Romanticism (eBook)

Duncan Wu is Professor of English at Georgetown University, a former Professor of English Literature at the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His publications include A Companion to Romanticism (Blackwell, 1997) and Romantic Women Poets: An Anthology (Blackwell, 1997). He is Vice-Chairman of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association and The Charles Lamb Society.

List of Illustrations xxviii

List of Plates xxix

Abbreviations xxx

Introduction xxxii

Editor's Note on the Fourth Edition xlv

Editorial Principles xlvi

Acknowledgements xlviii

A Romantic Timeline 1770-1851 li

Richard Price (1723-1791) 3

Thomas Warton (1728-1790) 6

Edmund Burke (1729/30-1797) 8

William Cowper (1731-1800) 17

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) 24

Anna Seward (1742-1809) 29

Anna Laetitia Barbauld
(née Aikin) (1743-1825)
34

Hannah More (1745-1833) 55

Charlotte Smith (née Turner)
(1749-1806) 81

George Crabbe (1754-1832) 146

William Godwin (1756-1836) 155

Ann Yearsley (née Cromartie)
(1756-1806) 160

William Blake (1757-1827) 174

Mary Robinson (née Darby) (1758-1800)
250

Robert Burns (1759-1796) 265

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) 281

Helen Maria Williams (1761-1827) 291

Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) 313

William Lisle Bowles (1762-1851) 321

John Thelwall (1764-1834) 322

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (1798) 333

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 420

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) 597

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855) 603

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) 611

Francis, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850) 734

Robert Southey (1774-1843) 741

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) 756

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) 774

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) 816

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) 829

Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) 858

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788-1824)
862

Richard Woodhouse, Jr (1788-1834) 1067

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) 1070

John Clare (1793-1864) 1271

Felicia Dorothea Hemans (née Browne)
(1793-1835) 1290

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) 1375

John Keats (1795-1821) 1384

Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849) 1503

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin)
(1797-1851) 1505

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838) 1512

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) 1532

Index of First Lines 1538

Index to Headnotes and Notes 1543

"In the third edition of his groundbreaking Romanticism: An
Anthology, Duncan Wu has made a very good text even better. For
those interested in stirring the familiar ingredients (Blake to
Byron) back into the rich soup of the times in which they dwelt,
this anthology offers the best opportunity. Wu gives us the texts
of familiar poems made strange--sometimes by being presented in
their first printed version, sometimes by the juxtaposition implied
by Wu's canny practice of the anthologizer's art."

--David Latane, Virginia Commonwealth University

"The Wu anthology, even more magnificent and indispensable
in its Third Edition, is not simply the most useful or the most
learned anthology of English Romantic poetry and thought; it is the
most exciting. The flames of that excitement are fed by generous
cords of minor poets and major essayists, carefully selected,
intelligently bundled. But even the old-growth timber of the major
poets burns with a brighter flame by being most provocatively
introduced, brilliantly edited (especially Blake), and stacked
against the kindling of the lesser lyricists. The combination of
earlier and revised versions of the same poem is dazzlingly
illuminating. One might say of Wu's Romanticism: An Anthology, in
comparison to any other collection, what Wu himself says in
introducing the early use of the term "Romanticism:
"Romanticism was 'organic' and 'plastic,' as against the
'mechanical' tendencies of Classicism." Perhaps the anthology
itself cannot keep growing in subsequent editions without becoming
unwieldy; but the enthusiasm it generates can grow without bounds
and will prove both "organic"--well rooted in accurate,
historically placed texts--and "plastic," ever subject to
imaginative reshaping."

--Leslie Brisman, Yale University

"The fourth edition of Duncan Wu's Romanticism: An
Anthology offers the perfect combination of breadth and
depth. It contains a superb selection of literary texts with
thought-provoking annotations and contextual materials that help
bring the Romantic era to life."

--Kim Wheatley, College of William and Mary

"No one familiar with Duncan Wu's impressive body of
Romantic period scholarship and criticism will be surprised at the
high quality of Romanticism: An Anthology. I have chosen it
for my "British Romantic Poetry" as this text is superior to any
other available in its combination of essential canonical poetry
with an astute selection of other literature, including extensive
representation of women writers."

--Paul Betz, Georgetown University