Writing Romanticism : Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, 1784-1807

What is 'Wordsworthian' Romanticism and how did it evolve? This book argues that only by reading Charlotte Smith's poetry in tandem with William Wordsworth's can this question be answered, demonstrating their mutual contribution to the creation of the 'Wordsworthian', through literary analysis and historical contextualizing of their writings.

What is Wordsworthian Romanticism and how did it evolve? What happens if we read the poetry of Charlotte Smith into the equation? Now in paperback for the first time, this book argues that what we have commonly labelled the ''Wordsworthian'' in fact emerges from the sustained attention the young Wordsworth paid to the thematics of place, history, memory, and subjectivity in Smith''s work: a Smithian poetics. What follows is a period of mutual reading, each poet attuned to and absorbing the work of the other, in a virtual partnership more productive to the development of English poetry than any other of the period. Although they met only once, their work shows, throughout the 1790s and until Smith''s death in 1806, a common devotion to innovation and experimentation that establishes Romantic poetry. This book demonstrates that the two poets co-wrote a poetics that stands for many readers as representatively Romantic, and represents a significant and original re-evaluation of the Romantic period.