Michael O’Neill & Madeleine Callaghan 
The Romantic Poetry Handbook 

An absorbing survey of poetry written in one of the most revolutionary eras in the history of British literature

This comprehensive survey of British Romantic poetry explores the work of six poets whose names are most closely associated with the Romantic era–Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats, Byron, and Shelley–as well as works by other significant but less widely studied poets such as Leigh Hunt, Charlotte Smith, Felicia Hemans, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Along with its exceptional coverage, the volume is alert to relevant contexts, and opens up ways of understanding Romantic poetry.

The Romantic Poetry Handbook encompasses the entire breadth of the Romantic Movement, beginning with Anna Laetitia Barbauld and running through to Thomas Lovell Beddoes and John Clare. In its central section ‘Readings’ it explores tensions, change, and continuity within the Romantic Movement, and examines a wide range of individual poems and poets through sensitive, attentive and accessible analyses. In addition, the authors provide a full introduction, a detailed historical and cultural timeline, biographies of the poets whose works are featured in the ‘Readings’ section, and a helpful guide to further reading.

The Romantic Poetry Handbook is an ideal text for undergraduate and postgraduate study of British Romantic poetry. It also will appeal to every reader with an interest in the Romantics and in poetry generally.

About the author

Michael O’Neill (born 1953 in Aldershot, Hampshire) is an English poet, and academic, specialising in the Romantic period and post-war poetry. A graduate of Exeter College, Oxford, O’Neill lectured at Durham University.