An account of the political background of the British Romantic period

What is it about?

This collection is divided into thematically linked sections, each of which is prefaced with brief notes on themes, issues and texts, and lists of books for further study. The dates of the period have been extended at the beginning to provide extracts from texts that frame the ensuing radical debate that arose around the French Revolution and concludes at the Reform Act of 1832, which can be seen as the culmination of the movement for political reform in the latter half of the Romantic period. The division of topic areas within the volumes into specific areas of interest provides an easy route to negotiate the texts, whereas sections such as 'Women and politics' and 'Colonial politics' highlight previously neglected areas.

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Why is it important?

The project of selecting materials for this large collection of primary texts, editing them to appropriate standards, and contextualizing and introducing them, was a substantial and extensive research activity. It took many hours of archival work, especially because the collection presents a great variety of previously unpublished texts, and even where there were existing secondary accounts the editor wrote new ones from literary-historical first principles. Because the collection represents the work of neglected political activists as well as canonical writers, the proper framing of their writings required substantial research into the political networks of the period. The collection widens areas of debate from those usually represented to include aspects of foreign and colonial policy, female demands for social and political equality, and identifies provincial, as well as metropolitan, issues. This too entail a great deal of primary research as the intention was to offer a fully-realised and complex understanding of the political context and culture, in order to challenge conventional orthodoxies about Britain's socio-political history. This last point is especially true of the twenty-eight page 'General Introduction' to the collection.