Within key texts of Romantic-era aesthetics, William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, and other writers and theorists pointed to the poet, naturalist, and physician Erasmus Darwin as exemplifying a lack of originality and sensibility in the period’s scientific literature--the very qualities that such literature had actually sought to achieve. The success of this strawman tactic in establishing Romantic-era principles resulted in the historical devaluation of numerous other, especially female, ...

A lively and far-ranging interest in place, space, and situation characterizes the work of Romantic-era British author Charlotte Smith (1749-1806). Featuring ten original essays, an introduction and an epilogue, this volume offers new insights into Smith’s life and work by exploring two central issues: Smith’s place as a foundational writer in her period, and her contribution to the creation of “place” as a concept of social and literary importance. The contributors analyze themes such as ...

Spreading the news of scientific breakthroughs in the eighteenth centuryHistories of Science shows how different forms of media communicated scientific breakthroughs during the long eighteenth century, bringing together eighteen humanities scholars to discuss the representation, reception, and application of natural philosophy in the Atlantic world. In particular, the authors focus on descriptions of scientific discoveries in popular print, with essays on ...

In the mid-eighteenth century, many British authors and literary critics anxiously claimed that poetry was in crisis. These writers complained that modern poets plagiarized classical authors as well as one another, asserted that no new subjects for verse remained, and feared poetry's complete exhaustion. Questioning Nature explores how major women writers of the era—including Mary Shelley, Anna Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith—turned in response to developing disciplines of natural h...