Romanticism: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies) - Softcover

In the third edition of his groundbreaking Romanticism: An Anthology, Duncan Wu has made a very good text even better. For those interested in stirring the familiar ingredients (Blake to Byron) back into the rich soup of the times in which they dwelt, this anthology offers the best opportunity. Wu gives us the texts of familiar poems made strange--sometimes by being presented in their first printed version, sometimes by the juxtaposition implied by Wu's canny practice of the anthologizer's art. David Latane, Virginia Commonwealth University The Wu anthology, even more magnificent and indispensable in its Third Edition, is not simply the most useful or the most learned anthology of English Romantic poetry and thought; it is the most exciting. The flames of that excitement are fed by generous cords of minor poets and major essayists, carefully selected, intelligently bundled. But even the old-growth timber of the major poets burns with a brighter flame by being most provocatively introduced, brilliantly edited (especially Blake), and stacked against the kindling of the lesser lyricists. The combination of earlier and revised versions of the same poem is dazzlingly illuminating. One might say of Wu's Romanticism: An Anthology, in comparison to any other collection, what Wu himself says in introducing the early use of the term Romanticism: "Romanticism was 'organic' and 'plastic,' as against the 'mechanical' tendencies of Classicism." Perhaps the anthology itself cannot keep growing in subsequent editions without becoming unwieldy; but the enthusiasm it generates can grow without bounds and will prove both "organic"--well rooted in accurate, historically placed texts--and "plastic," ever subject to imaginative reshaping. Leslie Brisman, Yale University The fourth edition of Duncan Wu s Romanticism: An Anthology offers the perfect combination of breadth and depth. It contains a superb selection of literary texts with thought-provoking annotations and contextual materials that help bring the Romantic era to life. Kim Wheatley, College of William and Mary No one familiar with Duncan Wu's impressive body of Romantic period scholarship and criticism will be surprised at the high quality of Romanticism: An Anthology. I have chosen it for my "British Romantic Poetry" as this text is superior to any other available in its combination of essential canonical poetry with an astute selection of other literature, including extensive representation of women writers. Paul Betz, Georgetown University

Duncan Wu’s Romanticism: An Anthology has been appreciated by thousands of literature students and their teachers across the globe since its first appearance in 1994, and is the most widely used teaching text in the field in the UK. Now in its fourth edition, it stands as the essential work on Romanticism. It remains the only such book to contain complete poems and essays edited especially for this volume from manuscript and early printed sources by Wu, along with his explanatory annotations and author headnotes. This new edition carries all texts from the previous edition, adding Keats’s Isabella and Shelley’s Epipsychidion, as well as a new selection from the poems of Sir Walter Scott. All editorial materials, including annotations, author headnotes, and prefatory materials, are revised for this new edition.

Romanticism: An Anthology remains the only textbook of its kind to include complete and uncut texts of:

1. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (1798)
2. Wordsworth, The Ruined Cottage, The Pedlar, The Two-Part Prelude, Michael, The Brothers and the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800)
3. Charlotte Smith, Elegiac Sonnets (3rd edn, 1786), The Emigrants, Beachy Head
4. Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Records of Woman sequence (all 19 poems)
5. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto III and Don Juan Dedication and Cantos I and II
6. Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Urizen
7. Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, Epipsychidion, The Mask of Anarchy and Adonais
8. Keats, Odes, the two Hyperions, Lamia, Isabella and The Eve of St Agnes
9. Hannah More, Sensibility and Slavery: A Poem
10. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven 
11.  Ann Yearsley, A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave-Trade
12. Helen Maria Williams, A Farewell, for two years, to England

As well as generous selections from the works of Mary Robinson, John Thelwall, Dorothy Wordsworth, Robert Southey, Charles Lamb, Thomas De Quincey, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, John Clare, Letitia Landon and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Visit www.romanticismanthology.com for resources to accompany the anthology, including a dynamic timeline which illustrates key historical and literary events during the Romantic period and features links to useful materials and visual media.