The best way to learn about Romantic poetry is to plunge in and read a few Romantic poems. This book guides the new reader through this experience, focusing on canonical authors - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Blake and Shelley - whilst also including less familiar figures as well. Each chapter explains the history and development of a genre or sets out an important context for the poetry, with a wealth of practical examples. Michael Ferber emphasizes connections between poets as they responded to each other and to great literary, social and historical changes around them. A unique appendix resolves most difficulties new readers of works from this period might face: unfamiliar words, unusual word order, the subjunctive mood and meter. This enjoyable and stimulating book is an ideal introduction to some of the most powerful and pleasing poems in the English language, written in one of the greatest periods in English poetry.

"The best way to learn about Romantic poetry is to plunge in and read a few Romantic poems. This book guides the new reader through this experience, focusing on canonical authors - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Blake and Shelley - whilst also including less familiar figures as well. Each chapter explains the history and development of a genre or sets out an important context for the poetry, with a wealth of practical examples. Michael Ferber emphasizes connections between poets as they responded to each other and to great literary, social and historical changes around them. A unique appendix resolves most difficulties new readers of works from this period might face: unfamiliar words, unusual word order, the subjunctive mood and meter. This enjoyable and stimulating book is an ideal introduction to some of the most powerful and pleasing poems in the English language, written in one of the greatest periods in English poetry"--

More than any other period of British literature, Romanticism is strongly identified with a single genre. Romantic poetry has been one of the most enduring, best loved, most widely read and most frequently studied genres for two centuries and remains no less so today. This Companion offers a comprehensive overview and interpretation of the poetry of the period in its literary and historical contexts. The essays consider its metrical, formal, and linguistic features; its relation to history; its influence on other genres; its reflections of empire and nationalism, both within and outside the British Isles; and the various implications of oral transmission and the rapid expansion of print culture and mass readership. Attention is given to the work of less well-known or recently rediscovered authors, alongside the achievements of some of the greatest poets in the English language: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Scott, Burns, Keats, Shelley, Byron and Clare.

A fully updated edition of this popular Companion, with two new essays reflecting new developments in the field.

This new edition of The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism has been fully revised and updated and includes two wholly new essays, one on recent developments in the field, and one on the rapidly expanding publishing industry of this period. It also features a comprehensive chronology and a fully up-to-date guide to further reading. For the past decade and more the Companion has been a much-admired and widely-used account of the phenomenon of British Romanticism that has inspired students to look at Romantic literature from a variety of critical angles and approaches. In this new incarnation, the volume will continue to be a standard guide for students of Romantic literature and its contexts.

More than any other period of British literature, Romanticism is strongly identified with a single genre. Romantic poetry has been one of the most enduring, best loved, most widely read and most frequently studied genres for two centuries and remains no less so today. This Companion offers a comprehensive overview and interpretation of the poetry of the period in its literary and historical contexts. The essays consider its metrical, formal, and linguistic features; its relation to history; its influence on other genres; its reflections of empire and nationalism, both within and outside the British Isles; and the various implications of oral transmission and the rapid expansion of print culture and mass readership. Attention is given to the work of less well-known or recently rediscovered authors, alongside the achievements of some of the greatest poets in the English language: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Scott, Burns, Keats, Shelley, Byron and Clare.

This Companion provides new ways of reading a wide range of influential women's poetry. Leading international scholars offer insights on a century of writers, drawing out the special function of poetry and the poets' use of language, whether it is concerned with the relationship between verbal and visual art, experimental poetics, war, landscape, history, cultural identity or 'confessional' lyrics. Collectively, the chapters cover well established and less familiar poets, from Edith Sitwell and Mina Loy, through Stevie Smith, Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Jennings to Anne Stevenson, Eavan Boland and Jo Shapcott. They also include poets at the forefront of poetry trends, such as Liz Lochhead, Jackie Kay, Patience Agbabi, Caroline Bergvall, Medbh McGuckian and Carol Ann Duffy. With a chronology and guide to further reading, this book is aimed at students and poetry enthusiasts wanting to deepen their knowledge of some of the finest modern poets.