Table of Contents

Introduction: re-collections intranquility; 1. Corpus, canon, and the self-collected author; 2. Subscription reprinting: the third and fifth Elegiac Sonnets; 3. 'Bell's poetics': from The Florence Miscellany to the books of The World; 4. 'A local habitation and a name': remaking Lyrical Ballads; 5. Robert Southey's laureate policy; 6. Shelley incinerated: the heart of The Posthumous Poems.

Promotional Information

Michael Gamer explodes the myth of the unworldly Romantic poet, showing writers' interest in public presence, and profit and loss.

About the Author

Michael Gamer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation (Cambridge, 2000) and Associate Editor of the journal EIR: Essays in Romanticism.

Reviews

'A sure sign of a good critical book is surprise that it hasn't been written before. This is so with Michael Gamer's Romanticism, Self-Canonization, and the Business of Poetry … The argument is cogent, persuasive, and yet fresh.' Octavia Cox, Studies in Romanticism

'… expertly and persuasively argued. … Gamer's excellent book succeeds in getting readers thinking about the lifetimes of hustle involved in posthumous fame and Romantic poetry's bibliographic version of the greatest hits album or box set. Romanticism, Self-Canonization, and the Business of Poetry reveals that the iterative compilation is not merely derivative and that curating for a shot at immortality is literary art as much as business.' Yohei Igarashi, Modern Philology Journal

'Gamer focuses on Romantic writers' employment of publishing and advertising networks, noticing how the poets cannily designed their collections of previously published work to draw in audiences and maximize profits.' Talia Schaffer, Studies in English Literature

'… this study produces remarkable insights, such as its argument that 'Julian and Maddalo', the first poem in Posthumous Poems, is placed where it is to refute established stereotypes of Shelley's character. Readings of this quality occur throughout, and prove that Michael Gamer's study is a rare thing: an original analysis that should influence how we teach and how we read Romantic poetry.' Will Bowers, The Times Literary Supplement

'… quite simply one of the most insightful, lucid, and absorbing new studies of British Romanticism to appear in recent memory. Offering one groundbreaking archival discovery after another - many of which yield provocative new readings of major authors and texts … a remarkably cohesive and clear scholarly study which offers a masterclass in how to engage with previous scholarship on the topic both generously and incisively.' Nicholas Mason, European Romantic Review

'… the ultimate quality of Gamer's study resides in the acuity of its close readings, and in its attentiveness to a novel range of authors.' Andrew Raven, British Society for Literature and Science Reviews (bsls.ac.uk)