John Thelwall: Selected Poetry and Poetics (Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters)

John Thelwall: Selected Poetry and Poetics is the first modern edition of remarkably wide-ranging and original poetry and criticism of a Romantic-era polymath better known for his political activism than his literary art. John Thelwall stood at the forefront of the 'lost generation' of the 1790s and it wasn't until the late twentieth century that he regained his rightful place in history, as a generation of scholars argued for his significance as a 'maker of the English working class.' A cogent preface introduces his key theories, and eight essays and 125 fully-annotated poems are produced in context with correspondence with major contemporaries from Blake to Byron, historical traditions, and recent critical paradigms of sociable, performative, and gendered romanticism. Drawing on newly-discovered manuscripts, this book offers a representative selection that complements recent editions of Thelwall's political writing, plays and novels, and contributes to an ongoing project of archival rediscovery and critical revival.