This book investigates the presence of disability in British Romantic literature, as subject matter, as metaphorical theme, and as lived experience. It is the first collection of its kind, breaking new ground in re-interpreting key texts and providing a challenging overview of this emerging field. The collection offers both a critique of academic Romantic studies and an affirmation of the responsiveness of the Romantic canon to new stimuli. Authors discussed include William Blake, Lord Byron, Ann Batten Cristall, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Darley, Richard Payne Knight, William Gilpin, Mary Robinson, Mary Shelley, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth.

"Disabling Romanticism, edited by Michael Bradshaw, is an outstanding piece of scholarship and contributes mightily to both disability studies in the Humanities and studies in Romanticism. The scrutiny brought to both canonical and under-appreciated Romantic texts is thorough and penetrating; the quality of writing in every chapter is superb; and the arguments presented are persuasive and compelling. Disabling Romanticism builds on and extends in a significant way the work of Helen Deutsch, Lennard Davis, David Mitchell, Sharon Snyder, and Chris Mounsey, among others." (Chris Gabbard, University of North Florida, USA)

About the Author
Michael Bradshaw is Professor of English at Edge Hill University, UK. He has published extensively on Romanticism, including Keats, the Shelleys, The London Magazine, Romantic generations, and Romantic fragment poems; publications include Resurrection Songs: the Poetry of Thomas Lovell Beddoes (2001), and The Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Lovell Beddoes (2007).

Reviews
"I read Michael Bradshaw's edited collection Disabling Romanticism: Body, Mind, and Text with great interest. ... it has only nine articles, every one of them is substantive and useful." (Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 57 (4), 2017)

"Michael Bradshaw's Disabling Romanticism: Body, Mind, and Text is a fine collection. ... This volume is an excellent and compelling introduction to this material. ... I would place this as one of the most valuable volumes to have appeared this year." (SEL Studies in English Literature, Vol. 57 (3), 2017)

"It is also one of the first books devoted to disability studies and British Romanticism, which is surprising when one considers the wealth of material on this topic for scholars working in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. ... the wide range of its essays show the importance of both physical and cognitive disability to British Romanticism. I hope this book will stimulate more sustained work on its topic, including monographs on Romanticism from the perspective of disability studies." (Karen Bourrier, Review 19, nbol-19.org, 2017)

Book Information
ISBN 9781137460639
Author Michael Bradshaw
Format Hardback
Page Count 215
Imprint Palgrave Macmillan
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan