British Romantic Poets

This important collection of review articles makes it possible to trace the critical reputations of both major and minor British Romantic poets at the hands of first their contemporaries and then the principal Victorian critics.
The collection also enables the reader to perceive the growing influence of Romanticism on the thinking of those critics of the second half of the nineteenth century who were instrumental in forming the canon of English Literature and instituting it as a field of study in the universities for the first time.
The four volumes
* include minor figures and overlooked women writers
* allow insight into the history of criticism itself as readership became wider and more educated
* trace the critical reputation of certain authors as it changed over time - from contemporary to historical perspective
* trace the perception of Romanticism as a whole and its progress from a new movement to a dominant philosophy in Britain.