A Companion to Romanticism

The Companion to Romanticism is a major introductory survey by an international collection of scholars, whose 52 specially commissioned contributions are aimed specifically at a student readership.Divided into four parts – Contexts and Perspectives 1790-1830: Readings: Genres and Modes: and Issues and Debates – the Companion provides students new to the subject with a vital orientation and foundation for study, and also offers senior and graduate students an important focus upon new developments and possible future directions.Contexts and perspectives vital to our understanding of the origins and evolution of the concept of Romanticism are elucidated in a section of eight introductory essays. There follow 22 readings of key texts, canonical and postcanonical, from Wordsworth’s Prelude (by Johnathan Wordsworth) to Joanna Baillie’s A Series of Plays (by Janice Patten) and Felicia Heman’s Records of Woman (by Adams Roberts).A section on genres and modes includes Frederick on ‘The Romantic Drama’, John Sutherland on ‘The Novel’ and David Maill on ‘Gothic Fiction’. In a final group of essays 15 contributors explore key issues and debates.

Author Biography

Duncan Wu is Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow. His numerous publications include Romanticism: An Anthology, Second Edition (1998), Romanticism: A Critical Reader (1995), Romantic Women Poets: An Anthology (1997), an edition of William Wordsworth’s The Five-Book Prelude (1997) and, with Tom Paulin, of William Hazlitt’s The Plain-Speaker: Key Essays (1998), all available from Blackwell Publishers. He has collaborated with David Miall in preparing Blackwell Publishers’ Romanticism: The CD-Rom and is the editor of a nine volume edition of The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt (1998).