Part of the 'Transits: Literature, Thought, and Culture, 1650–1850' series, this collection builds on the foundation of post-colonialism to explore how Romantic writers viewed themselves in relation to other peoples, places, and world literatures. As a time when the British Empire was expanding and technological and scientific innovations were making it possible to have easier contact with the rest of the world, this period can be seen as the beginning of 'globalization.' Written by an impressive group of scholars, the essays Gottleib has brought together explore this topic through a wide variety of Romantic authors, from the well-known to the obscure. The most interesting chapters examine the connection between Robert Burns’s writings and the independence movement in India, the genre of Equiano’s Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) and its connection with the ill-fated African English colony in Sierra Leone, and the unusual climate reformation ideas of Erasmus Darwin and Percy Shelley. Both wanted to reform the world’s climate by loosening the ice caps, but Shelley had the even more extreme idea of straightening Earth’s axis in the hope that all the world would enjoy a temperate climate. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Choice Reviews

The excellent essays in the collection tend to explore the interface between nascent imperial formations and emergent understandings of how subjects and populations are linked around the globe

SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900