The bicentenary of the foundation of the Edinburgh Review has provided the foremost scholars in the field with the opportunity to re-examine the pervasive significance of the most important literary review of the Romantic period. These essays assess the controversial role played by the Edinburgh Review in the development of Romantic literature and explore its sense of 'Scottishness' in the context of early nineteenth-century British culture.

From its first issue, published on the 10th October 1802, Francis Jeffrey's "Edinburgh Review" established a strong reputation and exerted a powerful influence. This is a literary study of the "Edinburgh Review" for over fifty years. It contextualizes the periodical within the culture wars of the Romantic era.

The book offers an exciting new map of the cultural geography of the Romantic era, and establishes a dynamic methodology for future comparative work."--BOOK JACKET.

From its first issue, published on the 10th October 1802, Francis Jeffrey's "Edinburgh Review" established a strong reputation and exerted a powerful influence. This is a literary study of the "Edinburgh Review" for over fifty years. It contextualizes the periodical within the culture wars of the Romantic era.

The Oxford Handbook of British Romantic Prose is a full-length essay collection devoted entirely to British Romantic nonfiction prose. Organized into eight parts, each containing between five and nine chapters arranged alphabetically, the Handbook weaves together familiar and unfamiliar texts, events, and authors, and invites readers to draw comparisons, reimagine connections and disconnections, and confront frequently stark contradictions, within British Romantic nonfiction prose, but also in its relationship to British Romanticism more generally, and to the literary practices and cultural contexts of other periods and countries. The Handbook builds on previous scholarship in the field, considers emerging trends and evolving methodologies, and suggests future areas of study. Throughout the emphasis is on lucid expression rather than gnomic declaration, and on chapters that offer, not a dutiful survey, but evaluative assessments that keep an eye on the bigger picture yet also dwell meaningfully on specific paradoxes and the most telling examples. Taken as a whole the volume demonstrates the energy, originality, and diversity at the crux of British Romantic nonfiction prose. It vigorously challenges the traditional construction of the British Romantic movement as focused too exclusively on the accomplishments of its poets, and it reveals the many ways in which scholars of the period are steadily broadening out and opening up delineations of British Romanticism in order to encompass and thoroughly evaluate the achievements of its nonfiction prose writers.

Building on a revival of scholarly interest in the cultural effects of early 19th-century periodicals, the essays in this collection treat periodical writing as intrinsically worthy of attention not a mere backdrop to the emergence of British Romanticism but a site in which Romantic ideals were challenged, modified, and developed. Contributors to the volume discuss a range of different periodicals, from the elite Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews, through William Cobbett's populist weekly newspaper Two-Penny Trash, to the miscellaneous monthly magazines typified by Blackwood's. While some contributors to the volume approach the phenomenon of Romanticism within periodical culture from a more materialist standpoint than others, several elaborate upon recent intersections between Romantic studies and gender studies.