British culture of the Romantic period is distinguished by a protracted and varied interest in things Spanish. The climax in the publication of fictional, and especially poetical, narratives on Spain corresponds with the intense phase of Anglo-Iberian exchanges delimited by the Peninsular War (1808-14), on the one hand, and the Spanish experiment of a constitutional monarchy that lasted from 1820 until 1823, on the other. Although current scholarship has uncovered and reconstructed several foreign maps of British Romanticism - from the Orient to the South Seas - exotic European geographies have not received much attention. Spain, in particular, is one of the most neglected of these 'imaginary' Romantic geographies, even if between the 1800s and the 1820s, and beyond, it was a site of wars and invasions, the object of foreign economic interests relating to its American colonies, and a geopolitical area crucial to the European balance designed by the post-Waterloo Vienna settlement. This study considers the various ways in which Spain figured in Romantic narrative verse, recovering the discursive materials employed in fictional representation, and assessing the relevance of this activity in the context of the dominant themes and preoccupations in contemporary British culture. The texts examined here include medievalizing and chivalric fictions, Orientalist adventures set in Islamic Granada, and modern-day tales of the anti-Napoleonic campaign in the Peninsula. Recovering some of the outstanding works and issues elaborated by British Romanticism through the cultural geography of Spain, this study shows that the Iberian country was an inexhaustible source of imaginative materials for British culture at a time when its imperial boundaries were expanding and its geopolitical influence was increasing in Europe and overseas.

Excerpt from Castle Gates: A Book Poems; Through Which the Knowing Ones Are Admitted Into Some of My Castles in Spain In order that the reader may better under stand the conditions out of which this volume has grown, it may be worth while to add here a few words in regard to my life-history. I was born on a poor mountain farm near Moravian Falls, N. C., 29 years ago. Worked on the farm until I was 21 years old. Sometimes I got to at tend the district free school a few weeks during the winter. Studied grammar a little, but couldnot make head nor tail of it. Had only a very moderate liking for history and geography, and couldn't endure arithmetic at all. Liked my old Fourth Reader very well, because it had some poetry in it. Spent most of my time during school hours writing poetry on my slate. W'as set down as a hopeless case, whom there was no use trying to educate. Quit school entirely at 16, having never been in school more than 12 months, from first to last. Never saw the inside of a high school or college. Stayed between the plow-handles for several years longer. Read all the poetry I could get hold of, and gradually developed a taste for other kinds of reading. Wrote a poem every little while for some pa per or magazine. The editors were kind, and printed my stuff. Drifted into a local newspaper office. Learned to set type. Edited the paper. Acted as Washington correspondent. Contrib uted poems to various periodicals. Operated a linotype machine in office of city daily. Got married. Set up a print-shop of my own to print my books. That brings us down to the present, and that's as far as I can go with my history just now. Maybe the world will want to know more about me some time, and maybe it won't. We'll wait and see. Respectfully. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

British salons, with guests such as Byron, Moore, and Thackeray, were veritable hothouses of political and cultural agitation. Using a number of sources - diaries, letters, silver-fork novels, satires, travel writing, Keepsakes, and imaginary conversations - Schmid paints a vivid picture of the British salon between the 1780s and the 1840s.

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