English Romantic Writers and the West Country

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Nicholas Roe

      Pages 1-11

3. Landscapes and Legends

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

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   2. ‘More wondrous far than Egypt’s boasted pyramids’: the South West’s Megaliths in the Romantic Period

      • Joanne Parker

      Pages 15-36

   3. ‘Al under the wyllowe tree’: Chatterton and the Ecology of the West Country

      • Nick Groom

      Pages 37-61

4. The Bristol School: Cottle, Coleridge, and their Circles

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 63-63

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   2. Joseph Cottle and West Country Romanticism

      • Richard Cronin

      Pages 65-78

   3. William Gilbert and his Bristol Circle, 1788–98

      • Paul Cheshire

      Pages 79-98

   4. S. T. Coleridge, Joseph Cottle, and Some Bristol Baptists, 1794–96

      • Timothy Whelan

      Pages 99-114

   5. Coleridge’s Bristol and West Country Radicalism

      • Peter J. Kitson

      Pages 115-128

   6. Radical Bible: Coleridge’s 1790s West Country Politics

      • Anthony John Harding

      Pages 129-151

5. Imagining the West Country

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 153-153

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   2. Wordsworth’s 1793 Journey to the West Country and Wales

      • Carol Kyros Walker

      Pages 155-175

   3. Coleridge in Devon

      • Graham Davidson

      Pages 176-200

   4. Southey’s West Country

      • Lynda Pratt

      Pages 201-217

   5. Romantic Hydrography: Tide and Transit in ‘Tintern Abbey’

      • Damian Walford Davies

      Pages 218-236

   6. The Road Not Taken: Robert Bloomfield’s Wye Valley and the Poetic Imagination

      • Tim Fulford

      Pages 237-254

6. In Pursuit of Spring

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 255-255

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   2. ‘The Outset of Life’: Shelley, Hazlitt, the West Country, and the Revolutionary Imagination

      • Michael O’Neill

      Pages 257-270

   3. ‘Over the Dartmoor Black’: John Keats and the West Country

      • Nicholas Roe

      Pages 271-288

Long confounded with a monolithic British entity or misrepresented as 'Lakers' and 'Cockneys', the diverse regional forms of 'English Romanticism' are ripe for reassessment. Ranging west of a line between the Wye at Tintern and Jane Austen's Chawton, this book offers a first reconfiguration of Romantic culture in terms of English regional identity.

• Coleridge
• English Romanticism
• Figuration
• Imagination
• Jane Austen
• John Keats
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Romanticism
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Thomas Hardy
• William Wordsworth
• Wordsworth
• British and Irish Literature

'This diverse and absorbing book explores some of the ways in which many of the Romantic writers, both major and minor, found a local inspiration in the West Country. Nicholas Roe's well-judged collection relates for the first time a brilliant chapter in English literary history, and vividly evokes some of its most memorable personalities.' - Seamus Perry, Balliol College, Oxford, UK

'This is a diverse, fascinating and entertaining collection...Anyone seriously interested in early literary Romanticism, the West Country's appeal to the literary imagination or in the distinctive regional varieties of literary Romanticism will want to read it.' -Coleridge Bulletin

PAUL CHESHIRE is author of a number of articles on Coleridge and his contemporaries. He is editor of two websites: www.friendsofcoleridge.com and www.williamgilbert.com, and is a trustee of the Friends of Coleridge. He lives and works in Bath, UK RICHARD CRONIN is Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow, UK GRAHAM DAVIDSON is the editor of The Coleridge Bulletin and secretary to The Coleridge Summer Conference TIM FULFORD is a Professor at Nottingham Trent University, UK NICK GROOM is Chair in English at the Universtiy of Exeter's Cornwall Campus, UK ANTHONY JOHN HARDING is Professor Emeritus, University of Saskatchewan, Canada RICHARD HOLMES is the most distinguished Romantic biographer of our times and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the British Academy, UK PETER J. KITSON is Professor of English at the University of Dundee, UK TOM MAYBERRY is the County Heritage Officer for Somerset and Chairman of the Friends of Coleridge charitable trust MICHAEL O'NEILL is Professor of English at Durham University, UK JOANNE PARKER is Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Exeter's Cornwall Campus, UK LYNDA PRATT is Reader in Romanticism at the University of Nottingham, UK DAMIAN WALFORD DAVIES is Reader in Romantic and Victorian Literature in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, UK CAROL KYROS WALKER is Professor Emerita, Department of English, City Colleges of Chicago, US TIMOTHY WHELAN is a Professor of English at Georgia Southern University, US SAEKO YOSHIKAWA is Associate Professor at Kobe City University, Japan

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