Time and Terrain in British Romantic Writing

Walking and its relationship to our mental and cultural lives has been a topic of huge academic and popular interest in the last few years. Here, Alan Vardy explores the role of walking in one of its most obvious locations within English literature: Romanticism. Through chapters focusing on both canonical and non-canonical writings – including rich ephemera – by Joseph Cottle, Coleridge, Dorothy and William Wordsworth, de Quincey and John Clare, Time and Terrain in British Romantic Writing draws out a specific focus on affect studies and the relationship between walking and trauma, examining the relationship between emotional states and movement through space and time. It also takes up the work of lesser-known Romantic writers such as Elizabeth Smith and Thomas Wilkinson in order to mount a broad and deep exploration of the quotidian, fleeting events that nonetheless constitute our subjective selves.

• Explores Romantic walking in plain language, making a complex and poetically rich experience accessible to readers from a range of backgrounds
• Provides a nuanced and granular sense of the social history of Bristol, Edinburgh, the Lake District, and other important sites in the history of British Romanticism
• Engages with canonical Romantics such as Coleridge, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Southey, De Quincey, and Clare, alongside non-canonical writers including Joseph Cottle, Thomas Wilkinson, and Elizabeth Smith