In this highly original book Marilyn Butler looks afresh at Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen and other writers, placing them in their proper historical, social, philosophical, and literary contexts. She questions the validity or even the usefulness of grouping such disparate talents under the retrospective label 'Romantic'. For perhaps the first time in a book of this brevity and readability we see these writers from avariety of perspectives: as individuals, as member of literary groups, or as they were interpreted to the reading public through critical journals.… (more)