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An absorbing survey of poetry written in one of the most revolutionary eras in the history of British literature
This comprehensive survey of British Romantic poetry explores the work of six poets whose names are most closely associated with the Romantic era--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats, Byron, and Shelley--as well as works by other significant but less widely studied poets such as Leigh Hunt, Charlotte Smith, Felicia Hemans, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Along with its exceptional coverage, the volume is alert to relevant contexts, and opens up ways of understanding Romantic poetry.
The Romantic Poetry Handbook encompasses the entire breadth of the Romantic Movement, beginning with Anna Laetitia Barbauld and running through to Thomas Lovell Beddoes and John Clare. In its central section 'Readings' it explores tensions, change, and continuity within the Romantic Movement, and examines a wide range of individual poems and poets through sensitive, attentive and accessible analyses. In addition, the authors provide a full introduction, a detailed historical and cultural timeline, biographies of the poets whose works are featured in the "Readings" section, and a helpful guide to further reading.
The Romantic Poetry Handbook is an ideal text for undergraduate and postgraduate study of British Romantic poetry. It also will appeal to every reader with an interest in the Romantics and in poetry generally.
List of contents
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Part 1 Introduction 1
Part 2 Timeline of the Late Eighteenth Century and Romantic Period 21
Part 3 Biographies 47
Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825) 49
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) 51
William Blake (1757-1827) 54
Robert Burns (1759-1796) 57
Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) 59
John Clare (1793-1864) 61
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) 63
Felicia Hemans (1793-1835) 66
(James Henry) Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) 69
John Keats (1795-1821) 72
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838) 74
Thomas Moore (1779-1852) 77
Mary Robinson (1758-1800) 80
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) 82
Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) 85
Robert Southey (1774-1843) 87
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 90
Ann Yearsley (1753-1806) 93
Part 4 Readings 95
First?]Generation Romantic Poets 95
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, 'Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq., on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade'; 'The Rights of Woman'; Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem 97
Charlotte Smith, Elegiac Sonnets 101
Charlotte Smith, Beachy Head 107
Ann Yearsley, 'Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave?]trade'; 'Bristol Elegy' 110
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience 115
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell ; The Book of Urizen ; 'The Mental Traveller' 124
Mary Robinson, Sappho and Phaon 132
Robert Burns, Lyrics 137
William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads 144
William Wordsworth, 'Resolution and Independence'; 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality'; 'Elegiac Stanzas, Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont'; 'Surprized by Joy' 152
William Wordsworth, The Prelude 163
William Wordsworth, The Excursion 174
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Conversation Poems: 'The Eolian Harp', 'This Lime?]Tree Bower My Prison', 'Frost at Midnight', and 'Dejection: An Ode' 179
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ; Kubla Khan; 'The Pains of Sleep'; Christabel 187
Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer and The Curse of Kehama 196
Second?]Generation Romantic Poets 203
Thomas Moore, Irish Melodies 205
Leigh Hunt, The Story of Rimini 211
Lord Byron, Lara ; 'When We Two Parted'; 'Stanzas to Augusta'; Manfred 215
Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 223
Lord Byron, Don Juan, Cantos 1-4 232
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab ; Alastor; Laon and Cythna [The Revolt of Islam] 242
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty'; 'Mont Blanc'; 'Ozymandias'; 'Ode to the West Wind'; the late poems to Jane Williams 251
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound; Adonais; The Triumph of Life 260
John Keats, Endymion ; 'Sleep and Poetry'; The Sonnets 268
John Keats, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion 277
John Keats, The 1820 Volume 284
Third?]Generation Romantic Poets 295
John Clare: Lyrics 297
Felicia Hemans, Records of Woman: With Other Poems 304
Letitia Elizabeth Landon, 'Love's Last Lesson'; 'Lines of Life'; 'Lines Written under a Picture of a Girl Burning a Love?]Letter'; 'Sappho's Song'; 'A Child Screening a Dove from a Hawk. By Stewardson' 311
Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Death's Jest?]Book and Lyrics 318
Part 5 Further Reading 325
General Critical Reading 327
Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825) 328
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) 32
About the author
Michael O'Neill (born 1953 in Aldershot, Hampshire) is an English poet, and academic, specialising in the Romantic period and post-war poetry. A graduate of Exeter College, Oxford, O'Neill lectured at Durham University.
Summary
An absorbing survey of poetry written in one of the most revolutionary eras in the history of British literature
This comprehensive survey of British Romantic poetry explores the work of six poets whose names are most closely associated with the Romantic era--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats, Byron, and Shelley--as well as works by other significant but less widely studied poets such as Leigh Hunt, Charlotte Smith, Felicia Hemans, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Along with its exceptional coverage, the volume is alert to relevant contexts, and opens up ways of understanding Romantic poetry.
The Romantic Poetry Handbook encompasses the entire breadth of the Romantic Movement, beginning with Anna Laetitia Barbauld and running through to Thomas Lovell Beddoes and John Clare. In its central section 'Readings' it explores tensions, change, and continuity within the Romantic Movement, and examines a wide range of individual poems and poets through sensitive, attentive and accessible analyses. In addition, the authors provide a full introduction, a detailed historical and cultural timeline, biographies of the poets whose works are featured in the "Readings" section, and a helpful guide to further reading.
The Romantic Poetry Handbook is an ideal text for undergraduate and postgraduate study of British Romantic poetry. It also will appeal to every reader with an interest in the Romantics and in poetry generally.
