Reading Experience Database. Plenary speakers: There are further details regarding the Ian Duncan (UC Berkely) conference in the Call for Papers below. We Ina Ferris (University of Ottawa) hope that many of you will be able to attend, Susan Manning (University of Edinburgh) whether to present papers or to listen, and would be very grateful if you would spread the word to ‗Re-Enlightenment‘ panel discussion: colleagues and students to whom you think the Peter de Bolla (Cambridge University) conference might be of interest. Murray Pittock (University of Glasgow) Clifford Siskin (New York University) Matthew Sangster and Daniel Cook BARS Early Career and Postgraduate In the last few decades, scholarly perceptions of Representatives the relationship between Enlightenment and Romanticism have been revised in a number of ways, to the extent that a narrative of continuity has largely replaced an older picture of rupture and antagonism. This is especially evident in the following fields: romantic affect, sensibility and gender; the aesthetics of the sublime and beautiful; conversation and romantic sociability; antiquarianism and historiography; periodicals and the history of the book; race and ethnicity; popular culture and the ballad revival (the list is far from exhaustive). At the same time the period categories ‗Enlightenment‘ and ‗Romanticism‘ have themselves been opened up to a more pluralistic and contextualised

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understanding. The rise of a ‗four nation‘ the abbreviated list) that has begun to redress the approach to Romanticism has questioned an tendency of post-1945 criticism to focus older ‗centre and periphery‘ model of cultural exclusively on the ‗big six‘ of Blake, production, devolving canonical notions of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and ‗English literature‘ and underlining a more Keats. Equally, recent work in the field has nuanced sense of national and regional location. highlighted the means by which distinctive By extension, this has important consequences systems of cultural production in Britain and for thinking about nationalism in Europe and the Ireland produced diverse articulations of wider world, as well as transnational and Romantic literature and thought, emphasizing colonial networks, ethnic diasporas, migration the role that national public spheres have played and slavery: why was the ‗British Empire‘ never in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales and the ‗English Empire‘? It is with a view to complicating the cultural history of the encouraging papers addressing these and other Romantic period projected by the post-war related themes that the 12th Biennial Anglo-American academy. The conference International Conference of the British hopes to continue and deepen these debates, and Association for Romantic Studies has chosen the move outwards from the particular case of title of ‗Enlightenment, Romanticism & Nation‘. Anglo/Scottish literary negotiations to a broader The conference seeks to address two specific consideration of regional, national and trans- areas: first, the relationship between the Scottish national issues, under the aegis of Enlightenment and Romanticism (British, ‗Enlightenment, Romanticism & Nation‘. American, European etc); and second, the study We hope that our rubric is broad enough to of Scottish, Irish, and Welsh literature in relation encompass the work of scholars researching to their distinct national cultures, and to the across the whole range of Romantic literature, overarching claims of ‗Britishness‘. Regarding while at the same time highlighting our Scottish the first area, we ask what are the relative claims location, and the particular research grouping of of Scottish thinkers and literati like Hume, Glasgow‘s School of Critical Studies. Glasgow Smith, Blair, Reid, Beattie and Stewart, University was a key centre of the Scottish compared, say, to French and German influences, Enlightenment and today has an international upon Romantic literature and criticism? This reputation in both Enlightenment and Romantic might focus on associationism and Common studies, with the latter currently being taught at Sense philosophy versus Transcendentalism, or all levels in the School. Glasgow‘s active ‗rhetoric and belles lettres‘ criticism in relation community of academic staff and graduate to the claims of Germano-Coleridgean theories students working in the area of Romanticism of imagination, amplifying recent debates about will provide a congenial intellectual the complex conceptual and philosophical issues environment for this international conference. that energised the scene of writing in the long The School has recently run a postgraduate eighteenth-century. programme entitled ‗Enlightenment, With regard to the second area, the editors of Romanticism, & Nation‘, convened by Professor Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism have Nigel Leask, and is also home to the Centre for recently taken issue with a common twentieth- Robert Burns Studies, as well as being the century view of Scottish writing as ‗stand[ing] institutional base for the new Oxford Collected for an inauthentic Romanticism, defined by a Works of Robert Burns, General Editor Dr mystified – purely ideological – commitment to Gerard Carruthers. In 2011 the School will history and folklore‘. (The same might be said launch The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish of Irish or Welsh Romanticism). This criticism Romanticism, edited by Professor Murray is cognate with a new body of research on Scott, Pittock. As the proud host of next summer‘s Hogg, Baillie, Burns, Edgeworth, Owenson, 12th International Biennial Conference of the Moore, Iolo Morganwg (inter alia, but the new British Association for Romantic Studies, importance of women writers is notable even in Glasgow and its ancient university‘s College of

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Arts remains committed, now as in the past, to the contexts of Romantic cultural production; bringing the world to Scotland and Scotland to gender and the public sphere; national the world. enlightenments and periodical cultures. Romantic Writers and Asia: Empire, Nation We welcome the submission of: and Exchange: Four nations participation in Suggested panel presentations comprising 3 imperial cultural exchange and trade; Romantic presenters and chairperson (please submit 3 x Orientalism at home and abroad; imperial 250-word abstract and a short rationale for the cultural production and Romantic literary genres. panel theme). Sir Walter Scott, Nation and the Romantic 250-word abstracts for twenty-minute papers Historical Novel: Scott, the Scottish that broadly address the above themes in twenty- Enlightenment, and Scottish Romantic cultural first century Romantic studies, and that may production; the Romantic historical novel and address, but not be limited by, the following the Union; the national tale and the Romantic topics: historical novel. Four-Nations Romanticism: Literary relations James Hogg and Scottish Romanticism: between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales Scottish Gothic modes and Confessions of a in the period. Justified Sinner; Hogg and folktales, ballads and The Scottish Enlightenment and song; Hogg and Scottish regionality; Hogg, Romanticism: Papers might address pastoralism and modernity. associationism, Common Sense philosophy, Other papers may address the following rhetoric, aesthetics and theories of imagination, topics: Enlightenment and Romantic Landscape; political economy, stadial theory. Romantic Ecologies; Medicine and Adam Smith and Sympathy: Smith was Embodiments; The National Tale; Transatlantic professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow Literary Relations; Nationalism and Revolution; University 1752-64, and his Theory of Moral Ballad and Song; Political Economy: ‗An End to Sentiments (1759) profoundly influenced Poverty‘ Romantic criticism and literary production. Antiquarianism, History and Historiography: DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: FRIDAY 21 Modes of antiquarian and historical writing in JANUARY 2011 relation to criticism, poetry and the novel. PLEASE SEND ABSTRACTS BY EMAIL TO: Robert Burns and Romanticism: Glasgow‘s [email protected] School of Critical Studies hosts the Centre for Robert Burns Studies, and is the institutional base for the new Oxford edition of the Collected Coleridge, Romanticism, and the Works of Robert Burns. Of particular concern is Orient: Cultural Negotiations the reception and influence of Burns‘s poetry An International Conference at Kobe, and song in England, Ireland and Europe, as well as further afield, from Philadelphia to Japan, 16-18 July 2011 Calcutta. Language: Standard versus vernacular English, Call for Papers Scots and the ‗copia verborum‘; linguistic ‗improvement‘; literary relations between A three-day international conference focusing English and Celtic languages; translation, on Samuel Taylor Coleridge and cross-cultural dictionaries and the ‗grammar of Empire‘; issues in Romantic Literature, in particular, their ethnography and etymology; poetic diction. associations with the Orient. National Public Spheres and Romantic Plenary Lecturers include: Elinor Shaffer, Periodical Culture: Scottish, English, Irish and Alan Bewell, Seamus Perry, Masashi Suzuki, Welsh literary public spheres in the long Tim Fulford, Deirdre Coleman eighteenth century; intellectual sociability and

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Topics for discussion will range widely to continuing consequences, including the include Coleridge and other Romantic writers, posthumous canonisation of certain writers of travel writings, cross-cultural issues in Romantic the period as Romantics while others remain Literature, a reconsideration of Romanticism neglected. and Orientalism, the reception of Coleridge and We welcome proposals for papers on any other Romantic writers in the non-European aspects of the ways that writers and works of the context - and much more. [All papers will be in period construct, construe and project identities English.] and/or on the ways such identities have been Paper proposals should be sent in as an e-mail received. Topics might include, but are not attached document in the form of an abstract of limited to: theatre and theatricality; nationalism; approximately 400 words in in length to imperialism; femininities and masculinities; kaz[at]lit.nagoya-u.ac.jp, not later than 31 gender and sexuality; class; authorial masks and January 2011. Please include your e-mail personae; censorship; criticism and politics; address and affiliation in your proposal sheet. fame and celebrity; conceptions of Romanticism; ideas of literary value; identities in visual arts; characters and lives; auto/biography; genres; British Association for Romantic archetypes; iconography and worship; modes of Studies Early Career and Postgraduate education; publicity and promotion; periodical Conference 2011 culture; anonymous and pseudonymous authorship; forgery and authenticity; genius and

hack writing. Romantic Identities In addition to panel sessions, the conference Selves in Society, 1770-1835 will feature a keynote address by John Whale (University of Leeds) and a roundtable session Institute of English Studies, Senate House, on conceiving, co-ordinating and working on London large-scale academic projects with Sharon Ruston (University of Salford) and Simon Eliot Friday 13 May 2011 (Institute of English Studies). Papers at the conference will last twenty The British Association for Romantic Studies minutes. If you are interested in presenting a invites proposals for papers for its 2011 Early paper, please email an abstract of up to 250 Career and Postgraduate conference on the words to [email protected]. Please theme of Romantic Identities. Political and also direct any queries or questions to this military conflict, the proliferation of print address. culture, and the diverse aesthetics espoused by competing authors all served to make the Deadline for abstracts: 15 January 2011 Romantic period one in which creating, assuming and redefining different kinds of Organisers: Matthew Sangster (Royal Holloway) identities was of critical importance. Increased and Daniel Cook (Bristol) interest in the lives and characters of writers, particularly in periodicals, constrained certain authors while provoking others to develop new forms of self-expression. Effectively manipulating identities was also critical to the period‘s burgeoning theatrical culture, in debates about hierarchies of forms and genres, and in the works and reception of female and working- class writers. The interplay of these competing self-presentations has had wide-ranging and

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revolutionary break. Ironically for a philosopher Reviews who so often invoked custom against revolutionary reason, Burke denied legitimacy to ‗customs in common‘, preferring the ‗negative reciprocity‘ of an elitist notion of chivalry unknown to the revolutionary mob. Later, in David Collings, Monstrous Society: ‗Thoughts on Scarcity‘, he even repudiated the Reciprocity, Discipline and the Political customary notion that the poor had any right to Uncanny at the End of Early Modern subsistence, based on a selective reading of the England. Lewisberg: Bucknell new political economy. Burke‘s ‗anti-aesthetics University Press, 2009. Pp. 332. £54.95. of the monstrous‘ conceives plebeian agency as ISBN 9780838757208 mere mindless violence: ‗the crowd turns into a mob, carnival into disaster, comedy into tragedy,

revolution into apocalypse‘. David Collings offers a strikingly new Denial of reciprocity between living and dead perspective on social conflict in Britain during underlies this terror of ‗monstrous society‘. the Romantic period. Although fluent in both Burke insisted on being buried in an unmarked French and Anglo-Saxon theory, the book grave for fear that his remains would be dug up makes its pitch by turning attention away from and desecrated by the Jacobin crowd, realising a familiar Foucauldian ‗discursive regularities‘ to gothic trope by haunting the revolutionary social history, namely E. P. Thompson‘s seminal futurity he dreaded. In contrast, Bentham willed 1971 essay on the ‗moral economy of the crowd‘. that his mummified corpse be put on public Thompson argued that in pre-modern society display as an ‗auto-icon‘, a secularist challenge political authority was deeply conditional: to the ‗official supernatural‘. Burke and plebeians and magistrates exerted pressure on Bentham‘s fixation with their mortal remains each other, competing through a ritualized represent ‗opposed attempts to keep the body theatre and counter-theatre of power. In resisting singular, to protect against or inaugurate a authority, ‗the people‘ claimed to be appealing historic break, reveal[ing] instead that such a to a set of customary conditions older than the break provides only another scene for the legal system itself, and in complying with these operations of reversibility‘. At the heart of what demands (for example releasing bread after a Hazlitt diagnosed as ‗the spirit of the age‘ then, food riot) magistrates acted less according to a lies a rationalist denial of figuration, always moral code than upon a traditional sense of local haunted by the spectre of alterity that it seeks to social ties and obligations. expel. It‘s an easy transition to gothic fiction and An opening chapter links Thompson with The Monk, whose plot of transgression is Victor Turner‘s ‗logic of reversibility‘: via an Burkean politics writ large, epitomising the insightful discussion of gift theory, we grasp revolutionary ‗language of hyperbole‘. Although how perpetual and conditional exchange works Lewis shared Burke‘s horror of the monstrous to defer violence around the pressure-points of crowd, his novel defends the principle of exploitation and insurrection, the nearest thing reversibility: the spectral figure of the Bleeding to a participatory politics in an era of limited Nun ‗exemplifies the process whereby power‘s franchise. Replacing the spirit of carnival with negation of counterpower kills both – and yet revolutionary politics post-1789 ‗shift[ed] the how both traumatically endure in a single, self- symbolic reversal of social norms into the lacerating figure‘. process of their literal transformation: its axis is In contrast to Burke, Malthus‘s Essay on not high/low but past/future‘. Chapter two Population sees ‗monstrous society‘ as accordingly proposes, with reference to Burke‘s militating against the laws of nature in the shape Reflections, that the social conditions of of the principle of population. His notorious reversibility were destroyed forever by the pronouncement that ‗at nature‘s mighty feast

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there is no vacant cover for [the poor man]‘ Claire Lamont and Michael cancelled the relations of reciprocity, demanding Rossington, eds, Romanticism’s a collective submission to the regime of scarcity Debatable Lands. Basingstoke: and death. Malthus reversed Godwin‘s claim that progressive politics inhered within society Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp. 262. £50. itself; the imminent principle of dearth and ISBN 0230507859 hunger is the fearful ghost within the machine. Nature‘s stern regulator is the market, with its Although this collection is based on papers moralizing imperatives of endless labour and given at the 2005 BARS conference, with which sexual restraint. But in a lesson for our own it shares a name, unlike many such collections times, it turns out that without popular Romanticism’s Debatable Lands achieves a legitimacy, market forces are impotent to convincing consistency of theme, bringing impose discipline on the collective. together work on regional identities within the Chapter 5 offers a rewardingly fresh study of British Isles with studies of Romantic Frankenstein. Turning away from an over- representations of Europe and Romantic familiar view of the Creature as a figure for the colonialism. Many of the essays focus on non- revolutionary mob, Collings conceives it as the canonical Romantic writing, although some by ‗common body‘ of the new species theorised by implication suggest fresh approaches to Bentham and Malthus. The Miltonic trope of canonical texts. The examination of the Victor‘s godlike power indicates that the attempt relationship between early mountaineers‘ to eradicate the sacred from the enterprise of accounts of Alpine exploration and later guide- power simply restores it in altered form. But books offered in Cian Duffy‘s ‗Interrogating the Shelley‘s novel allows this bizarre prototype to ―Valley of Wonders‖: Some Romantic-Period talk back in a defiant act of figural exchange, as Debates about Chamonix-Mont Blanc‘, for the ‗symbolic counterpart‘ of the old model of example, offers a original perspective on the reciprocity is transformed into modernity‘s most sublime equation of ‗a gain in altitude... not only striking parable of the political uncanny. to a gain in knowledge, but also to a gain in Victor‘s refusal to create a mate for his ‗hideous aesthetic appreciation of the landscape‘, which progeny‘ parallels Malthusian ‗moral restraint‘, could be very useful in teaching Shelley‘s ‗Mont but in a broader sense the novel critiques Blanc‘, whose ‗anachronistic description of the attempts to literalise humanity‘s symbolic ―inaccessible‖ summit‘ is merely mentioned by relations. Duffy. Similarly, Peter Kitson‘s ‗Debating The final chapter surveys the transformation China: Romantic Fictions of the Qing Empire‘ from reciprocity to constitutional reform in post- briefly but suggestively locates Coleridge‘s war radicalism, with a nice focus on the dying ‗Kubla Khan‘ in the context of the opposition William Cobbett‘s embrace of Thomas Spence‘s between Chinese civilization and Tartar agrarian system. Spence‘s carnivalesque, savagery that characterized European discourse parodic and blasphemous radicalism is very about China. Nigel Leask advances a new much within the popular tradition of Linebaugh context for a key Romantic document in ‗―The and Rediker‘s ‗many-headed Hydra‘, at odds Shadow Line‖: James Currie‘s ―Life of Burns‘ with mainstream Marxism‘s disdain for the and British Romanticism‖, arguing that the ‗lumpenproletariat‘. Collings‘ achievement in ‗Preface to the Lyrical Ballads‘ represents a Monstrous Society is not just to demonstrate Wordsworthian appropriation of the arguments how that earlier radicalism was superseded by about the Scottish peasantry presented in modern revolutionary politics, but how much of Currie‘s 1800 edition of Burns in the name of an it survived, albeit in mutated forms, in the gothic English ‗Harringtonian agrarian idealism‘. Joel literary imaginings of the nineteenth century. Faflak‘s ‗Philosophy‘s Debatable Land in Nigel Leask Coleridge‘s Biographia Literaria‘ identifies the University of Glasgow presence of mesmeric discourse in Coleridge‘s

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discussions of enthusiasm and national identity, that the poem ‗I Am‘ reveals such identities to suggesting that mesmerism functions as the be ‗already criscrossed with otherness‘. unavowed political unconscious of Coleridgean The essays on texts altogether outside the thought, whilst Deirdre Coleman‘s examination canon share a focus on the way in which borders of the key role played in eighteenth-century function to constitute representations of thought by polyps and coral, as intermediaries otherness. Within the British Isles, Mary-Ann between vegetable, animal and mineral Constantine examines the career of Iolo kingdoms, proposes an interesting context for Morganwg (Edward Williams) and his the metamorphosis of the leech-gatherer from construction of a Welshness which resisted the ‗huge Stone‘ to ‗Sea-beast‘ in Wordsworth‘s Ossianic stereotype of cultural primitivism ‗Resolution and Independence‘. whilst drawing on English conceptions of Appropriately enough, the theme of national identity. Janet Sorensen‘s ‗The borderlands prompts renewed attention to texts Debatable Borders of English and Scottish Song which are themselves at the borders of the and Ballad Collections‘ revisits the arguments of Romantic canon. Prominent among these is William St Clair‘s The Reading Nation in the Wordsworth‘s much neglected The Excursion, Romantic Period to argue for the distinct nature whose more explicit political stance resonates of Scottish literary culture given greater popular with the cultural materialist focus of many of the literacy and less restrictive copyright law, a essays. Karen O‘Brien‘s ‗Uneasy Settlement: culture which she suggests is anachronistically Wordsworth and Emigration‘ examines the role misrepresented as ‗traditional‘ in English ballad of Wordsworth‘s poem, along with writings by collections. Another group of essays examines Southey and Coleridge, in shaping attitudes to the political implications of depictions of Europe, colonial emigration; Alex Benchimol, on the with Nanora Sweet examining the significance other hand, examines the way in which the poem of Naples and its revolutions for the sibylline presents a ‗social ethic ... rooted in a moral prophetic stance assumed by Staël, the Shelleys, engagement with landscape‘, contrasting this and Hemans, Juan Sánchez considering the with Cobbett‘s economic mode of interpretation implications of the representation of Spanish in Rural Rides. Scott figures in a number of colonialism in Helen Maria Williams‘s Peru for essays, with Fiona Wilson, in ‗He‘s Come conceptions of English imperial rule, and Diego Undone: Gender, Territory and Hysteria in Rob Saglia very topically analyzing representations Roy‘, interestingly relating the novel‘s economic of the Crusades in Romantic drama as setting up aspect to its theme of male hysteria, Susan ‗moments of intercultural contact and exchange Oliver offering a reading of ‗The Lady of the which... ultimately confirm the separate and Lake‘ in terms of the Scottish Enlightenment superior identity of the Western dimension‘. stadial account of history, and Fiona Stafford Altogether, this collection contains many using Raymond Williams‘s concept of ‗border thought-provoking essays on issues of regional vision‘ to compare Scott‘s approach to and national identity which reflect the traditional culture in Minstrelsy of the Scottish increasingly intercultural focus of Romantic Border to the treatment of Irish legend in studies. Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon. Carol Gavin Budge Bolton‘s ‗Debating India: Southey and The University of Hertfordshire Curse of Kehama‘ argues that competing Evangelical and Romantic conservative discourses about India are expressed in the tension between the poem and Southey‘s extensive footnotes. Timothy Morton makes use of John Clare‘s status as romanticized outsider to the established literary canon to interrogate ecological understandings of place, suggesting

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Clark Lawlor, Consumption and The first two chapters address the association Literature: the Making of the Romantic of consumption with the literary traditions of Disease. Basingstoke: Palgrave love melancholy and ars moriendi, or the ‗good death‘. Lawlor suggests that the features of Macmillan, 2006. Pp. 243. £45. consumption commonly identified by medical ISBN 9780230020030 writers in the early modern period (youth, hope, preternatural energy and a ‗refined‘ spirit, Clark Lawlor‘s excellent study has at its centre a possibly attractive weight loss) fed into ‗a gulf that has always troubled readers sceptical of flexible and gendered discourse‘ about love. consumption as a ‗glamorous Romantic disease‘, Along with these features, its reputation as ‗the as he initially puts it – ‗an apparent gulf between easy and certain death‘, with a slow period of representation and reality, well-structured serene decline in which to contemplate and narrative and horrific biological fact.‘ A repent, also proved useful for seventeenth- gruesome description of consumptive death is century religious narratives about dying, such as given on the second page, should we be in any Walton‘s life of Donne. (It would have been doubt from the start about the nature of the interesting to read more about how these two disease. Yet a great strength of this book is its traditions fed into each other.) More refusal to be biologically reductive or dismissive significantly for Romanticists, the book then of the range of (often positive) meanings given moves towards the late eighteenth century, to consumption over the period covered. Nor tracing the increasing influence of physiological does it engage in the oddly popular activity of models of the nerves and their importance to assuming diagnostic authority over long medical aspects of the culture of sensibility. A disappeared bodies and symptoms. The author rich and useful discussion of medical contexts is understands that any textual representation of followed by a section on the consumptive disease is a representation of historical ideas heroine, with an extended reading of the death about disease rather than just its physical of Richardson‘s Clarissa, contrasted with others manifestation, and that these were and are in Sarah Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne; then an subject to ideological pressure in scientific as analysis of the contrasting treatment of well as popular and literary writing. So ‗what consumptive masculinity, especially in relation was it about this condition that caused it to be so to the latter two authors‘ own illnesses. The seductive to both a popular and elite book then arrives at the ‗familiar ground‘ of readership?‘ asks Lawlor. The answers he Romantic poetic genius and consumption, where provides are convincing, well-documented, and it finds that existing models were reformulated historically differentiated. The book covers a by the Brunonian theory of nervous stimulation large period, from the classical roots of the (the coverage of materia medica is very good concept of consumption to the present day throughout the book, but in this period reference (although substantive analysis runs effectively is less diverse, and there is perhaps a little too from the seventeenth century to around 1882, much emphasis on Brown). There is a sensible when Robert Koch discovered the bacillus that discussion of Keats biographically, together with gave consumption its modern pathological consideration of the image of the consumptive identity as tuberculosis). The adeptness with poet, but given his central place in this image which Lawlor moves between periods shows there is surprisingly little about how Keats‘s that the longue durée is not necessarily a cause own poetry embodies, reflects upon, or critiques for concern, although in some chapters detailed it. Lawlor cites Hermione de Almeida‘s literary readings and arguments could be discussion of the ‗Ode on a Grecian Urn‘ in the augmented usefully (the book itself is not over- context of nervous irritability (in her Romantic long), and there are occasional startling Medicine and John Keats) but regrettably does chronological leaps. not provide similar analyses. There is a suggestive section on Shelley (partially

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dismissed as ‗conniving‘ and ‗wheedling‘), and contextual concerns of every kind. ‗Jane Austen how Adonais ‗allowed an extended focus on the and…‘ may be followed by something as dying mind of the overreaching poet—as well as general as ‗Representations of the Regency‘ or embodying that very excess‘, but this is one of by a much more specific signpost into those instances in the book where interesting contemporary culture – the body, food, leisure, arguments are unfortunately curtailed in the rush the clergy, the navy, the theatre, the to the next subject and period. Consumption and Enlightenment or the English landscape. Such Literature concludes with interesting although titles almost constitute a distinct sub-genre of again rather flighty chapters on the ‗medical literary criticism. And as anyone teaching or hectoring‘ of the female consumptive, and the pursuing serious research into Austen‘s work persistence of Keats‘s role and a ‗cometary knows, this kind of criticism is invaluable in its death‘ for young male poets in the nineteenth detail and has cumulatively deepened our century (less famous authors covered include understanding of both the novels and the Mary Tighe, Lucretia Maria Davidson, Henry Romantic period. The appearance of three more Kirke White, Robert Pollok, and David Gray). contributions is therefore welcome, especially as The conclusion teems with ideas and lines of each provides a fresh approach to the departure into the twentieth century, further inexhaustible novels that form the centre of the indication that this is a book, like the ever-increasing circles of contextualisation. consumptives it describes, in which a slender The title of Anthony Mandal‘s study might frame belies vital force and purpose. raise expectations of a cults-and-cultures kind of James Whitehead analysis, but instead of Bridget Jones or Pride King’s College London and Prejudice and Zombies the cover depicts the frontispiece of Mary Brunton‘s Self Control. Mandal‘s ‗popular novel‘ is that of Austen‘s Peter W. Graham, Jane Austen & own lifetime and his critical discussions draw Charles Darwin: Naturalists and extensively on his work for the database of British Fiction, 1800-1829. Such detailed Novelists. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. knowledge of the late eighteenth and early Pp. 214. £50. ISBN 9780754658511 nineteenth-century publishing trade makes this an especially important contribution to Austen Anthony Mandal, Jane Austen and the studies, and was anticipated by Mandal‘s 2006 Popular Novel: The Determined Author. article in The Review of English Studies, which Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, shed such helpful light on the old puzzle about Crosby‘s failure to publish Susan. Jane Austen 2007. Pp. 265. £50. and the Popular Novel includes similar evidence ISBN 9780230008960 from publishers‘ archives and analysis of contemporary book sales, but extends the Eric C. Walker, Marriage, Writing & discussion into consideration of emerging trends Romanticism: Wordsworth and Austen in fiction during the opening decades of the after War. Stanford University Press, nineteenth century. The Evangelical novel, the national tale and the historical novel all became 2009. Pp. 297. £53.50. popular in the years when Austen was writing ISBN 9780804760928 her novels and so Mandal demonstrates that Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion were Modern critical studies of Austen rarely treat her each engaged dialogically with the new forms of work in isolation. For the last two decades, her fiction. His analysis of Persuasion thus novels have been discussed in relation to an complements Jocelyn Harris‘s recent A apparently endless catalogue of predecessors, Revolution Almost Beyond Expression in its contemporaries, heirs, or admirers, as well as emphasis on Scott‘s significance for Austen,

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despite the overtly male voice and public of interlocking essays which juxtapose Darwin concerns of the Waverley novels. While and Austen with a variety of results. The starting Mandal‘s analysis is illuminating in its point is the uncontentious emphasis on their discussion of specific aspects of Austen‘s fiction, capacities for careful observation, but by the end however, its greatest value lies in the of the book we find Darwin‘s son becoming repositioning of Austen‘s political context. interested in the geography of Lyme Regis after Though Sense and Sensibility, Pride and reading Persuasion, while Anne Elliot‘s story is Prejudice and Northanger Abbey had their read as a rejection of the ‗dying dinosaurs origins in the 1790s and can therefore be among whom she‘s lived‘, which makes the legitimately read in the light of the revolutionary fossiliferous cliffs of Dorset the perfect setting debates of that era, all of Austen‘s novels were for her reanimation. Not all readers will be actually published in the 1810s, with the later persuaded by the juxtaposition of Austen and three being composed shortly before publication. Darwin‘s last works (The Formation of It is therefore more fruitful to read them in the Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms, light of the politics of the Regency and the later and Sanditon), but it is a characteristically stages of the Napoleonic wars, however long- thought-provoking parallel with which to lived the earlier war of ideas might seem. Jane conclude. The unusual, though not unbecoming, Austen and the Popular Novel may be conjunctions throw up focal points such as unassuming in appearance but its scope and blushing or sibling relationships that help reveal significance are far from modest. new aspects of both Austen and Darwin‘s work, Equally ambitious, though very different in making for an intriguing, refreshingly multi- focus and method, is Peter Graham‘s innovative faceted study. conjunction of Austen & Darwin (the ampersand, Eric Walker‘s new book is similarly built from as he explains at the outset, signifies juxtapositions, but this time Austen is paired juxtaposition and comparative analysis, rather with another contemporary literary giant: than implying a real relationship.) Rather than William Wordsworth. Like Mandal, Walker pursue Darwin‘s reading of Austen, which might recognises the importance of Regency contexts have produced some fruitful connections, for Austen and extends the insight to encompass Graham is interested in the similarities between Wordsworth, similarly shifting the traditional the naturalist and the novelist – ‗both Austen critical emphasis on the revolutionary decade to and Darwin are naturalists who look with a clear the post-Waterloo period. Walker‘s analysis of cold eye at the concrete particulars of the world the literary representation of marriage is thus around them… both Austen and Darwin are seen in the context of the peace that followed novelists who rely on storytelling and the verbal long years of warfare, though this does not lead strategies that it entails‘. Rather than invite his to an interpretation of marriage as a harmonious own readers to regard his book in purely conclusion. If Romantic-period marriage plots objective scholarly spirit, he suggests that we can be read as allegories for political Union, might gain personally from his chosen authors – they can also, apparently, signal compromise ‗attuned to reading the world by reading Austen and covert conflict. Taking his lead from Cavell, or Darwin‘. The suggestion that reading great Walker presents an unsentimental view of the authors might help us ‗to look closely at the early nineteenth-century married couple, social and natural phenomena around us, to form ‗lacking in poetry, frozen between the terrors of opinions based on attentive individual the only other ways to try to be human, alone or judgement rather than on transmitted opinion‘ in a crowd‘. Where many readers of Persuasion makes this a book for our times just as much as have seen the Crofts as a happily-balanced pair, for Austen‘s, though its very originality may Walker goes to great lengths to reveal dark defeat some students in search of easy possibilities in Mrs Croft walking ‗for her life‘ downloadable answers. Since this is not a study through the streets of Bath. He also reminds us of influence, the book is organised into a series that when Wordsworth was composing odes

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apparently occasioned by the British victory at the era‘s controversially progressive, and Waterloo, he was also contemplating the contemporaneously vilified, ‗sexually marriage of his daughter, Caroline, which took precocious‘ female. Using this foundation, place in February 1816. This book wouldn‘t George strives to reinstate the important cultural make a tactful wedding present, filled as it is context of botanical study in shaping the figure with memorable comments such as Johnson‘s on of the Enlightened woman of science. The second marriages (‗the triumph of hope over Victorians, by contrast, did much to reclaim the experience‘), but it is certainly one to see before serious study of natural sciences as a masculine it is placed, jacketless, on a library shelf. The realm, and George argues that this led to the cover is the most stylish of the three books decline of female interest in botany to a more under discussion, with its splendid full-colour superficial love of floristry and aesthetics. Her reproduction of Anna Letitia Aikin‘s ‗A New subsequent method, then, is to showcase British Map of the Land of Matrimony‘, with its women writers‘ original and well-informed numerous offshore hazards and attractions – literary and practical engagements with the new ‗Rocks of Jealousy‘, ‗Syren‘s Islands‘ and the methodology posited by Linnaeus during the nearby ‗Bay of Repentance‘. The map does course of the long eighteenth century. reappear in the opening chapter, though, where George is swift to identify her critical we are told that the authoress gave the print with predecessors in this contextual research field a wedding-day address to her new husband (Barbara T. Gates, Ann Shteir, Londa Rochemont Barbauld, who later committed Schiebinger), but positions her own study as suicide. divergent in its more overtly literary focus, Each of these studies offers an unusual which includes new considerations of epistolary, approach to Austen – and each reveals ways in dialogic and poetical interpretations of botany. which Austen may shed unexpected light on her George makes particular reference to the contemporaries and heirs. Though very different importance of the familial dialogue as a in method and purpose, all repay careful reading specifically feminised form in botanical and are likely to provoke further critical literature, a textual vehicle through which discussion of Austen and the Regency period. women writers could project their scientific Fiona Stafford interests and, indeed, knowledge, in a socially Somerville College, Oxford acceptable, sexually suitable manner. George‘s book actively traces this form through the poetry of Charlotte Smith as well as other more Samantha George, Botany, Sexuality & explicitly instructive texts by lesser-known Women’s Writing 1760-1830 – From writers such as Priscilla Wakefield, Maria Modest Shoot to Forward Plant. Jacson and Harriet Beaufort, in order to fully establish the role of botanical science in the Manchester University Press, 2007. collective education of women. Pp. 261. £55. ISBN 9780719076978 One of the great strengths of George‘s work lies in its academic function as both a recovery Samantha George introduces this compelling of historically obscured yet significant texts, and interdisciplinary study with a clearly defined as a gendered and well-informed interrogation of purpose; to explore the science of botany as a the cultural and discursive history of eighteenth- specific ‗discourse of female sexuality‘, and its century Britain. Her linguistic exploration of the subsequent bearing on the issues of nation, word ‗cultivation‘ and its connotations of both morality and gender underpinning the cultural botanical and educational growth, is a history of Enlightenment Britain. She begins by particularly successful example; George argues linking the groundbreaking eighteenth-century that eighteenth-century femininity is perpetually emergence of sexualised plant taxonomy portrayed as a form of either over-cultivation or (instigated by Carl Linnaeus) with the image of minimal cultivation, and situates this idea within

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the Enlightenment polemic of Jean-Jacques Christopher Smart in Jubilate Agno, William Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft. George‘s Blake in Jerusalem, Percy Shelley in The Witch research on key philosophical figures of the of Atlas, and John Keats in Lamia. The context period reveals fascinating dialogues between of the poets‘ responses, described in Gigante‘s Rousseau‘s Lettres, a seminal botanical text in introduction, is the pervasive cultural debate in France, and the work of British women writers philosophy and natural history about the idea of such as Wollstonecraft, alongside the poetry of ‗life‘ as it found expression in a Romantic Charlotte Smith and Anna Seward. George also aesthetic between 1760 and 1830, an aesthetic uses the botanical link between artificially which the author terms ‗epigenesist poetics.‘ cultivated flowers, such as tulips, and women‘s The author succinctly summarizes the luxurious fashion of the period as an illustration development of the idea of ‗epigenesis‘ from of the seemingly dangerous and degenerative Aristotle to Coleridge and the European form of over-cultivation and hyper-feminisation. Naturphilosophen that created a ‗Zeitgeist of George deserves much praise for her ability to living form‘ in the Romantic period which historicise and further contextualise women‘s provided the context for ‗wide-sweeping inquiry writings of the period; the literary relationship into the phenomenon of life‘ and the founding of she posits between Anna Seward and Erasmus an ‗aesthetics on an organic model.‘ In poetics Darwin (with reference to the botanical of the era, the focus became unity and form, a Lichfield Circle and Darwin‘s sexually explicit focus, according to Gigante, that became Loves of the Plants), provides an important and obscured in literary scholarship (though not in exemplary historical revision of female the history of science) when the paradigm of the contributions to science whilst also dealing with biologist‘s cell theory replaced the natural contemporary issues of gendered social historian‘s vitalism. Gigante‘s book is an effort boundaries. For George, it is the link between to make ‗sense of the life contained in the poetry science and literature that defines both the of the time, at the level not only of content but philosophy and the literary output of that which also of form… and offer a pragmatic we define as the Romantic era, and her book is methodology for reading certain seemingly consequently a work of literary criticism formless poems and central figures contained executed through the specific discursive lens of within them as living forms‘. eighteenth-century scientific context. Her While much has been written on Blake‘s structural focus thus creates a rigorously poetic attacks on the New Science and the researched and innovative text, whilst inviting intellectual rigidity of Enlightenment methods further academic study on the literary nature of and laws, Gigante cunningly enlists Christopher these newly rejuvenated female-authored texts. Smart in the battle as antecedent and inspiration. Amy H. Pugh Here, the concept of ‗epigenesist poetics‘ serves Lancaster University admirably to explicate the various intentionally unconventional and fluid rhetorical forms encountered by the reader of Jubilate Agno. Denise Gigante, Life: Organic Form These include the extraordinarily long yet lively and Romanticism. New Haven and lines (‗versicles‘) of ‗self-conscious meditations on generation, poiesis, and autopoiesis‘ intended London: Yale University Press, 2009. to rival Newton‘s scientific principles and the Pp. 302. £27.50. ISBN 9780300136852 statements based on the English alphabet whose relationships to one another are organic rather Evoking the famous unanswered question at the than sequential or logical in meaning as they end of Shelley‘s unfinished The Triumph of Life, would be in scientific taxonomy. In addition, ‗Then, what is life…‘, Gigante seeks to there is an abundance of animals mentioned in explicate the answers provided by four Smart‘s vital poetic world whose names, Romantic poets in four major poems: understood as puns and Latin phonemes, provide

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occasion for rhetorical playfulness rather than sexless, a fluid conception of Life without systematic classification, and there are material substance. metaphoric transformations of Romantic Gigante finds meaningful parallel between the scientific obsessions—colors and rainbows, The Witch and Lamia as symbols of a self- pneumatics—from mechanical into living forms. propagating vitalism, and she argues that Keats Each of these narrative experiments is intended employs his knowledge of medical and to stand alone yet be conceived as analogous to biological theorizing in his time to imagine the others—rather than sequential or progressive Lamia as a ‗monstrous beauty‘ whose disturbing as in scientific argument—so as to create the appearance mocks the mechanically organized organic form that is Jubilate Agno as a whole. and dull rainbow of a materialist like Newton Blake, when he lived in Felpham, knew Jubilate and whose form is animated (like Dr. Agno from the manuscript in William Hayley‘s Frankenstein‘s creature) by an electrical ‗spark possession, and Gigante credits Smart with of life.‘ The fascinating background of early inspiring Blake‘s long rhetorical line to express nineteenth-century Romantic science is nicely the ‗Living Form‘ of Jerusalem in rivalry to the evoked in the explication of Lamia, and the dead and deadly rhetoric of vitalistic scientists. chapter provides a fitting conclusion to Blake‘s version of ‗epigenesist poetics‘ resulted Gigante‘s argument for a poetics of epigenesis in the human-vegetable forms represented in the in an age in which Enlightenment thought is frontispiece to Jerusalem, and Gigante breaking up into the rival cultures of art and explicates it, and other puzzling plates, as science. expressions of Blake‘s revelation of an organic George H. Gilpin vision of life in opposition to the intellectual University of Tulsa rigidity and imprisoning notions of the New Science. Gigante warns readers that in her argument Simon Bainbridge, Romanticism, A there is a ‗rift‘ from the ‗poetry of epigenesis‘ of Sourcebook. Basingstoke: Palgrave Smart and Blake to the ‗more symbolic one‘ of Shelley and Keats. By the time that The Witch of Macmillan, 2008. Pp. 317. £18.99. Atlas and Lamia were written, the vitalistic ISBN 9780230000353 debate had shifted its materialistic focus from the circulatory system and the blood to the In addition to extracts from key primary texts nervous system and the brain, electrical theory arranged by subject, the Palgrave Macmillan had emerged as an issue, and philosophical Sourcebook series contains illustrations, maps, a debate had become focused on an ineffable timeline, and a chronological list of major consciousness as the indwelling center of life literary texts. Simon Bainbridge‘s Romanticism and site of the ‗soul.‘ As a result, in The Witch succeeds in creating a valuable resource for of Atlas the idea of epigenesis is expressed students of the period, identifying a through a cluster of symbols rather than through comprehensive context for the study of both the allegorical forms of conventional narrative. canonical and non-canonical British texts of the In Gigante‘s interpretation, Shelley‘s figure of period. The Witch, at the core of this cluster, is vitalistic In his Introduction Bainbridge discusses the poesy at work trying to liberate humanity from way the term ‗Romanticism‘ has evolved, the limitations of materialistic scientific and beginning with what now seems to be a very restrictions of artistic systems; the boat, which is narrow definition from René Wellek writing in The Witch‘s vehicle, suggests a transcendental the 1960s. Despite contributions to the debate physiology of the soul. The Hermaphrodite, from Frye, Erdman, and others, Bainbridge which The Witch creates out of the classical justifiably argues for the persistence of Wellek‘s elements air, fire, and water, embodies an model, which he concludes was ‗based… on the ethereal Living Form that is figureless and work of only a few exceptional writers working

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in a single genre‘, poetry. Part of the explanation Napoleon is so helpful. Whately‘s contention for this relates to the aftermath of the Second that Napoleon‘s life has been written as fiction, World War on the perception of Anglo-German ‗everything upon that grand scale, so common in cultural relations in the nineteenth century, the epic, so rare in real life‘, introduces what is crucial period for the development of potentially a very modern suggestion of ironic Romanticism as a defining literary term. This suspicion of a textual record that purports to be takes the discussion beyond the range of historically factual. Bainbridge‘s Introduction, but in this respect, The central place of women as writers, readers, Wellek‘s essays on German, English, and and activists in the Romantic period has long American cultural exchange in the nineteenth been recognised. What still seems to be a point century, written during the war, then brought of debate, however, is how to deal with this together to be published as Confrontations in when it comes to teaching Romanticism. 1965, reveal the full extent of his tendency to Bainbridge‘s ‗Women‘ section contains five minimise European – specifically German – extracts by women: Macaulay, Wollstonecraft, influences on Anglo-American Romanticism. Hays, More, and Jane West. Two men are When later twentieth-century critics did begin included, James Fordyce and John Gregory, and to have an impact, Romanticism as a concept finally there is an extract from Appeal of One began to be significantly problematised. The Half of the Human Race co-authored by William major issues are clearly outlined here, reflecting Thompson and Anna Wheeler. Across the other in particular the debates around genre and nine sections, just seven passages by women are gender. Having introduced Anne Mellor‘s thesis included. Regardless of how you view this, ‗that it is possible to distinguish between Bainbridge does appear to privilege the male ―masculine‖ and ―feminine‖ Romanticism‘, (to voice, although his Introduction to the ‗Women‘ the distinct advantage of women), Bainbridge section (as well as his general Introduction to the goes on to argue that fundamental to all these book as a whole) makes the case for extending twentieth- and twenty-first-century critical the student‘s opportunity to read what women developments is ‗a commitment to the location were writing in a wide range of genres. What of texts within broader contexts.‘ This informs this collection of material will not do is lessen his brief, perceptive, and provocative account of the need for volumes dedicated specifically to the relationship between ‗new‘ and ‗old‘ the female writer. historicism, an issue that inevitably informs the One particularly helpful aspect of this book concept of a Sourcebook such as this. was Bainbridge‘s decision to include the Bainbridge explains that the extracts here are occasional extract from a writer not normally from material ‗widely available during the considered an expert in the nominated topic. period itself‘, but likely to be unfamiliar to Leigh Hunt appears in ‗Religion and Belief‘, twenty-first-century students. This aspiration is while Volney (frequently now considered a probably least evident (and understandably so) ‗historian‘ because of Mary Shelley‘s use of him in the first section on ‗Historical Events‘. The in Frankenstein) is properly located and French Declaration of Rights, Richard Price‘s A explained as a philosopher. The extract from Discourse on the Love of our Country, and David Samwell‘s Narrative of the death of Helen Maria Williams‘ Letters From France are Captain Cook is similarly an unexpected but all required reading, as are Burke, extremely helpful inclusion in ‗Empire, Slavery Wollstonecraft, and Paine. Hannah More‘s and Exploration‘. The student of Romanticism Village Politics, however, will be less familiar; who might have known what to expect from J. S. this helps to identify complexities which Mill in relation to his discovery of the Romantic surround the conservative position, easily poets (Wordsworth in particular), is presented missed if we rely on the familiar arguments (and with a less familiar, but no less important and rhetoric) of Burke. This is also why the decision challenging revelation of how he justified to include Richard Whately‘s assessment of

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British Imperialism in India through an extract concludes with a somewhat cursory exploration from his History of British India. of the use of the genre in marginalised This book offers students a comprehensive, discourses, such as gay/lesbian and post-colonial clear guide to a wide ranging context for the rewritings of the past. The result is a book that study of British Romanticism; it also indicates provides a useful snapshot of the historical novel, the significance of European, as well as British but largely fails, despite a number of insights, to sources, for establishing that context. locate a fulcrum for a fully developed argument John Williams on the genre‘s longevity, its unequal fortunes University of Greenwich and current success. There is a danger inherent in general introductions to generic forms, especially those Jerome de Groot, The Historical Novel. as ductile as the historical novel, that a desire for New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge, comprehensiveness and the widest reach is only 2009. Pp. 208. £12.99. achieved at the expense of argumentative and intellectual coherence. The Historical Novel ISBN 9780415426626 does not wholly eschew the danger. The book shows commendable breadth in the choice of The shortlist for the 2009 Booker Prize last subject for the chapters. For instance, the October was comprised exclusively of historical discussion of popular historical romances in novels. The best known, most generous and Chapter 3 is especially illuminating, because it widely publicised among literary prizes, the deliberately dwells on the range of ideological Booker‘s selections at once reflect and influence positions they embody and accompanies it with contemporary literary taste and, importantly, an overview of the success of this market. sales. The dominance of historical fiction among Similarly, Chapter 5 probes the relationship the prize‘s final six titles is only the latest between postmodernism and historical narratives evidence of the present consolidation of a with both gusto and theoretical clarity. It is all protean genre, variously popular and dissected the more disappointing, therefore, that the in academic fora, formulaic and experimental, question of whether there is any relationship mindlessly escapist and politically engaged. between the two manifestations of historical Jerome de Groot‘s timely introduction to the fiction (beyond the use of the label itself) is not historical novel seeks to examine the range of raised in the book, let alone answered. As a expressions of the genre, aiming at both result, de Groot offers a collection of interesting, diachronic sweep and synchronic specificity. In well-researched, but ultimately independent this, perhaps self-consciously, the author essays on the numerous facets of the historical replicates the very characteristics of his subject. novel, which do not quite add up to a coherent Beginning with a survey of the historical novel overview of the genre. So, the informative which emphasises the diversity of its examples exposition of the market for historical romance, (even if with a tendency to argue by lists), the while interesting in itself, does not immediately book proceeds to discuss the popular historical reverberate to other areas of the book – for romance in relation to patriarchal and feminist instance to an examination of the reasons for the ideologies, before examining the opposite pole; prevalence of a Victorian setting in ‗serious‘ nineteenth-century European historical contemporary historical fiction. novels that were expressions of a particular Regrettably, what is missing is a clear and philosophy of history. De Groot then moves on consistent definition of what constitutes a to the revival of the genre at the turn of the historical novel beyond the lowest common twenty-first century, a phenomenon he denominator of detailing action taking place in persuasively attributes to the supra-national the past. It seems to this reviewer that there are impact of postmodern attitudes towards both cognitive and narrative differences between knowledge, representation and narrative, and novels set one hundred years ago and those

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whose plot unfolds in the 1980s (one of the Fiona Stafford, Brief Lives: Jane examples the author gives is Alan Hollinghurst‘s Austen. London: Hesperus Press, 2008. Thatcher-era The Line of Beauty); differences Pp. 115. £6.99. ISBN 9781843919063 pertaining to the novelist‘s experience of the past, that past‘s accessibility and availability to memory as opposed to the reliance on Janet Todd, Cambridge Introduction to documentary evidence for its reconstruction, the Jane Austen. Cambridge University perception of estrangement from, and otherness Press, 2006. Pp.152. £11.99. of, the past to readers. It is no coincidence that ISBN 9780521858062 the subtitle to Walter Scott‘s Waverley, arguably the first example of the genre, is ‗‗tis sixty years In these two excellent short introductions to Jane since‘. This points to a moment in time beyond Austen‘s life and works, Fiona Stafford and the lived experience and memory of the author, Janet Todd both seek to provide a solution to the which requires him to engage with the past puzzle of Jane Austen‘s enduring popularity through the mediation of textual and material with critical and popular readerships. Stafford evidence. Indeed, in the ‗Introductory‘ chapter suggests that Austen‘s appeal lies in ‗the to the novel Scott situates his work between the enticing balance between intimacy and distance‘ poles of ‗a romance of chivalry‘ and ‗a tale of that her style enacts, simultaneously providing modern manners‘, before proceeding to outline the reader with intimate access to the minds of the features of his pioneering work, namely, a her characters and tactfully preserving their limiting of the historical scope of the privacy. Stafford characterises Austen‘s representation, a qualified retrospection on narration as ‗at once intimate and elusive, events, an awareness of the historical process inviting and in retreat‘, and Todd agrees, and the use of the imagination at the service of suggesting that Austen‘s achievement is to truth. These have formed the centrepieces of represent the impossibility of ‗absolute subsequent attempts to define the historical knowability‘, thus mirroring the failures of real novel. life experience in her fictional world. In Todd‘s In what is an otherwise intelligent discussion account, Austen ‗forces us to become actively of the historical novel, it is a pity – and a involved‘ with the characters and the fictional limitation of de Groot‘s intervention in this field worlds she creates, and leaves us after every re- – that the book barely engages with what reading of the novel with her characters and legitimately constitutes its subject. their lives as ‗part of our own mental Mariadele Boccardi landscapes‘. In 1925, Virginia Woolf made a University of the West of England similar observation, suggesting that the sparseness of Austen‘s style ‗stimulates us to supply what is not there‘. The ‗trifle‘ Austen provides, she explains, ‗expands in the mind‘ of the reader, and Austen‘s novels thus enlist the reader‘s imagination in the process not only of seeing, but also of creating their fictional worlds. Stafford‘s brief biography is beautifully written, subtly weaving together accurate information about the events of Austen‘s life with an elegant analysis of the works. Stafford‘s approach is never heavy handed, and she neatly avoids the major pitfalls of biographical criticism. She is refreshingly candid about what we still do not know about Austen‘s life, making

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the connection between the scarcity of available write a history of the House of Saxe-Coburg: ‗I information and our curiosity regarding must keep to my own style & go on in my own Austen‘s life: ‗As so often, the known facts are Way; And though I may never succeed again in interesting enough to generate lively imaginative that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in interpretations, but insufficient to establish any any other‘. Her ‗own style‘ included burlesque, full, authoritative account of crucial moments in mimicry and parody of her predecessors and her life‘. This is nicely related to her recurring peers, and Todd suggests that by writing in her argument that the spareness of Austen‘s style ‗own way‘, Austen ‗almost single-handedly gives licence to the imagination. made most of her contemporaries seem The book is arranged chronologically, excessive, artificial, or absurd‘. following the traditional biographical trajectory In Todd‘s readings of her novels, Austen is from birth to death, but the chapters are also revealed as a writer about passion, structured around Austen‘s writing, covering the fascinated with its ‗literary construction and juvenile works, the six novels, the letters and the narcissistic power – and at times its absurdity‘. unfinished later manuscripts, and ending with It is in the discussions of Sense and Sensibility the final poem on Winchester races. Brief Lives: and Persuasion that the focus on passion is most Jane Austen is particularly good, albeit brief, on clearly demonstrated, although Todd‘s analysis the role of the early Steventon theatricals and of Darcy‘s suppressed passion is impressive, and their place in showing Jane Austen what ‗art unexpectedly moving. Despite the focus on could mean‘. Stafford also deals well with the passion, however, Todd is at pains to stress the early manuscript writings and their part in difference between Austen‘s characters and the Austen‘s artistic development. She covers solipsistic heroes of Romantic poetry. She historical context briefly, and a light touch shows that Austen‘s vision differs both from the places Austen‘s mature work in fruitful ‗egotistical solitude‘ of the first generation of juxtaposition with her Romantic contemporaries Romantic writers and the ‗visionary narcissism‘ – Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley of the second generation, all of whom sought to and Byron – but the major focus of the remake society while standing outside it. In biography is rightly kept on Austen‘s life and contrast, neither Austen nor her characters the works themselves. ‗accept the nineteenth century‘s estrangement of Similarly, Janet Todd provides a helpful the writer from the material world of labour and introduction to Austen‘s life and times, and the things‘. Her heroines, Todd stresses, are literary context in which she wrote, but ‗embedded in time, place and fashion‘, and dedicates the majority of her book to analysis of Austen herself in her society and time. the six novels, with some commentary on the Neither of these books presents new manuscript writings. Todd sees Austen‘s novels information either about Austen‘s life or about primarily as ‗investigations of selfhood, her works. They do not set out to do so. Instead, particularly female, the oscillating relationship both works neatly and economically introduce of feeling and reason, the interaction of present their readers to Austen and her writing in a clear and memory, and the constant negotiation and helpful way, synthesizing the major trends between desire and society‘, and she relates in Austen criticism over the last two hundred these various concerns to Austen‘s literary, years, and providing stylish and intelligent philosophical and religious affiliations. Todd readings of the novels. Both Todd and Stafford examines Austen‘s intellectual debts to a are excellent and sensitive readers of Austen, number of writers – the discussion of Hume is and they are especially alive to the shifts of particularly worthy of note – but eventually narrative tone that destabilise and problematise presents her as a writer who learned much from Austen‘s novels. Todd in particular comments her reading but was never overwhelmed by it. on the fluidity of Austen‘s narrative voice, Austen wrote to James Stanier Clarke, the Prince suggesting that ‗there is no single secure moral Regent‘s librarian, when refusing his advice to

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or socio-political vision that cannot be forms were natural and inevitable results of ‗the investigated, a little ironised, or a little mocked‘. larger workings of the literary economy‘ of the Each generation of critics, as both Fiona times. As scholars have during the past decade Stafford and Janet Todd point out, reinvents or so reconsidered what it meant to be a ‗reader‘ Jane Austen for its own time, finding in her during this era, scholarship has begun to reassess books reflections of its own cultural both the demographics of Romantic reading preoccupations. Her earliest critics saw her as a audiences and the nature of the reading activity moralist. The Victorians enlisted her as a itself. Romanticism and the Uses of Genre offers representative of the feminine domestic ideal, illuminating new insights that will necessarily and F. R. Leavis as the mother of the ‗great affect how we think about all these matters in tradition‘ of male writers in the early twentieth the future. century. The New Critics admired her style, and The expansion of literacy (and reading) at the feminist criticism of the 1970s reclaimed her as end of the eighteenth century meant that there part of an important and ignored female tradition. were proportionally fewer erudite and The Austen of the early twenty-first century essentially gentrified readers of wide interests emerges from these two introductions as a writer and broad capacities. While those readers did of considerable subtlety and sophistication, an not disappear, there arose more and more ‗niche‘ innovator, a humorist, but above all a serious readerships whose members sought out more literary professional. These two affordable particularized reading matter – not just Gothic or volumes not only offer students approaching sentimental fiction but also works intended for Austen‘s works for the first time an accessible children or ‗new‘ readers, for working-class introduction to her œuvre, but also provide a readers, or for consumers of evangelical writing. model of lucid and stimulating criticism. These new readers constituted potentially Katie Halsey lucrative markets, especially as broader reading University of Stirling patterns were fuelled by circulating libraries, daily and periodical literature, and other stimuli. Writers (and their publishers) exploited the David Duff, Romanticism and the Uses seemingly insatiable ‗popular-culture‘ appetite of Genre. Oxford University Press, by combining the comfort of familiarity with 2009. Pp. 256. £60. substantial doses of the novel, the exotic, or the titillating. The Gothic filled the bill, abundantly ISBN 9780199572748 so, but so did ‗older‘ forms like the ballad, reimagined as an indigenous form in the wake of David Duff‘s fine new book reconsiders the projects like Percy‘s Reliques of Ancient English significance of genre for canonical and non- Poetry (1765) in England or Charlotte Brooke‘s canonical Romantic-era authors alike. That Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789) in Ireland. period, Duff contends, witnessed a wholesale Likewise, authors of romances (in verse and in rethinking of genre as writers attempted prose) blew new life into a genre historically simultaneously to write in ‗new‘ ways and to associated with a relatively ‗general‘ audience. sustain ‗old‘ literary models and genres. The Not surprisingly, writers in the post- coexistence of these ‗contradictory tendencies,‘ Revolutionary Romantic climate found these as Duff calls them, yielded a distinctive new more ‗popular‘ generic forms particularly aesthetic that highlights the competing pressures suitable for loading with ideological content, to dissolve and to transcend traditional genres from radical to reactionary. In both transforming and their familiar paradigms, to consolidate and established generic models and evolving new reformulate those familiar models even as they ones from them, Duff convincingly exploited them. It is no coincidence, Duff argues, demonstrates, Romantic writers illustrated their that the Romantic era saw the flowering of era‘s distinctive fondness for linking the ‗generic literature‘ like the Gothic; rather, new progressive and the retrogressive, the dynamic

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and the static, in works whose innovative Books that offer a genuinely ‗fresh‘ look – a recombinations of tradition may startle (like startlingly new perspective – are rare: this is one Shelley‘s Prometheus Unbound) or puzzle (like such book, and reading it is richly rewarding. the countless Romantic ‗fragments‘) but always Stephen C. Behrendt and unfailingly engage their readers. University of Nebraska The individual chapters in Romanticism and the Uses of Genre proceed from an essentially historical, interdisciplinary perspective upon Frederick Burwick, Romantic Drama: British writing framed by an Anglo-German aesthetics in which the Schlegels (Friedrich Acting and Reacting. Cambridge especially) are conspicuous. Not surprisingly, University Press, 2009. Pp. 345. £50. Coleridge and Wordsworth figure prominently ISBN 9780521889674 too, both as subjects and as illustrations. Writing about Wordsworth in 1815 (in Chapter 2), for Frederick Burwick, fresh from the recent example, Duff observes that despite Coleridge‘s kerfuffle over the authorship of a Faustus inescapable presence for later criticism he was a translation, returns to the more genteel world of less visible presence in his own time than Romantic period drama with this offering. This Wordsworth, whose works, paradoxically, is ground he has covered before with his well embody so much of the Anglo-German received Illusion and the Drama: Critical aesthetics he imbibed freely from his erstwhile Theory of the Enlightenment and Romantic Era friend. Duff examines both the preface to (1991), a book which considered the function of Wordsworth‘s 1815 Poems and the complex aesthetic illusion in English and continental interrelations among the poems that the poet‘s drama. In this equally wide-ranging study, dense and theory-laden preface itself glosses for Burwick argues ‗that all aspects of theatre and the attentive (and patient) reader. Later (in performance were interrelated, and that each Chapter 5), Duff assesses the ‗combinatorial aspect involved a fundamental duality or method‘ represented in Shelley‘s notions about bifurcation‘. With that rather brief outline of his the ‗great poem‘ (illustrated by his mixed-genre argument Burwick continues in the introduction masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound), notions that to ‗describe changes taking place in performance, are indebted to the other Schlegel (A. W.) and in theatres and audiences, and in the kind of that Shelley would articulate more formally in plays that gained popularity‘. He then proceeds 1821 in A Defence of Poetry. In his great lyrical to familiar ground with succinct accounts given drama, Duff contends, Shelley demonstrates that of such contemporary phenomena as William variety of creative recombination of genres and Betty (the ‗infant Roscius‘), the one-man show forms that Schlegel associated with an ideal exemplified by practitioners such as John ‗progressive universal poetry‘ characterized by Bannister and Joseph Grimaldi, sniffy the inspired intersection of original genius with contemporary complaints about the degeneration the historical heritage of genre. of the drama, the increase in the size of the Duff‘s is one of those books whose reader patent theatres, and so on. These set the scene continually experiences moments of both for the rest of the book. revelation and assent; there is much nodding in Romantic Drama argues that Georgian theatre agreement, much marking in the margins. Duff‘s ‗is a drama of dichotomies and contrarieties, elegant, lucid prose and his careful persistently exposing its own strategies‘ in the documentation reinforce his compelling thesis course of its nine chapters. Chapter 1 introduces that during the Romantic era genres (and genre John Waldie, a contemporary theatre-goer and theories) were neither degraded nor critic, whose journals Burwick has partly edited compromised but were, to the contrary, revived, and which are available electronically through subverted and – most of all – recombined for the University of California‘s website. Waldie‘s strikingly new artistic and ideological purposes. reviews and opinions on plays and actors he saw

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in London, Newcastle, and elsewhere are way to facilitate the display of Burwick‘s threaded through the book. Chapter 2 considers undoubted prowess in the archive. The claim the ‗opposing tensions between Francophobia that ‗all aspects of theatre and performance were and Francophilia‘. In chapter 3 Burwick re-jigs interrelated‘ has been illustrated many times some of his earlier work by discussing before. This brings us to another flaw. illusionism and realism. The acting styles of the The problems with the underdeveloped period and how they evolve from Garrick to arguments of the book are exacerbated by the Kemble to Kean are the subject of chapter 4. Burwick‘s failure to engage with the rich critical Chapter 5 is concerned with transvestism and in field of Romantic drama. The work of David chapter 6 Burwick argues that the stage and Worrall on theatrical subcultures and censorship, settings of the Romantic period were for example, would surely have merited some ‗transgressive, always converting then to now, discussion but it is nowhere to be found. Nor are here to there, there to here‘. To those who might exemplary scholars of Romantic theatre such as query whether this is not true of any drama of Julia Carlson, Jane Moody, Gillian Russell, or any time, Burwick counters that in the Romantic Julia Swindells and the book is the poorer as a period ‗relocating time and place was sometimes result. Situating his work in relation to these a manoeuvre necessary to circumvent the critics would certainly have grounded his constraints of cautious censorship‘. The final argument a little better. What does come through three chapters are closely related being engaged strongly is Burwick‘s love of the theatre of the with the Gothic‘s potential for both comedy and period, unsurprising from someone who has horror, the evolving representation of women in directed revivals of plays by Thomas Morton, different versions of Blue-beard, and the stage Elizabeth Inchbald, and even the Marquis de vampire. Sade (who features significantly in this book). There is a tremendous amount of archival The primary materials are rich and manifold: it work on display here. Burwick‘s study is rich in is a real pity that the tremendous research gone anecdote and references to many playwrights into this book was not matched with a more from the period. The discussion of Blue-beard careful and considered argument to bring and stage vampires was particularly interesting, together all the wonderful anecdotes and the former being a play much referenced in the illuminating extensive readings that Burwick literature of drama scholars and here situated in provides. a broader historical framework to much effect. David O’Shaughnessy But there are a couple of problems with University of Warwick Romantic Drama. Firstly, it reads more like a collection of essays than a monograph. Each chapter – with the Jonathan Shears, The Romantic Legacy exception of the final three – seems detached of ‘Paradise Lost’. Aldershot: Ashgate, from the others and they have the most cursory of conclusions. Indeed, the book as a whole ends 2009. Pp. 221. £50. quite abruptly with no summation of what the ISBN 9780754662532 book has achieved by way of overarching argument. There is a lot of archive material and Coming sixteen years after the last book-length wide reading of the period‘s drama on display study on this topic, Lucy Newlyn‘s ‘Paradise but it is not coherently organized into a Lost’ and the Romantic Reader (1993), Shears‘s sustained argument: to say that the drama of the monograph is a timely re-evaluation of period is one of ‗dichotomies and contrarieties‘ Romantic responses to Milton. This engaging is a somewhat general statement that does not and stimulating discussion seeks to recover get developed in a more interesting critical way. Milton‘s original reading paradigm and show The argument that it was a ‗bifurcatory period‘ how Romanticism sought to alter it. Shears for theatre is a little undeveloped, yet a useful argues convincingly that for Milton, epic

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meaning coheres under one overriding argument In chapter two Shears shows how Edmund and that Milton uses the narrative of the Fall to Burke‘s Philosophical Enquiry into our Ideas of ‗foreground his belief in the desirability of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) begins to alter man‘s obedience to God through the exercise of Milton‘s paradigm. Burke separates the rational his (free) will‘. Milton declares this argument in from the imaginative stating: ‗So far as the the opening lines of his epic: ‗[to] justify the imagination and the passions are concerned… ways of God to men‘. For Milton, epic reason is little consulted‘. Anticipating interpretation is generated through narrative Romanticism, Burke creates an animus between progression and causality: ‗on the fulfilment reason and imagination. In his reading of offered by plot organised through the temporal Paradise Lost he focuses on the sublime successiveness of events‘. Thus Satan fell descriptions of Satan, foregrounding ‗natural because he coveted Christ‘s place at God‘s right and poetic forces and images that excite pain hand; Adam and Eve because they succumbed and awe‘. He is not concerned with the morality (through free will) to Satan‘s temptation. While of Satan – Milton‘s rational argument – but with Newlyn had argued that classical allusion in the ‗creative power‘ of the mind to ordering and Paradise Lost is a source of ambiguity which combining images received by the senses in the qualifies any moral message Milton intended, process of reading. Shears observes that such an interpretation Focusing on the Romantic aesthetic, chapters undermines Milton‘s paradigm. Allusion does three, four and five depict how Blake, not seek to subvert his argument but to ‗sharpen Wordsworth and Coleridge were (to varying expression‘. Thus his depiction of a heroic Satan degrees) less interested in narrative causality and evokes Homer and Virgil in order to undermine more in the visionary moment and the many classical notions of heroism. But while this interpretations of that epiphanic moment. In might mean the epic contains many styles and Blake‘s Milton, such an epiphany occurs in Plate genres, this ‗plurality of modes is always yoked 14 when Milton enters Blake‘s left foot. Blake to his declared argument‘. shifts emphasis from a Miltonic argument Shears contends, therefore, that Romantic toward the many interpretations of this visionary interpretations of Paradise Lost are a event by characters within the poem and by ‗misreading‘: an ‗assumption that there exists a readers of the text. Similarly, Wordsworth‘s reading congruent with the originating Prelude should be considered more a lyrical circumstances of the text‘. This misreading outpouring less concerned with Miltonic manifests itself through the Romantic argument and causality, instead cultivating a ‗fragmentary aesthetic‘. Fragment poems more organic narrative format: ‗whither shall I prompt readers to complete texts and generate turn,/ By road or pathway, or through trackless meaning: if a poem‘s meaning is not produced field‘. Interest, Shears notes, rests in the through narrative causality (beginning, middle, ‗imagination‘s responses to the natural world‘. end) but just stops, then readers are forced to Wordsworth‘s moments – ‗spots of time‘ – are develop other interpretative strategies. In this not accurate versions of events, but show how reading paradigm, Romantics emphasise the the mind/imagination represents them. Causality primacy of the imagination: readers create the is a secondary concern. Like Blake‘s Milton, missing parts of the text. It is this paradigm that events could be reordered yet still leave the Romantics impose on Paradise Lost: sections same impression on the reader. (fragments) are given ‗competitive precedence Subsequent chapters examine the responses of over large-scale meaning‘. Milton‘s argument, Shelley, Byron and Keats (respectively) to constructed through narrative causality, is Paradise Lost. Keats, for example, rejects replaced by particulars, and, more importantly, Milton‘s epic paradigm. ‗Negative capability‘ the reader‘s response which reorganises the text seeks to replace the rational causality of by privileging certain sections and producing Milton‘s verse whereby the reader is forced to meaning from these. make a moral choice between good and evil.

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Instead, Keats‘s ‗Mysteries‘ and ‗doubts‘ Coleridge‘s scattered remarks on symbol with become what Shears calls an ‗aesthetic the contentions of Reid‘s own grandfather, the opportunity‘ privileging and stimulating the philosopher Louis Arnaud Reid, to argue for a imagination. Shears ends with a challenging view of the mind as an active, creative chapter revealing how far Romanticism has participant in its perception of the world. influenced twentieth-century criticism of Coleridge vehemently opposed any idea of the Paradise Lost. Thus the contributions of critics mind as a ‗lazy Looker-on‘, entirely passive to Stanley Fish and William Empson are reactions sense-impressions, instead proposing that the to twentieth-century neo-Romantic misreadings senses are dependent on the mind, and Reid of Paradise Lost that neglect ‗Milton‘s epic highlights the similarities with his grandfather‘s intention‘. Whatever doubts one may have of claims for ‗the active nature of imaging, as Shears‘s thesis, his argument is compelling and opposed to the notion of an immediate and makes a significant contribution to the study of passive image‘. This emphasis on the dynamic Romanticism. activity of the mind lays the basis for the book‘s Cato Marks larger points. ‗Form‘ is distinguished from Open University ‗shape‘ and ‗likeness‘; it is ‗the outcome of a transformative process‘, the product of Nicholas Reid, Coleridge, Form and ‗imaging‘, and in this sense, form equals content. Symbol: Or The Ascertaining Vision. All meaning, because all idea, depends on form, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Pp. 189. £45. and the identity of form and idea is symbol. For Reid, and Reid‘s Coleridge, these processes are ISBN 0754653277 fundamental to human consciousness: all perception is transformative, and hence art is not Richard Berkeley, Coleridge and the a rarefied or pathological activity, but an Crisis of Reason. Basingstoke: Palgrave extension of ordinary perceptual activity. Reid Macmillan, 2007. Pp. 231. £45. impressively defends his position by drawing on ISBN 0230521649 modern neurophysiological theory, which he explains concisely and clearly, and consciously

presents his findings as an alternative to the These two interesting and valuable books focus twentieth century scepticism on the very primarily on Coleridge the philosopher, with existence of ‗mind‘ found in Frege, Ryle and the Reid exploring the implications of his thinking varieties of behaviourism. Reid ‗places the on imagination and symbol, and Berkeley the imagination… squarely back at the heart of role of the ‗pantheism controversy‘ (or aesthetics‘ – where it functions as the symbol- Pantheismusstreit) that both energised and making power, and ‗symbols‘ are at once forms enervated the post-Kantian philosophical of ‗Reason‘ and ‗concrete and sensuous entities‘. moment which so fascinated Coleridge. As ever In Part II of the book, Reid turns to with Coleridge, philosophy and theology Coleridge‘s poetry of the later 1790s – subsume each other, and in pursuing their quarry especially ‗The Ancient Mariner‘ and the both authors are led into the heady realms of his ‗conversation‘ poems – as the works in which he later speculative metaphysics – and with the developed the techniques he would later maze of relevant Coleridge manuscripts only translate into literary and philosophical theory. published a few years back, with the last Reid suggests how in thinking with nature, that volumes of the notebooks and the Bollingen is, through imaging the world we inhabit, the Opus Maximum, this will have the feeling of poems come to treat the forms of nature as fresh territory for many readers. symbols. In the case of ‗The Ancient Mariner‘, Reid‘s book comprises three parts. The first Reid usefully relates this to the process of puts forward a theory of art in the form of a thinking with myth. Reid is alive to the way theory of mind, which fruitfully entwines Coleridge rejects ‗the reification of the symbol,

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or its allegorisation as a counter of meaning‘, so presents Part III of the book as ‗perhaps the first it is a little disappointing to find what look like systematic account‘ of that system. Reid is fully instances of just such reification in his aware that he has to fill in gaps to achieve such discussion of the ‗Mariner‘. The bride at the an account, and frequently qualifies his wedding-feast, for example, becomes ‗a comments with the word ‗presumably‘. At these symbol… of the true community of the Church key moments, Reid presumes Coleridge‘s in its relation to Christ‘, as juxtaposed to Life- theological orthodoxy, where the texts in-Death, who symbolises the sin of ‗despair‘. If themselves are often more open-ended. The idea and form are identical in the symbol, one question arises how theistic Coleridge‘s might ask, surely there can be no symbol of metaphysics truly are, when they can so readily anything, because the symbol is in some sense form the basis of a non-theistic aesthetic. Reid the thing itself – symbols being ‗consubstantial refers to the Trinity as ‗the bedrock of with the truths, of which they are the Coleridge‘s thinking‘ and ‗the origin of conductors‘ (as Coleridge has it). Coleridge‘s view of form‘ – but this surely puts If this is a slip from symbol into allegory, the cart before the horse, besides drifting into however, of the kind de Man might have anachronism. Nevertheless, the book is pounced on, it is soon forgotten as Reid turns his refreshingly open in its purposes and direct in its sights on aspects of Coleridge‘s later claims, and at its best when advancing the metaphysics, in the final part of the book. importance of dynamic form and the activity of Beginning with a dense chapter that credits the imagination for the very structure of Coleridge with moving beyond the impasse Coleridge‘s thinking. Schelling left him with, Reid makes a brave The question of how active the mind really is attempt at explaining the hotch-potch in the in its participation in reality is as fundamental to ‗philosophical chapters‘ of Biographia Literaria Berkeley‘s Coleridge and the Crisis of Reason and beyond – even ingeniously extrapolating its as it is to Reid‘s book, but Berkeley comes at the missing transcendental deduction from materials issue from a different angle. Rather than setting contained in the Logic. out to establish a successful philosophical Although the book‘s three parts (and even system in Coleridge‘s name, Berkeley individual chapters – for example, the one on concentrates on the contours of the problem Akenside) can feel rather independent of each itself, as played out in the Pantheismusstreit. other at times, Reid‘s over-arching purpose is Indeed, the very notion of ‗system‘ is kept in its felt in each, which is to present Coleridge‘s place: ‗System is not an achievement. System treatment of ‗form‘ as the common ground itself is a philosophical claim‘. Berkeley is not between his aesthetics (based on symbol), and so much concerned with affirming or denying his Trinitarian idea of God, including the Coleridgean solutions to the pantheism relation between God, humankind and the rest of controversy, as with the fact that ‗pantheism‘ the universe: ‗Just as ―images‖ are the was perceived as a threat at all – a threat, he constructions by which we know the world, so maintains, that dominated Coleridge‘s the Son is the constructed image through which intellectual life. the Father knows Himself‘. The shape (or form) The problem derives from the age-old of this ambition, which gives the book its feel, is dilemma of the One and the Many. If the Many therefore coloured by two heterogeneous are One, how far can they have a distinctive impulses. While Reid begins his book by existence at all – and how can autonomy, insisting that Coleridge‘s ‗aesthetic views can be freedom and rationality be anything other than defended in a non-theistic context‘, the work is delusions? And if the Many are not somehow driven throughout by an openly conservative One, how can unity itself be possible? In the determination to remain true, as Reid sees it, to post-Kantian context, Spinoza is the central Coleridge‘s philosophical theism. Reid is figure here, as the internal conflicts of his convinced that Coleridge had a ‗system‘, and philosophical monism raised all the big

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questions – over the nature of God, infinity, free systematising tendency of Enlightenment will and evil, for example – in ways susceptible rationalism – which he traced back to Spinoza – both to mystical, religious, atheist and is pivotal here, because for Jacobi ‗the use of determinist readings, making his work a connected philosophical reasoning leads to remarkably apt point of contestation for atheism and determinism‘. European thinking in the late eighteenth and Coleridge‘s ‗plagiarism‘ is something of an early nineteenth century. Berkeley‘s exposition assumed value throughout Berkeley‘s book, of Spinoza and his place in that intellectual though mainly because he uses the patterns of context is excellent, not least because he keeps Coleridge‘s textual incorporations to ‗trace out the battle-lines of the debate to the fore of his the underlying anxieties, and the unsettled narrative. He deftly describes the unfolding of interpretive cruces that are sculpting Coleridge‘s an intellectual drama, bringing in logical conceptions of reason, being and God‘. In the progression each of the characters of this grand context of the present review it is worth noting philosophical dialogue – from Coleridge, that Berkeley takes issue with Reid‘s Spinoza, Lessing, Jacobi, Mendelssohn, Kant, reconstruction of Coleridge‘s transcendental Maass, Fichte, Oken and Schelling, and back to deduction; instead of a successful (but deferred) Coleridge. Berkeley is good on the dynamics of resolution, Berkeley sees ‗the theatrics of the Coleridge‘s initial attraction to Spinoza, through interrupting letter‘ in chapter 13 of the his apprehension of the ‗One Life‘ as an Biographia as a direct result of the ‗anxiety of ‗omnipresent creativeness‘, and subsequent pantheism‘ – the notion that ‗his own thought doubts as he worked through the determinist and beliefs might contain some kind of hidden implications raised by his post-Kantian pantheistic tendencies‘. That said, he does argue, contemporaries: ‗in Spinoza Coleridge sees the like Reid, that in his later conception of the ―one life‖ and the ―inanimate cold world‖ Trinity, Coleridge succeeds in avoiding superimposed on one another, and he never ‗Schellingianism, Spinozism or any form of escapes the torment of it‘. pantheism‘. Berkeley is striking in naming a single target Berkeley has an admirably clear style, which within Coleridge criticism that he wishes to packs a certain pugilistic bravado; his purpose, bring down, and he harries it relentlessly he declares, is ‗to remedy the central weakness throughout: Thomas McFarland‘s influential in Coleridge studies‘. In his single-minded Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition. pursuit of the pantheism controversy, however, Berkeley‘s point is that for all the work‘s vast Berkeley at times risks repeating McFarland‘s learning – and continuing value as a source of tendency to group nuanced positions under one reference – the ‗I am‘/‘It is‘ divide into which term (‗pantheism‘). Berkeley is at least aware of McFarland forces Western intellectual history is the problem – something as much an issue in too crude to be of lasting value, chiefly because Coleridge‘s day as it is for readers of this book – it elides the nuances that characterise philosophy but perhaps some desynonymising is required. itself. The justice of the critique becomes clear Coleridge‘s poetry is swept up in this difficulty, when remembering that McFarland corrals the as for Berkeley the poems of the 1790s express likes of Plotinus, Swedenborg, Spinoza, Hartley, the specific problems of pantheism he has in Priestley, Boehme, Blake, Bruno, Hermeticism mind. This raises questions about whether and Cabbala into his ‗pantheist‘ ‗it is‘ category, poems are justifiably read this way, and indeed which he opposes to a broadly Christian how to approach Coleridge‘s writings as a whole. ‗resolution‘ in what he calls ‗Platonico-Christo- For Berkeley – as he was for McFarland – Kantism‘. Instead of presenting the Coleridge is above all a philosopher. I wonder Pantheismusstreit as a contest between these what he would make of Hazlitt‘s point, that it two ontological approaches, Berkeley argues was poetry that saved Coleridge from pantheism. that the controversy revolved upon the efficacy Gregory Leadbetter of ‗reason‘ itself. Jacobi‘s antipathy to the Birmingham City University

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Paul H. Fry, Wordsworth and the ‗Wordsworth studies‘ itself. Fry does not want Poetry of What We Are. New Haven: his reader to see Wordsworth within a Yale University Press, 2008. Pp. 256. preconceived field of interpretation. Therefore chapter by chapter we see Fry skirting past £35. ISBN 9780300126488 commonly granted presuppositions in order to regain an unbiased understanding of what is In this study Paul Fry argues that unity is the original in Wordsworth. In chapters 2 and 3 Fry central subject of Wordsworth‘s poetry. The examines the foundations of Wordsworth‘s unity or equality that Wordsworth perceives is reception. A lengthy though convincing neither political nor social, rather it is argument shows how and why Wordsworth‘s ontological. For Fry Wordsworth‘s originality is ontological permissiveness was at odds with rooted in the poet‘s commitment to a belief that Coleridge (chapter 2) and misunderstood by all modes of being are united by the very fact Jeffrey and Byron (chapter 3). Then in chapter 4 that they share the property of existence. The — after providing a useful summary of the past nonhuman is Fry‘s term for that ontological forty years of Wordsworth criticism — Fry quite ‗thing‘ which all modes of being have in refreshingly reasserts that Wordsworth is common. This notion of ontic unity therefore essentially a nature poet after all. Even means that the poet perceives the natural Wordsworth‘s own bias towards his own work is landscape, animals, the spiritual, the religious, subtly examined in chapter 5 where Fry marginalised humans and corpses in a radical compares the earliest landscape poems, such as way. An Evening Walk, with later ones. The Poetry of What we Are is moderately Chapter 6 is where Fry really begins to unpack philosophical: in particular Fry is influenced by the symbiosis Wordsworth perceives between the phenomenology of Hegel and Heidegger. the human and the nonhuman. This chapter Fry claims however that his own methodology is stands out because in it we see Fry in a formalist deliberately under-theorized. His premise is that mode. In a close examination of a number of studies of Wordsworth since the 1970s, which poems, including ‗The Idiot Boy‘ and Benjamin articulate a calculated theoretical position, leave the Waggoner, Fry develops an original and little room for intricate, sensitive thinking about insightful argument about metric time. He does the poetry itself. In this study Fry is therefore this via a remarkable discussion of the poet‘s responding to a field full of critics who have recurrent figuring of feet as hoofs and the (mis)used Wordsworth‘s poetry as a means of connection between the qualities of some signalling their theoretical allegiances. Having marginalised humans and horses. said this, Fry could have given more time in the By naming chapter 7 ‗The Poem to Coleridge‘ first half of the volume to a close analysis of the Fry once again shows his preference for all primary texts themselves. The reader has to wait things original. Although this chapter discusses until chapter 5 for the first significant sight of various parts of The Prelude quite sporadically close reading. Throughout the volume however and shows Fry in his most philosophically- Fry‘s respect and reverence for Wordsworth‘s informed mode — he breezes through Locke‘s texts is evident. We see this for instance in his ideational theory, Kant‘s theory of imagination zealous reproof of those who take Wordsworth‘s and Hartley‘s associationism in a single page — supposed egotism for granted. it is an engaging discussion of Wordsworth‘s This volume is a valuable addition to struggle with the transcendent. Chapter 8 which Wordsworth studies for a peculiar reason. It focuses on the religious pronunciations of The stands out because it implicitly questions the Excursion seems dry in comparison. In chapter 9 value of the field to which it belongs. Fry‘s Fry successfully concludes that the spiritual and underlying message is that the most fruitful way animal impulses of human consciousness reunite to understand the poet is to try to detach oneself that consciousness with the natural world. At the from the network of debates that constitute end of this volume we see one of Fry‘s strengths

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in the sheer volume of Romantic poetry and Wordsworth‘s reaction, in 1800, to the pressure philosophical works he is able to bring to mind of ‗a multitude of causes unknown to former and reconcile with his thesis. times‘ is driven by his deliberate response to – This volume would sit well alongside works rather than evasion of – historical circumstances. such as Simon Jarvis‘s Wordsworth’s Unlike much recent new historical criticism of Philosophic Song, but in his notion of ontic Wordsworth, Simpson recognises Wordsworth‘s harmony Fry also has something to say to almost obsessive concern with the ethical ecocritics. This volume opens up new questions dilemmas of his time. He foregrounds the about the value of getting away from the manner in which the characters and situations network of debates that constitute Wordsworth‘s represented in his poetry portray ‗a crisis of reception history, and back to the root of the ethical subjectivity itself, one not open to good poetry itself. After all, Fry convinces us, the key faith solutions but articulating a profound to understanding Wordsworth lies in the notion alienation that could be stated and explored but of ‗being‘, which is the most primary property not surpassed‘. Simpson‘s sensitive appreciation we know. of Wordsworth‘s actual historical ethos Jessica Fay recognises ‗the deep bite of Wordsworth‘s self– University of Liverpool critique‘ (something that might be seen to give his poetry its cutting edge). But rather than looking back into the past to David Simpson, Wordsworth, locate the influences that constructed Commodification and Social Concern: Wordsworth‘s classical republican and rhetorical The Poetics of Modernity. Cambridge frame of mind, Simpson‘s concern is to look forward and discover, in Wordsworth‘s work, a University Press, 2009. Pp. 292. £50. poetics of modernity. Wordsworth‘s troubled ISBN 9780521898775 poetic mind is evidence of a deep sensitivity to human affairs that is also the basis of a prophetic David Simpson‘s Introduction to his latest insight. In The Prelude Wordsworth related how representation of Wordsworth begins by he had pursued the vocation of a vates poet in foregrounding Wordsworth‘s ‗almost obsessive his youth, and how he later discovered it to be a representation of spectral forms and images of false calling – a false consciousness – because death in life‘. In his poetry these are seen to not based on a true understanding of Nature. The ‗embody a metaphysical intuition about the idealised ‗Prophets of Nature‘ represented at the death–directedness of all life‘ – something that end of The Prelude, who will be capable of makes Wordsworth a precursor of Freud, ‗teaching‘ humanity are only able to do so if Heidegger or Sartre. The uncanny and ‗difficult‘ they are in harmony with Nature. But the sense Wordsworth, whose view of the world is often of Nature that Wordsworth aspired to reconnect complicated by anxieties of self–projection and with was a ‗sense sublime‘ belonging to a self–doubt is, initially, Simpson‘s focus in this bygone era. And in his troubled heart study. And the particular influence of both Wordsworth knew that, despite the impressive David Ferry‘s and Geoffrey Hartman‘s readings rhetoric of his ‗Address to Coleridge‘, he of Wordsworth are acknowledged. But rather entertained something of a ‗vain hope‘ in than reading Wordsworth‘s anxieties as the attempting to persuade either Coleridge, or his subjective expression of an ‗exemplary‘ later audience. romantic who, according to Jerome McGann‘s Simpson honours Wordsworth‘s attainment of influential characterisation, ‗lost the world self–consciousness, finding him to be a prophet- merely to gain his own immortal soul‘, poet who was capable of recognising and Simpson‘s latest figuration of Wordsworth‘s articulating that the signs of the times were not reality finds his poetics ‗reflecting a general leading to some great millennial resolution of condition of radically disoriented subjectivity‘. human conflict – as the youthful Wordsworth

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had hoped – but signalled the birth of ‗a culture commodity form, itself the ghostly heart of all governed by industrial time, machine driven sorts of communications and exchanges in the labour and commodity form: the culture whose modern world‘. But Simpson‘s argument seems profile would eventually be theorised much later at times to be invoking the spirit of commodity by Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle’. form to explain far too many of the finer points In his new reading of Wordsworth Simpson of Wordsworth‘s distinctive poetic voice. Rather revisits the ‗natural delineation of human than Wordsworth having the opportunity to talk passions, human characters, and human to Marx, it is as if Marx is given the role of incidents‘ portrayed in poems that had caught speaking for Wordsworth. But by Chapter 5, as his imagination in his two earlier studies of Simpson began to pull the threads of his Wordsworth. In revisiting these poems from a argument together I found myself able to ‗break perspective on modernity defined after the through‘ into a greater appreciation and events of 1989 and September 2001, Simpson admiration for what this work was attempting to applies a postmodern Marxian approach, one achieve. In the final chapters I was more at revivified and reconfigured by his reading of home with Simpson‘s ‗late modern‘ Derrida‘s Spectres of Marx. He argues that representation of Wordsworth as I came to better ‗Wordsworth‘s narrative persona, in its very understand the canniness of his argument about efforts at ontological security, stages an Wordsworth‘s uncanniness. indeterminate social identity that registers the John Cole presence of something sinister and invisible Auckland University of Technology governing everyday life, something whose considerable powers cannot be readily apprehended or controlled: the dynamics of Norman and June Buckley, Walking commodity form‘. with Wordsworth in the Lake District. There is not space here to analyse Simpson‘s justification for linking Wordsworth‘s London: Frances Lincoln, 2010. fascination for the spectral to the ghostliness of Pp. 157. £8.99. ISBN 9780711229310 commodity form. In his Introduction he explains that his argument about commodity form is There has been considerable critical interest in highly complex and that he will take up the task Romantic (and Wordsworthian) walking in the a bit at a time, ‗Only at the end will the reader last fifteen years or so, initiated by Jeffrey gain a sense of the larger pattern‘. This Robinson‘s wonderfully reflective The Walk: hermeneutical approach, one employed by Notes on a Romantic Image (1989) and taken Wordsworth in his wanderings in The Prelude, forward in various ways in the more scholarly presupposes a reader who already has a good work of Wallace, Langan, Jarvis, Bennett and appreciation of Wordsworth‘s poetic art. It is not others. Attitudes towards actual rather than so much about Wordsworth, but situating intellectual pedestrianism, however, remain Wordsworth in a modern frame of reference – rather less clear for the academic community. In one in which he might be able to enter into The Literary Tourist: Readers and Places in dialogue with Marx. Romantic and Victorian Britain (2006) Nicola Simpson‘s argument is both provocative and Watson, notes that ‗the co-existence of academic challenging. Many times in the early chapters I textual studies with tourism is thoroughly felt myself ‗lost as in a cloud‘, due to the uneasy . . . Purists and professionals should find abstruseness of some of the Simpson‘s claims. the literary text in itself enough, it should not The poems he discusses, though few in number need supplementing or authenticating by are said to ‗stand for and point to others and reference to externals‘. At the same time, represent... an important structuring energy for however, the presence of this little volume in the much of Wordsworth‘s poetry. Much of which BARS Bulletin & Review would seem to lend comes from insights into the operations of credence to Watson‘s observation that the

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‗embarrassment palpable to literary scholars Graham Tulloch and Judy King, eds, over the practice of literary pilgrimage co-exists Walter Scott@ The Shorter Fiction. with a marked willingness to indulge in it as a Edinburgh University Press, 2009. private or even communal vice‘. This little book, conveniently pocket-sized, is Pp. 263. £55. ISBN 9780748605897 certainly designed for the unquestioning enthusiasms of the literary pilgrim rather than The Shorter Fiction of Walter Scott is the the sceptical snortings of the post-Authorial twenty-fourth volume of the Edinburgh Edition academic. The book is very clearly organised of the Waverley Novels (EEWN). It gathers and structured with each of its twenty walks together for the first time all the stories and providing a local watercolour map with a series sketches contributed by Scott to four periodicals of instructions relating to it and leading around it, between 1811 and 1831, including The as well as a second short section of relevant Edinburgh Annual Register (1811), The Sale- information about Wordsworth‘s life and poetry Room (1817), Blackwood’s Edinburgh relating to that walk. Whilst many of these are Magazine (1817-1818) and The Keepsake fairly predictable, (Greenhead Ghyll and (1828-1831). The publication history of these ‗Michael‘, Easedale Tarn and Dorothy‘s Journal stories covers the full span of Scott‘s career as a entries) the maps do cover quite a wide novelist, and these works occupy a unique geographical range and provide some useful position among the series, as they are Scott‘s information. So, for example, Walk 11 from contribution to the short story – a developing Wythburn to Keswick clarifies Coleridge‘s route literary form prompted by the emergence of the in relation to the pre-reservoir landscape as he periodical. Scott wrote short stories throughout regularly strode along the 13 miles between his career and many of his famous tales, such as himself and the Wordsworths, whilst other ‗The Fortunes of Martin Waldeck‘ in The walks encourage the walker to wander as far Antiquary (1816) and ‗Wandering Willie‘s Tale‘ afield as the Duddon valley, Loweswater and in Redgauntlet (1829), are embedded within the Pooley Bridge. Quite specific information is larger narrative of the novel and cannot be easily given in relation to each walk as to why the poet detached from the main text; however, the works and his sister were there. My only real quibble collected in The Shorter Fiction were originally with it is that I would have liked more of this published by Scott as ‗detached pieces‘ with detailed information section, and perhaps a lives of their own. specific text to read out at a certain site during Despite their importance in Scott studies, not the walk. Norman and June Buckley are clearly all of these stories have been easily available Lake District enthusiasts rather than literary since their first publication. Only three among experts – their previous volume in the series is the eight stories, ‗My Aunt Margaret‘s Mirror‘, Walking with Beatrix Potter – but there is no ‗The Tapestried Chamber‘ and ‗Death of the reason to disparage their efforts. This book Laird‘s Jock‘, were later included in Scott‘s first successfully provides an initial literary focus and collected edition of his fiction, the Magnum context for those exploring the delights of the Opus edition of 1829-33. Others have never region, and is small enough even for the literary been collected within a single volume. The critic to hide in his or her anorak pocket. Shorter Fiction, as with all the volumes of the Sally Bushell EEWN, contains all the full texts based on the Lancaster University first published version, followed by an ‗Essay on the Text‘ by the editors of the volume offering a detailed and comprehensive account of the genesis, composition, and editorial history of each work. It also includes an ‗Emendation List‘ made to the first editions, comprehensive historical accounts, explanatory notes and a

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glossary. These supplementary materials will be Scottish tales. The former recalls and illustrates indispensable to scholars and students alike. the long-standing conflict between the Scots and The stories in this volume are complementary English, as it is the subject of ‗The Two to Scott‘s other works, not only because of their Drovers‘ (1827). The latter tale, a relatively less distinctive form but also because they have a ambitious work in its theme, recounts the injury strong connection, in their themes and concerns, to a Highlander due to his close fight with a deer. with Scott‘s novels. These eight short fictions These eight works represent Scott‘s significant fall broadly into three categories: satirical contribution to the development of shorter sketches; ghost stories; and Scottish anecdotes. fiction as a generic form in a newly invented The first group of stories, including ‗The Inferno modern professional literary sphere, the of Altisidora‘ (1811), ‗Christopher Corduroy‘ periodical. However, their function within the (1817), and ‗Alarming Increase of Depravity realm of periodicals and the relationship Among Animals‘ (1818), are mocking pieces. between the shorter fiction and the periodicals The ‗Inferno‘ is a satirical allegory on the state still await proper study. Moreover, their of periodical criticism, which was monopolised diversity in themes and originality in style also by a small number of critics whose judgment of merit critical and scholarly attention. literary works was mainly based on their Kang-yen Chiu political allegiances. The work is best University of Glasgow understood alongside the reading of Scott‘s own essay, ‗On the Present State of Periodical Criticism‘, published in the same volume of The Johnny Rodger and Gerard Edinburgh Annual Register in 1811, as the latter Carruthers, eds, Fickle Man: Robert provides a general background of periodical Burns in the 21st Century. Dingwall: criticism – key to an understanding of the former work. ‗Christopher Corduroy‘ can be read Sandstone Press. Pp. 319. £23.99. together with ‗The Surgeon‘s Daughter‘ (1827) ISBN 9781905207275 having as its focus the criticism of ‗the vanity of th human wishes‘. However, there are also remarks In recognition of the poet‘s 250 birthday, 2009 concerning the Orient and the imperial was a bumper year in Burns studies, and a good enterprise in both of the tales. ‗Alarming year to assess the poet‘s image and reception. In Increase‘ is ostensibly about theft by animals, their introduction, the editors of this volume but it is in effect based on the famous case of the signal a collective intention to grapple with ‗Murdieston and Millar‘ of the early 1770s, controversial issues in Burns‘ legacy. Burns is a thereby censuring human avarice. great and accessible poet, and it is that very ‗Phantasmagoria‘ (1817), ‗My Aunt accessibility which has made him amenable to Margaret‘s Mirror‘ (1829) and ‗The Tapestried many and various appropriations. Chamber‘ (1829) are ghost stories, but they, to a The book consists of three smartly designated large extent, focus on the definition of love and sections: ‗The Image of Burns‘, ‗Burns and the the betrayal of it. ‗Phantasmagoria‘, with the Enlightenment‘, and ‗Burns Abroad‘. The first history of the Black Watch as its background, essay is Tim Burke‘s discussion of Burns‘s can be read as the prequel of ‗The Highland place in the ‗Plebeian poetic tradition‘. Burke Widow‘ (1827), as both of these Highland tales studies ‗the often complex and sometimes deal with parental concern for children who are contradictory relationships between Burns, the away with the army. ‗My Aunt Margaret‘s labour he performed, the working communities Mirror‘ is a tale of the profound love shared in which he lived, and contemporary between siblings, while ‗The Tapestried understandings of creativity amongst the so- Chamber‘ is about the violation of friendship called ―uneducated‖ classes of society‘. Gerard and hospitality. ‗Death of the Laird‘s Jock‘ Carruthers – editor and author of two articles in (1829) and ‗A Highland Anecdote‘ (1832) are this collection, co-author of two more –

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similarly seeks to question, in rather an Murray Pittock situates Burns alongside Adam irreverent way, Burns‘s ‗political and sexual Smith. Though influenced by Smith, Burns solidity‘, as represented in Andrew Noble and conveyed in his poetry a form of egalitarian Patrick Scott Hogg‘s scholarship. Burns, these sympathy from below, less theoretical than the early essays indicate, was not one definite thing neurotic identifications found in the canonical or another; our understandings of his life and works of authors such as Smith and Henry work need to reflect his complexity, and that of Mackenzie. There is in Burns an immediacy of his milieu. identification which stems, perhaps, from the The emphasis then shifts to physical images of sheer physicality of his work, its frequent origin Burns, with Sheila Szatowski asking first why in lust and libation, origins explored in Pauline Edinburgh‘s eighteenth-century paparazzo John Anne Gray‘s connection of sex and social Kay never painted Burns. Though they would commentary. Nigel Leask concludes this section have shared certain wry observations on with a fascinating historiography of our Edinburgh society, Szatowski concludes that perception of Burns as a great poet troubled by Burns ‗did not satisfy Kay‘s requirements for unruly passions and boozy excess. In particular, visitors to be eccentric, whimsical or comical‘. Leask studies the mediation of this perception Johnny Rodger then supplies a substantial and with reference to eighteenth-century medical compelling survey of a hitherto neglected aspect theories of genius and its neuropathology. of Burns‘s legacy: those architectural The last section surveys ‗Burns Abroad‘, not monuments to his work which are to be found in just in terms of his reception but also the extent towns and cities across Scotland. Concluding of his sympathy for the plight of others in other this section, Alistair Braidwood investigates the scenes. Carruthers and Mitchell Miller in their dearth of images of Burns in twentieth-century essays discuss Burns‘s compromised critique of cinema. He proposes that the reasons for this slavery, and the nature and extent of that absence are as complex as the poet himself but compromise. Miller in particular, in comparing suggests also that, should Burns‘s life and career the attitudes of Boswell and Burns, makes the be re-imagined on screen, it might be an important observation that republicanism never occasion for modifying and/or renewing necessarily entails abolitionism. Thomas Keith globally understood symbols of Scottishness. makes the case for Burns‘s sympathetic The essays in the second section explore an rendering of a female voice in song, while issue which goes to the quick of our perception Rhona Brown and Kirsteen McCue defend ‗The of Burns, and indeed of his period. Was Burns Beautiful Nymph of Ballochmyle‘ from an Enlightenment figure? And what might such accusations of mawkishness. Fine essays both, a term mean for a poet whose work is so often but they seem a little out of place between associated with tradition and a threatened discussions of slavery and the concluding rurality? Ken Simpson begins by situating Burns sequence of pieces on Burns‘s attitudes to, and in terms of a ‗vernacular enlightenment‘, and influence in, the revolutionary scenes of Ireland, argues that ‗Holy Willie‘s prayer‘ is ‗one of the America and France. Carruthers co-authors two great Scottish Enlightenment texts‘. Such a scholarly essays which examine Burns‘s radical claim argues for the radicalism of his poetics as credentials. In the first, Carruthers and Norman much as his politics and undoes, according to Paton suggest that Burns‘s authorship of ‗The Simpson, too easy a distinction between high Tree of Liberty‘ should suggestively be kept in and low art. Ralph Richard McLean nuances the question. With Jennifer Orr, subsequently, ‗Enlightenment Burns‘ further, and suggests that Carruthers argues, against some legend and not a ‗Burns was both of, and not of, the little speculative scholarship, that Burns did not enlightenment‘. More than a fetishised primitive send guns to revolutionary France. performing for people of sensibility, Burns was Finally, two essays towards the conclusion of as complex and as contradictory as the this book deal with the influence, political and Enlightenment itself. In his stimulating essay, poetical, of Burns‘s work in Ireland. Carol

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Baranuik‘s essay argues that Burns‘s work has Suzanne Gilbert, ed., James Hogg, The been problematically co-opted in Ulster politics, Mountain Bard. Stirling/South by republicans and loyalists alike, and that he Carolina Edition. Edinburgh might be retrieved as a poet of all the people. Owen Dudley Edwards sees out the volume with University Press, 2007. Pp. 528. £55. a wide-ranging survey of Irish appropriations, ISBN 9780748620067 from the writings of the ‗Irish Burns‘, Thomas Dermody, through to the branding as ‗Sweet P. D. Garside and Richard D. Jackson, Afton‘ of a famous Irish cigarette, through to the eds, James Hogg, The Forest Minstrel. reflections in prose of Seamus Heaney. Burns, Stirling/South Carolina Edition. writes Edwards, ‗was a bridge between Jacobite and Jacobin, between religious conviction and Edinburgh University Press, 2006. enlightenment scepticism, between country and Pp. 404. £60. ISBN 9780748622887 city, between Europe and America, between Gaelic and English, between old learning and Thomas C. Richardson, ed., James new tradition, between books and memory, Hogg, Contributions to Blackwood’s between Highland and Lowland, between Edinburgh Magazine. Volume 1: 1817- medieval and modern, between tragedy and comedy‘. The connection of a late Jacobitism to 1828. Stirling/South Carolina Edition. a newer democratic sensibility is particularly Edinburgh University Press, 2008. intriguing; counter-intuitive to some, such a Pp. 575. £60. ISBN 9780748624881 connection describes a structure of feeling which prevailed across substantial sections of Irish and Douglas S. Mack, ed., James Hogg, The Scottish society. Bush aboon Traquair and The Royal This collection is timely and stimulating, and for the most part intelligently conceived. It is, Jubilee. Stirling/South Carolina however, very poorly copy-edited. That last Edition. Edinburgh University Press, point is no matter if the book, no doubt a little 2008. Pp. 207. £60. rushed in its current form and context, can, as it ISBN 9780748634521 should, survive to a less anarchically punctuated paperback edition. Such a publication would be Jill Rubenstein, Gillian Hughes and an indispensible addition to Burns scholarship. Michael Griffin Meiko O’Halloran, eds, James Hogg, University of Limerick Midsummer Night Dreams and Related Poems. Stirling/South Carolina Edition. Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Pp. 235. £65. ISBN 9780748624409

Janette Currie and Gillian Hughes, eds, James Hogg, Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books. Stirling/South Carolina Edition. Edinburgh University Press, 2006. Pp. 424. £60. ISBN 9780748615278

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Gillian Hughes, James Hogg: A Life. Hogg. Each of these review volumes provides a Edinburgh University Press, 2007. wealth of information and historical context for Pp. 349. £29. ISBN 9780748616398 the study of Hogg without hindering the reader‘s sheer pleasure in his work. Thus, the modern edition of The Mountain Bard, first published in Gillian Hughes, ed., The Collected 1807, then revised for 1821, contains both of Letters of James Hogg. Volume 2: 1820- these editions: double helpings that reveal 1831. Stirling/South Carolina Edition. Hogg‘s gradual construction of himself as the Edinburgh University Press, 2006. true Borders Minstrel based on his first-hand Pp. 538. £60. ISBN 9780748616732 knowledge of traditional ballads. Suzanne Gilbert ably describes the context surrounding

the production of Hogg‘s 1807 volume and

considers the influence of Walter Scott in After having immersed myself in these securing its publication. The relationship impressive volumes, I can confidently say that between Hogg and Scott is especially interesting, James Hogg‘s world was one of constant and given that Hogg was clearly alert to the vigorous competition against all the odds: advantage of having Scott as a powerful patron physical, financial, social and literary. Readers but refused to be overwhelmed by him. Despite new to Hogg might begin with the important and Hogg‘s admiration of the Minstrelsy of the scholarly biography of him by Gillian Hughes. Scottish Border, 1802-3, Gilbert suggests that he She describes how the seven-year-old Hogg had purposefully set out to present an alternative to become accustomed to life as a chilly little version of Borders ballads, championing the oral farm servant in the Scottish Borders, surviving tradition of Ettrick forest, and defying Scott‘s frequent brutal weather to become a promising Enlightenment reliance on the authority of the shepherd in 1788. She reconstructs the early life printed text. (‗days of vision‘) of the young Hogg, describing One of the intriguing aspects of The Mountain his fondness for running races against himself – Bard is Hogg‘s inclusion of the ‗Memoir of his often losing his clothes in the process – and how Life‘. This ‗Memoir‘ details the difficulties that he came to spend long hours listening to the Hogg has overcome and his early efforts to traditional tales and legends of his elders. make his literary reputation as an authentic Hughes suggests that Hogg‘s growing Scottish bard. One of his undoubted strengths dissatisfaction with the routine life of a shepherd was song writing, and in The Mountain Bard, became less urgent with his service to a new Hogg included eleven ‗Songs Adapted to the master, James Laidlaw of Blackhouse, in 1790. Times‘ with the intention of establishing and It was with the Laidlaws that Hogg‘s alternative promoting his credentials as a ‗natural songster‘. future as an author really became possible He clearly hoped to be accepted as an author and through their encouragement of him, and his folk musician in the tradition of Ramsay‘s Tea- longing to learn. They were a congenial and Table Miscellany, 1724-32, and Beattie‘s The kindly family, interested in books and reading. Minstrel, 1771-4. Hogg began keeping a notebook of his The reception of The Mountain Bard was experiences as well as composing verse, songs generally warm, although some reviewers and plays. pointed out practical difficulties for the author in Before Hughes, the only modern biography of combining poetry with labouring. Their Hogg was Karl Miller‘s Electric Shepherd: A reservations proved all too prescient. Hogg‘s Likeness of James Hogg in 2003. While Miller‘s earnings from this volume would partly fund work is vividly entertaining, Hughes‘s one particularly disastrous agricultural foray into contribution is both authoritative and thorough, Nithsdale, Dumfriesshire, even though he lacked exemplifying the depth of scholarship and experience as a tenant farmer and his abilities research associated with the S/SC edition of were, at best, unproven. It ended in humiliating

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retreat to Ettrick where he met with a cold Magazine, the editor Thomas C. Richardson reception from family and friends. In notes that Hogg‘s involvement with Blackwood, desperation, he moved to Edinburgh, determined and his Magazine, would endure from the first to persevere as a literary man and fell back on issue in April 1817 throughout eighteen years. his last resource: songs. He managed to His final contribution would be published in convince Constable to publish The Forest April 1835, only months before Hogg‘s death. Minstrel, 1810, described as ‗a selection of new Richardson describes the remarkable variety of Scottish songs, adapted to the most favourite Hogg‘s contributions: ‗songs and lyric poetry, national airs, and divided into the following narrative and dramatic poetry, sketches of rural classes: pathetic, love, national, and comic and farming life, review essays, ballads, short songs‘. Hogg‘s instincts were true: the editors P. stories, satirical pieces, and even a ―screed‖ on D. Garside and Richard D. Jackson point out politics‘. Richardson also discusses Hogg‘s that Scottish tunes were then very popular and involvement with the infamous, and satirical, Hogg might have expected sales to be buoyant. ‗Chaldee Manuscript‘ and describes the scandal Hogg was venturing once more into the of its publication in the Magazine of October competitive publishing arena that was 1817. Edinburgh. The volume contained over eighty Hogg‘s relationship with the Magazine’s songs of which fifty-six were by Hogg. He had editorial team of J. G. Lockhart, John Wilson, secured the contributions of several friends: and Blackwood himself, was one of initial Thomas Mounsey Cunningham, William warmth, and even goodwill, before sliding into Laidlaw, John Grieve, James Gray and John bitter and damaging rivalry. Richardson is Ballantyne, thereby enhancing the literary especially good on the role of Wilson as an credentials of his project. editor of destructive force, and describes how The editors of this edition of The Forest Hogg eventually found himself reinvented Minstrel have produced a truly remarkable within the Magazine as the bumbling and volume for the modern reader, providing drunken ‗Ettrick Shepherd‘ of the Noctes extensive information on the development of Ambrosianæ. Hogg seized the opportunity to Hogg‘s musical knowledge as well as the display the range of his talents, even while context for his talents. There is also one striving to combat the snobbish and patronising significant improvement on the 1810 edition. attitudes of Wilson and Lockhart. It was a Originally, the songs were printed without painful struggle, but, as Richardson notes, musical notation in order to keep publishing Hogg‘s eventual triumph is visible in the costs down, probably on Constable‘s insistence. author‘s damning portrait of editorial folly in Here, the songs are printed with this detail. The The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a accompanying CD even allows the reader to Justified Sinner (1824). hear an approximation of ‗the musical world of Identifying and collecting Hogg‘s the genteel middle-class drawing-room‘ as the contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh editors suggest. Magazine in volume form is clearly a By this stage, Hogg was no stranger to literary tremendous advantage for students and scholars collaboration. He was also accustomed to defend without ready access to the original issues. In his literary ambition in the teeth of frequent keeping with the ethos of this edition, there are difficulty, and succeeded in publishing The also some previously unpublished works, for Queen’s Wake (1813) to general acclaim. He example, the pastoral Dramas of Simple Life No. became famous, making new literary friends II that Hogg would later revise extensively for such as R. P. Gillies and John Wilson. He also publication as A Bush Aboon Traquair in the formed one especially significant working posthumous Tales and Sketches (6 vols, relationship with the publisher William Glasgow: Blackie, 1836-7). Blackwood. In the first volume of Hogg‘s The excellent edition of The Bush aboon Contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Traquair and The Royal Jubilee, edited by

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Douglas S. Mack, contains two versions of traditions of rural Scotland. Rubenstein suggests Hogg‘s lively pastoral drama, with songs, as that Hogg‘s Midsummer poems reflect his well as his masque, written as part of the anxieties about the loss of such traditions and his welcoming celebrations for George IV‘s visit to belief that stability and order can only be Edinburgh in 1822. Given Hogg‘s experience as restored with their return. In Hogg‘s eyes, the a shepherd, the genre of pastoral drama might departure of the fairies diminishes Scotland, and seem particularly apt. As Mack notes, The Bush indicates loss rather than progress. aboon Traquair can be seen as a response to Hogg‘s concern with the preservation of the Allan Ramsay‘s The Gentle Shepherd (1725). fantastical reappears in his many Contributions However, where Ramsay‘s popular drama to Annuals and Gift-Books, edited by Janette conformed to the neoclassical unities of time Currie and Gillian Hughes, and now collected in and place, and provided a happy ending for its volume form. Significantly, his first publication young lovers, Hogg‘s drama is a characteristic was the poem ‗Invocation to the Queen of the celebration of the earthy vigour and dynamic Fairies‘ which appeared in the Literary Souvenir good sense of his Borders men and women for 1825. Annuals were both fashionable and engaged in real sheep farming. popular, though characterised by polite restraint. The editor‘s introduction discusses the Nonetheless, Hogg found that his poetry and significance of the full title of The Bush aboon tales were in demand and the Ettrick Shepherd‘s Traquair; or, The Natural Philosophers. Mack contributions appeared both in British and reflects on Hogg‘s emphasis on the limitations American annuals. of formal education. His rural characters have Hogg published ballads, poetry and prose. had no academic schooling. Instead they must However, he would never have dreamt of rely on their religious faith, innate good sense publishing his letters. He objected strongly to and on wisdom derived from living a life close the intrusion and loss of privacy implicit in to nature. Hogg considered his literary talent to literary biography. However, The Collected be a gift of nature that was equivalent, even Letters of James Hogg, 1820-1831, edited by superior, to the academic prowess of university Gillian Hughes, is an essential volume for men, such as Wilson and Lockhart. If Hogg‘s everyone interested in Hogg and Hogg‘s literary standing within Blackwood’s Edinburgh Edinburgh. It is meticulous, detailed and Magazine was directly affected by his lack of exemplary in its breadth of scholarship. education, and lowly social status, then The Deirdre A. Shepherd Bush aboon Traquair offers an artist‘s University of Edinburgh alternative vision. Sadly, the recent death of Professor Douglas S. Mack has deprived the world of Hogg studies of Simon P. Hull, Charles Lamb, Elia and one of its most important members. The editors the London Magazine: Metropolitan of Midsummer Night Dreams and Related Muse. London: Pickering and Chatto, Poems note that this edition had been in preparation by the late Professor Jill Rubenstein 2010. Pp. 217. £60. and that Gillian Hughes and Meiko O‘Halloran ISBN 9781851966615 have now completed her work. Midsummer Night Dreams was first published as part of a In November 1820, Blackwood’s Magazine, four-volume collected Poetical Works by normally a sure-footed commentator on Constable in 1822 and contains some intriguing periodical culture, made a fool of itself. William poetry. His title refers to the evening before 24 Maginn referred to a writer named ‗Elia‘, the June (Midsummer Day) when the old worlds of author of articles in the rival London Magazine, superstition and magic hold sway; the reader as a ‗Cockney scribbler‘. John Scott, editor of discovers a supernatural world of dreams and the London, gleefully pounced on the slip, visions, associated with the pre-Enlightenment pointing out that Blackwood’s had always

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professed an admiration for Charles Lamb‘s For all that Maginn was a little embarrassed by writings. Maginn responded rather shamefacedly, his failure to conflate Elia and Lamb, Scott‘s but defended himself by remarking that ‗the criticism might seem misplaced: Elia, but not society with which we mix must gradually Lamb, is a product of the ‗Cockneyish‘ binding impart to us a tinge; and it is little wonder that of the London Magazine. being bound up in the same cover with Hazlitt, Hull names this process ‗metropolitanism‘. and others of that deplorable set of men, should The metropolis, like the periodical text, has the contaminate‘. The exchange suggests two capacity to overwhelm the individual, as connected difficulties which critics of Lamb Wordsworth recognised in The Prelude. But have always had: the extent to which ‗Lamb‘ rather than submitting to or attacking that and ‗Elia‘ represent separate authorial identities, capacity, Lamb produces an ‗emancipatory‘ and the extent to which his essays are ‗bound‘ response to the metropolis marked by ‗the by the covers of the magazines in which they appropriation of an environment which would appeared. Simon Hull‘s carefully argued book otherwise dissolve or compromise the asserting places these two issues at the heart of a new and self‘. Metropolitanism, for Hull, suggests sensitive reading of Lamb‘s London Magazine Lamb‘s ability at once to recognise his own essays. feebleness and yet, paradoxically, to offer We are now used to the idea that we ought to feebleness as a type of strength. So whereas read a periodical writer ‗in context‘, and the last Pierce Egan attempts to laugh off the notion of twenty or so years have sent critics scurrying the theatrical city that terrified Wordsworth, Elia back to what Lamb called the ‗dishabille, or redeems ‗the audience-like reader from the half-binding‘ of the periodicals in which famous theatricalized crowd by making him into an essays and poems first made their appearance. ideal, unimaginative reader, and in the process Rather than praising writers for their ability to empowering the ―minor‖ periodical author as a transcend that ephemeral status, achieving the phantasmal, emancipatory figure‘. Others permanence of the single-author book, critics attempted to ‗solve‘ the ‗problem‘ of London such as Mark Parker and Mark Schoenfield have beggars, but Elia offers a self-consciously suggested we focus our attention on the way that ‗tentative‘ method that makes a clear ethical such writing makes its unique cultural position through a deliberately ambivalent intervention precisely on account of the aesthetic. De Quincey retreats from a activities of editors and publishers who weave threatening city into the Lakes and the fug of the individual essay into the ideological fabric of opium, while Hunt dismisses the problem from the issue. Hull sees the limitations of this his Hampstead idyll, but Elia produces an position without, quite, wanting to return to the engagement with an oddly domesticated city, older model. Such ‗contextual‘ reading risks ‗an explicable and penetrable city, a place where removing all agency from Elia, but to ignore the one can find emancipation without losing context is, equally, to suggest Elia‘s ‗trans- oneself, or others‘. historical‘ inability to make a difference to the Hull occasionally displays a historicist‘s world around him. Hull proposes that we interest in context, such as contemporary recognise that Elia ‗embraces instead of resists debates over the poor laws. But in general this is the marginalizing condition of writing for an avowedly literary study that operates periodicals‘. Rather than the victim of a format principally as a series of close readings of the associated with marginality, fragmentation and Elia essays. The narrow focus of the study authorial powerlessness, Elia assertively produces pleasing results, most particularly ‗appropriates‘ a fragmentary, powerless status. Hull‘s ability to identify and affirm the critical Lamb‘s engagement with his context prompted manoeuvres of a writer too easily dismissed for him to produce ‗Elia‘, a figure which represents, the very indecision that makes him so valuable. for Hull, ‗a parodic engagement with the Yet one yearns for a little Elian modesty that a anxiety-ridden figure of the periodical writer‘. greater breadth of reference may have purchased.

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Hull is surely too quick to dismiss Lamb‘s pre- Elian work as ‗chequered‘, a decision the more Ann Wroe‘s biographical ‗experiment‘, Being odd in a study that seeks to reclaim Shelley, offers ‗to write the life of a poet from fragmentariness as a positive attribute. And Elia, the inside out: that is, from the perspective of the we are told, was uniquely able to produce these creative spirit struggling to discover its true effects; but something like his insight that ‗bias nature‘. No easy task, one might have thought, or prejudice is inevitable in the act of criticism‘ to get inside the long-dead poet‘s head and come was shared by writers like the London‘s T. G. up with something plausible. But the book has Wainewright and, pre-eminently, the been very well received, with generous reviews Blackwood’s writers. But the assertion of the in the national press from figures of genuine critical relevance of bias, tentativeness and authority in the field. So an open mind is called ambivalence matters more. This book, allied for. One way to come at it is through its striking with Felicity James‘s excellent 2008 monograph, contrast with the other widely-cited new might prompt Romanticists to see the literary biography of Shelley, James Bieri‘s two world through Elian spectacles. volumes Youth’s Unextinguished Fire 1792- David Stewart 1816 (2004) and Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, Northumbria University 1816-1822 (2005), subsequently published in one volume as Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography (2008). Bieri‘s work is in truth an Ann Wroe, Being Shelley: The Poet’s odd mixture. On the plus side it is a kind of Search for Himself. London: Jonathan highly discursive and massively inclusive chronology, helpfully arranging just about every Cape, 2007. Pp. 452. £25. known fact and circumstance relating to Shelley ISBN 9780224080781 into narrative order, and incorporating all of the vast mountain of information piled up over Timothy Webb and Alan M. Weinberg, several decades in the many volumes of Shelley eds, The Unfamiliar Shelley. Aldershot: and his Circle, the Garland diplomatic editions Ashgate, 2009. Pp. 369. £60. of Shelley‘s manuscripts in the Bodleian and elsewhere, and the range of scholarly editions of ISBN 9780754663904 the work and papers of central figures in his life, including Mary Shelley, the Clairmonts, Susanne Schmid and Michael William Godwin, Peacock, and so on. As such it Rossington, eds, The Reception of P. B. is immensely useful and a great service to the Shelley in Europe. London: Continuum, scholarly community. Its usefulness is enhanced 2008. Pp. 391. £150. by a really helpful index, and a comprehensive bibliography. All Shelleyans are going to need ISBN 9780826495877 to use it, and indeed it is already installed as an essential reference work. Stephen C. Behrendt, ed., Percy Bysshe However, given this usefulness and instant Shelley (A Longman Cultural Edition). acceptance into the canon of Shelley scholarship, New York: Longman, 2009. Pp. 372. one has to say that it has limitations which $8.80. ISBN 9780321202109 border on the alarming. Leaden prose and a complete absence of narrative drive or urgency are faults hardly unique, not least in Shelley James Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A biography. But there is a pervasive sense of Biography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins basic unfamiliarity with British culture and University Press, 2008. Pp. 832. £60. history, sometimes bursting into the light with ISBN 9780801888601 such a pronouncement as the admiring celebration of ‗Byron‘s feat, despite his foot

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deformity, of scoring six goals for Harrow in a straightforward, immensely informative, cricket match at Eton in 1805‘; a feat which unpretentious, and an invaluable aid to research. must certainly remain unsurpassed to this day. Ann Wroe‘s Being Shelley is completely Less endearingly, there is frequent misquotation different. Its method ‗takes seriously Shelley‘s of sometimes very famous poems, which can be statement that a poet ―participates in the eternal, downright embarrassing, as in ‗the keen stars are the infinite and the one; as far as relates to his twinkling‘, ‗the devotion of something conceptions, time and place and number are not‖. afar,/From the sphere of our sorrow‘, ‗Dearest, Its narrative track is the poet‘s quest for truth best and brightest, come away‘, and many more. through the steadily rarefying elements of earth, This is worrying because these errors seem to water, air and fire. It is an adventure story of indicate that metre is not being heard, and Shelley‘s search to discover, in his words, sometimes sense not grasped. There are also ―whence I came, and where I am, and why‖.‘ plenty of simple errors in citing names and titles The writing is informed throughout by a correctly. More worrying still is the thinness remarkable close knowledge of Shelley‘s works with which the historical context is evoked, with in all forms, and of those biographical sources an excessive reliance on just the one major with a claim to eye-witness authority. The secondary source (E. P. Thompson). More book‘s ‗narrative‘ ignores conventional broadly, the scholarship can be poorly controlled chronology and moves back and forth between and articulated, particularly when clarity is most moments in time; quotes and events are threaded essential. A prime example is the treatment of together by loose analogy of theme, imagery, the ‗Neapolitan baby‘. There has been a growing mood, and the principal cohering agent is a unity consensus that the child mysteriously registered of voice which sustains a sort of highly as ‗Elena Adelaide Shelley‘ in Naples in 1819 intelligent rapt wonderment in the contemplation was an illegitimate child of Shelley‘s by a of ‗Shelley‘s‘ exotic and enchanting strangeness. secretive liaison probably with a member of the It is more like a novel than a biography, with its family or circle of Lady Charlotte Bury. This subject‘s inner life told through the medium of a has always seemed to me inherently implausible species of free indirect speech; Wroe allows for a variety of reasons, and more likely to have herself complete freedom to speak for the inner been an adoption. So when Bieri comes to treat Shelley, repeatedly launching from or tying back of the matter, and to state or darkly hint to brief quotation from every kind of source. repeatedly that the child was indeed Shelley‘s, The whole project is grounded in what is clearly we are entitled to a decisive marshalling of a profoundly-felt affinity with a certain image of evidence. But it remains impossible to establish Shelley. The approach presumes an inwardness what proofs are being adduced, and if anything with its subject which is impossible to the situation ends up more confused and authenticate, but it does not even try to do that. undecidable. This Shelley is entirely subjective and Bieri‘s literary criticism is almost wholly broodingly introspective, dreamily self-obsessed confined to biographical interpretation and and humourless, and any evidence to the surmise, too often limited to unconvincing contrary simply gets left out. It mingles snatches speculation and underpowered psychologising, from a wide variety of sources, regardless of and sometimes straying very wide of the mark, provenance, reliability or plausibility. There is a as in the characterisation of Shelley‘s brilliantly powerful feel for the poetry, its cadences, funny and fluent translation of the Homeric movement, and imagery; but there is no critical Hymn to Mercury as ‗a rare indulgence of anal interest, no sustained attention to whole poems. humour‘, or in a completely misjudged reading The major longer works entirely disappear, and of the equally sophisticated Witch of Atlas. In everything is reduced to the suggestiveness of short, Bieri‘s biography is too limited to capture the fragmentary, the fleetingly self-expressive. the quality and scale of its subject‘s achievement We are asked to accept that all of Shelley‘s and complex personality. But it is experience was co-instantaneous in one grandly

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encompassing present moment. The refusal of thoughtfully illuminating discussions of the chronology frees the book from any leaden early ‗Esdaile‘ poems and Queen Mab, by David chains of verifiable circumstance, historical Duff and Christopher Miller respectively, which context, or credibility. The price of this freedom bring a freshness and seriousness which made is high. We lose in fact almost everything me think differently about work I thought I shareable or of wider cultural resonance: the knew very well. These essays work together to sense in Shelley‘s history of a strange, deeply bring out the contrasting but complementary eccentric and exceptional young man, growing modes of Shelley‘s poetry – introspective, through terrible suffering and deep study to very subjective and lyrical on the one hand, outward- hard-won maturity , and unmistakable greatness facing, philosophical and socially engaged on as a poet. In the end Being Shelley, not least in the other – as a duality that is present from the its palpably serious and heart-felt enthusiasm for very beginning of his career. There is a quite its subject, aligns itself with a fundamentally brilliant essay by Michael O‘Neill on Shelley as distortive tradition of Shelley-worship, reaching translator and prose poet, which includes the back through André Maurois and Francis best critical account I have ever read of how Thompson to the worshippers at the shrine to his Shelley‘s prose works. Timothy Morton and heart in Boscombe. Nora Crook each contribute highly original, A genuinely unfamiliar version of Shelley engaging and informative accounts of Shelley as does however emerge from The Unfamiliar dramatist in Swellfoot the Tyrant and the late Shelley, a persuasively conceived project to fragmentary dramas. But the whole volume is explore the less well-visited areas of Shelley‘s excellent in its slanting of new perspectives extraordinarily diverse career. The editors, Tim across interesting terrain, with confident Webb and Alan Weinberg, have brought command of current scholarship and some together an outstanding collection of powerful deployment of contemporary theory contributors, and the resulting volume is too – something Shelley seems to suit especially rewarding, although it obviously aims at an well – as in Hugh Roberts‘s characteristically academic audience, not something that it would powerful and acute account of the Prefaces. This be fair to claim of Being Shelley. The relatively volume also provides a very good bibliography; specialised audience that this collection all students of Shelley will need to read it. It is addresses is in fact the main caveat one might pleasing to note that the volume is dedicated to wish to enter about its success. The consistently Donald Reiman, whose work has done so much thick-textured and sophisticated voices here are to promote new and wider knowledge of Shelley; really only likely to change the perspective on and there is an interesting ‗Afterword‘ to the Shelley of people who already have a career collection by Reiman himself. investment in the academy and the Romantics There‘s another unfamiliar Shelley in The industry. The Unfamiliar Shelley is not going to Reception of P. B. Shelley in Europe, edited by speak to a wider audience as Being Shelley looks Susanne Schmid and Michael Rossington. This to do, and so Ann Wroe‘s fantasised Shelley is is a poet who grows gradually to prominence, or probably going to succeed in adding yet a at least a mode of cultural survival, at first further layer of opaque varnish to the many principally by association with Byron, but already applied in successive cultural increasingly for the power of his voice or incarnations. perceived presence in the theatre of burgeoning For all that, the fifteen essays in The European nationalism in the nineteenth century. Unfamiliar Shelley are of very high quality. The successive essays cover an unexpectedly They are grouped into sections addressing inclusive variety of national situations, and poems, genres or themes that have been repeatedly demonstrate the power of Shelley‘s relatively neglected by critics in the revival of different received images – fated lyrical idealist, serious academic interest in Shelley over the revolutionary and outspoken social thinker, past forty years. Amongst the highlights are two ineffectual or reckless angel – to embody

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different aspects of cultural crisis. In the uniquely represented by excellent essays in both twentieth century he looms still larger and more the collections here under review. But this variously, as an epitomising figure for the edition is too limited by space, convention and different intellectual landscapes of fascism and copyright to make any impact in research terms. communism. His reception, translation and It is essentially an anthology of poems and prose publishing histories are intertwined with the (but not really much prose), with a few items, shifting grounds of opposed and world- principally the Address to the People on the shattering ideologies, and it is remarkable how Death of Princess Charlotte, and The Mask of robust in this grand scene are Shelley‘s poetry Anarchy, contextualised by passages from and ideas. He has truly become a poet of relevant contemporary publications. A striking international stature, with a cultural afterlife of amount of space goes to reprinting Prometheus enormous variety and significance. The final Unbound in its entirety, which takes up well essay by Jeremy Dibble on the long and rich over a quarter of the volume. All the Shelley European tradition of setting Shelley‘s poetry to texts are taken from Forman‘s nineteenth- music startlingly points out that in this context century edition, a sensible choice under the Shelley is the most ubiquitous of all English circumstances but one which obviously poets, possibly excepting the songs from precludes any contribution to current scholarship Shakespeare‘s plays. bearing on Shelley‘s text. The items are very Certain Shelleyan texts tend, unsurprisingly, to lightly annotated. There are a series of headnotes dominate in his European reception, although which are quite well-judged and helpful for the the translation-friendly lyrics are balanced by a student, but they are necessarily somewhat widespread understanding of the complex abbreviated as is the Introduction to the volume achievement of works such as Prometheus as a whole, which seems too short to make much Unbound; and The Cenci emerges as a very inroad into its subject. The motivating influential European work, with a complex conviction which drives the choice of text and production history and a serious and even context here is that Shelley was a political writer, shaping influence on European theatre history, but it‘s hardly necessary nowadays to make the for example through the work of Antonin Artaud. argument for Shelley‘s social and historical This collection is a little uneven, if only in the engagement as a writer and thinker of a obvious sense that the style of each of the manifestly radical persuasion. He was of course eighteen essays tends to reflect the academic also more and more complicated than just that, culture of the various countries covered, with so there is an air about this edition of serving a some more descriptive and less analytical, and particular agenda within the American academy others strongly marked by Anglo-American and its current arguments with itself. The close influences and mannerisms. By any criteria and excluding concentration in this cultural though this is an extremely informative and edition on the immediate political context interesting volume, with a bibliography of actually ends up returning one to Being Shelley, ground-breaking extent in this field, and a if only because of the frank countenance there of fascinating forty-page ‗Timeline‘ of Shelley‘s Shelley‘s visionary aspect and the sheer European reception which is a significant piece strangeness of his life and character. of research in itself. One has to say that this Kelvin Everest volume is also staggeringly expensive. University of Liverpool Stephen C. Behrendt‘s Longman ‗Cultural Edition‘ of Shelley is evidently aimed at the higher education market in the United States (it is not available for sale in the UK), with those mainly in mind who prefer their contextual gobbets ready-packaged. Professor Behrendt is a distinguished Shelley scholar, who indeed is

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