Books in the Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism series

This comprehensive history of the Celts from origins to the present draws on archaeological, historical, literary and linguistic evidence.

Discovering the Footsteps of Time' probes the development of a distinctively Scottish tradition of geological travel writing from the seventeenth to early nineteenth century.

'This timely gathering of excellent scholars refreshes and deepens our understanding of "Peterloo." Reading it as now providing an argument for non-violent popular action and now revealing dispersed state violence, the collection broadens our approach to Peterloo to responses in painting, poetry, and plays and to reactions from Ireland, Scotland, and America.'Jeffrey N. Cox, University of Colorado BoulderReflections on the Bicentenary of the 1819 Massacre of Reformers in ManchesterTwo hundred years after the massacre of protestors in Manchester, known as Peterloo, distinguished scholars of Romantic-era literature join together in this commemorative volume to assess the implications of the violence. Contributors explore how attitudes towards violence and the claims of people to participate in government were reflected and revised in the verbal and visual culture of the time. Their analyses provide fresh insights into cultural engagement as a means of resisting oppression and a sign of the resilience of humanity in facing threats and force.Michael Demson is Associate Professor of English at Sam Houston State University.Regina Hewitt is Professor of English at the University of South Florida.Cover image: The Fall of Anarchy, Joseph Mallord William Turner, c.1833-4 © Tate, London 2019Cover design:[EUP logo]edinburghuniversitypress.comISBN 978-1-4744-2856-9Barcode

Engaging with the critical frameworks of cultural geography, cartography, and the burgeoning field of oceanic studies Radical Romantics reformulates theories of colonization and empire in the Romantic period.

The Dissolution of Character in Late Romanticism' studies texts written by contemporary poets, novelists, essayists, journalists, philosophers, phrenologists, sociologists, gossip-mongers and anonymous correspondents.

Literature and Medicine in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press investigates how periodicals cultivated innovative literary forms, ideologies and discourses that reflected and shaped medical culture of Romantic-era Scotland.

Explores the nature of Scottish Romanticism through its relationship to improvementProvides new insight into the concept of 'improvement'Advances current thinking on Scottish RomanticismIdentifies how improvement was involved in key aesthetic innovations in the periodIncludes case studies across poetry, short fiction, drama and the novelThis book develops new insight into the idea of progress as improvement as the basis for an approach to literary Romanticism in the Scottish context. With chapter case studies covering poetry, short fiction, drama and the novel, it examines a range of key writers: Robert Burns, James Hogg, Walter Scott, Joanna Baillie and John Galt. Improvement, as the book explores, provided a dominant theme for literary texts in this period, just as it saturated the wider culture. It was also of real consequence to questions about what literature is and what it can do: a medium of secular belonging, a vehicle of indefinite exchange, an educational tool or a theoretical guide to history.

Zoe Beenstock examines the relationship between two major traditions which have not been considered in conjunction: British Romanticism and social contract philosophy. Her reading offers a new understanding of canonical accounts of retreat by some of British Romanticism's most dominant voices.

Returning to the range of historical fiction written before Scott, Reinventing Liberty challenges this view by returning us to the rich range of historical novels written in the late eighteenth-century. It explores how these works participated in a contentious debate concerning political change and British national identity.

Charts Scottish Romanticism's significant contribution to the making of collective memory in the transatlantic worldOffers an in-depth examination of Scottish Romantic literary ideas on memory and their influence among various cultures in the British Atlantic, broken down into distinct writing modes (memorials, travel memoir, slave narrative, colonial policy paper, emigrant fiction) and contexts (pre- and post-Revolution America, French-Canadian cultural nationalism, the slavery debate, immigration and colonial settlement).Looks at familiar Scottish writers (Walter Scott, John Galt) in new ways, while introducing less familiar ones (Anne Grant, Thomas Pringle).Brings Scottish Romantic literary studies into new engagements with other fields (such as transatlantic and memory studies).Opens up new dialogues between Scottish literature and culture and other literatures and cultures (for example, French-Canadian, Black Diaspora, Indigenous).Scots, who were at the vanguard of British colonial expansion in North America in the Romantic period, believed that their own nation had undergone an unprecedented transformation in only a short span of time. Scottish writers became preoccupied with collective memory, its powerful role in shaping group identity as well as its delicate fragility. McNeil reveals why we must add collective memory to the list of significant contributions Scots made to a culture of modernity.

A study of the production and circulation of literary manuscripts in Romantic-era BritainOffers a detailed examination of the practices of literary manuscript culture, particularly the production, circulation and preservation of manuscripts, based on extensive archival researchDemonstrates how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, in a nuanced study of the interactions between the two mediaExamines the changing cultural attitudes towards literary manuscripts, and how these changes affected practices and valuesSurveys the impact of digital media on our access to and understanding of historical manuscriptsThis book examines how manuscript practices interacted with an expanding print marketplace to nurture and transform the period's literary culture. It unearths the alternative histories manuscripts tell us about British Romantic literary culture, describing the practices by which handwritten documents were written, shared, altered and preserved, and explores the functions they served as instruments of expression and sociability. By demonstrating how literary manuscript culture co-evolved with print culture, this study illuminates the complex entanglements between the media of script and print.

This book pioneers a subfield of Romantic periodical studies, distinct from its neighbours in adjacent historical periods.