Reading Romantic Poetry

Coleridge argued that the most powerful poems were those “to which we return with the greatest pleasure.” Reading Romantic Poetry demonstrates, through careful critical analysis, the ways in which the rich poetry of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries can speak directly to modern audiences. The book introduces readers, often for the first time, to the pleasure of reading Romantic poetry. The famous poets of the period are included: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Burns and Clare—together with a host of less familiar writers, such as the women poets Smith, Yearsley, Barbauld, More, and Hemans. Reading Romantic Poetry introduces the major themes and preoccupations, the key poems and players, as well as the crucial literary circles and influences of a period convulsed by revolution, prolonged warfare and political crisis.

Preface. Chapter One: The Pleasures of Poetry. Painful Pleasures. Public and Private. Chapter Two: Solitude and Sociability. Romantic Solitude. The Romantic Resistance to Solitude. Public and Private Friendships of Poets. Friendships Tested and Trie. Chapter Three: Common C.ncerns and Cultural Connections. Common Causes: The Abolition. Common Culture: Romantic Rainbows. Chapter Four: Traditions and Transformations: Poets as Readers. The Sonnet Revival. Paradise Lost. Native Traditions. Chapter Five: Reading or Listening? Romantic Voices. The Language of Conversation: Lyrical Ballads. Oral and Rural. Standard English and the Freedom of Speech. Chapter Six: Sweet Sounds. Romantic Nightingales. Hidden Birds that Sing. Sound and Sense. Chapter Seven: Poems on Pages. Romantic Poets: Then and Now. Illuminated Books. From Vision to Volume. Christabel, and Other Poems, 1816. Reading according to Composition or Publication? References.

Fiona Stafford is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. She has published on a wide range of Romantic literature, and is especially interested in the literary relationships between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Her most recent work, Local Attachments: The Province of Poetry , explores the vital connection between poetry and place from the Romantic period to the present day.  She has also edited novels by Jane Austen and Mary Shelley and is the author of Brief Lives: Jane Austen .    

"These engagements with the nature of poetry are no mystical celebration of a mysterious power—on the contrary: by focusing on specific attempts Professor Stafford underlines the demystifying facet of these poems which lay bare their own artifice to their readers." ( Cercles , 1 December 2012) "An excellent, well–written resource for those interested in Romantic poetry … Stafford brings a new sensibility and fresh eye to the subject ... Highly recommended." ( Choice , 1 October 2012)