The Romantic-era witch was a remarkably flexible symbol of political and social disorder. The then-recent seventeenth-century witch hunts had already revealed deep anxieties about the subversive potential of women, and the witches who stalk the pages of Gothic poetry and prose or glare menacingly from works of art by Henry Fuseli and William Blake embody revolutionary anger and the possibility of radical social transformation. Despite the fears surrounding such figures, however, the Romant...

Regularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.

Regularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.

Regularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.

Regularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.

Convinced that the end of the world was at hand, many Romantic women writers assumed the role of the female prophet to sound the alarm before the final curtain fell. Orianne Smith argues that their prophecies were performative acts in which the prophet believed herself to be authorized by God to bring about social or religious transformation through her words. Utilizing a wealth of archival material across a wide range of historical documents, including sermons, prophecies, letters and dia...

Scarcely had the Abbey Bell tolled for five minutes, and already was the Church of the Capuchins thronged with Auditors. Do not encourage the idea that the Crowd was assembled either from motives of piety or thirst of information. But very few were influenced by those reasons; and in a city where superstition reigns with such despotic sway as in Madrid, to seek for true devotion would be a fruitless attempt. The Audience now assembled in the Capuchin Church was collected by various causes,...

Each play Illustrated with Illustrations unique to this release, over 350 Illustrations in total.Biography and literary critique includes annotated inline footnotes.The Plays.The Comedies of William Shakespeare.All's Well That Ends Well. (Illustrated)As You Like It. (Illustrated)Comedy of Errors. (Illustrated)Cymbeline. (Illustrated)Love's Labour's Lost. (Illustrated)Mea...

In this brilliant work of literary investigation, Matthew Beaumont shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers: the fetid, treacherous streets known to Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and his ecstatic peregrinations; the feverish ramblings of opium addict Thomas De Quincey; and, among the lamp-lit literary throng, the supreme nightwalker Charles Dickens. We discover how the nocturnal city has inspired some and served as a balm or narcotic to others....

Why did he love her? Curious fool, be still! Is human love the fruit of human will?

Sonnets from the Portuguese, written ca. 1845-1846 and first published in 1850, is a collection of forty-four love sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poems largely chronicle the period leading up to her 1846 marriage to Robert Browning. The collection was acclaimed and popular even in the poet's lifetime and it remains so today. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Pierre, or the ambiguities is the seventh book by Herman Melville, first published in New York in 1852. The novel, which uses many conventions of Gothic fiction, develops the psychological, sexual, and family tensions between Pierre Glendinning, his widowed mother Glendinning Stanley, his cousin Lucy Tartan, his fiancée and Isabel Banford, who is revealed to be his half-sister. According to scholar Henry A. Murray, in writing Pierre Melville «purposed to write his spiritual autobiography i...