This book covers the life and work of a wide range of writers from Coleridge to Wollstonecraft, Hemans, Beckford and their contemporaries. Also encompassing a wealth of material on contexts from the treason trials of 1794 to the coming of gas-light to the London stage in 1817, it provides a panorama of one of the richest periods in British culture.

This volume explores 'the labyrinth of what we call Coleridge' (Virginia Woolf): his poems and prose, their sources, interpretation and reception; his life, troubled marriage and fatherhood, conversation, changing intellectual contexts and legacy. Major entries cover such canonical works as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, 'Kubla Khan', the 'conversation poems' and Biographia Literaria. But a fuller understanding of Coleridge must embrace many lesser-known poems - lyrics, satire, comical squibs. The prose - critical, philosophical, political, religious - ranges from his early radical writings to the more conservative On the Constitution of the Church and State, his influential Shakespeare lectures, and the vast resource of the notebooks. Coleridge read widely throughout his life and engaged extensively with the work of, among many others, Milton, Fielding, Berkeley, Priestley, Kant, Schelling. One of his most important relationships was with William Wordsworth. Another was with Sara Hutchinson. Entries trace Coleridge's changing reputation, from brilliant young activist to the 'Sage of Highgate' to the later apostle of the theories of the imagination and of Practical Criticism. Other topics covered include opium, plagiarism, the French Revolution, Pantisocracy, Unitarianism, and the Salutation and Cat tavern.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Martin Garrett's comprehensive collection presents and explains the history of the critical reception to Massinger's work from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth century. The volume includes extensive selections from the writings of Pepys, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb and Swinburne, as well as briefer comments from Scott, Byron and Keats. Responses to Massinger's plays from writers as diverse as Boswell, Mrs Thrale, Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are discussed in Martin Garrett's introduction, which also includes an account of the plays' original political and theatrical context.

The "Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read these sources direct.

The plays of Philip Massinger (1583-1640) have been at the centre of a recent re-evaluation of the politics of 17th century drama. In their own time, the plays contributed to contemporary arguments about appropriate dramatic language. In the 18th and early 19th centuries they were crucial to the rediscovery of Renaissance drama outside Shakespeare. During the Victorian period Massinger's plays gradually fell from grace, to be rediscovered by a new generation following T.S. Eliot's reappraisal in 1920. This volume presents and explains the history of the critical reception to Massinger's work from the early 17th to the late 19th century. The volume includes extensive selections from the writings of Pepys, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb and Swinburne, as well as briefer comments from Scott, Byron and Keats. Responses to Massinger's plays from writers as diverse as Boswell, Mrs Thrale, Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are discussed in the introduction, which also includes an account of the plays' original political and theatrical context.

This volume considers the work and life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851). It looks not only at Frankenstein and its composition, sources, themes and reception but at the wide range of other work by Shelley including such novels as The Last Man and Mathilda and her tales, reviews, travel writing and the (until recently neglected) Literary Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French writers. There are detailed entries on her personal and/or literary relationship with her parents Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Byron, Coleridge and Claire Clairmont; on her religion, feminism, politics, relation to Romanticism, portraits and representation in drama, film and television; and on the influence of her work on such writers as Poe, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontes, Dickens and H.G. Wells.

Cosy crime fiction is a popular phenomenon, with its safe but intriguing boundaries. This latest addition to the Gothic Fantasy series is packed with armchair detectives, murders in the vicarage, family secrets unravelling in gossipy ears, and the ingredients of a genteel bloodbath in an otherwise delightful village. Contains a fabulous mix of classic and brand new writing, with contemporary authors from the US, Canada, and the UK. Classic authors include: Arnold Bennett, Ernest Bramah, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Conan Doyle, Andrew Forrester, R. Austin Freeman, Anna Katherine Green, Maurice Leblanc, Arthur Morrison, Baroness Orczy, Catherine Louisa Pirkis, Edgar Wallace, Israel Zangwill, G.K. Chesterton.

Oxford started as an Anglo-Saxon border outpost, with a bridge replacing the 'oxen ford' from which it takes its name. It became a centre for trade and religion and developed one of the oldest universities in Europe from the late twelfth century. Since the Middle Ages its individual colleges have gone on building--chapels, halls, accommodation, libraries--in an extraordinary variety of styles from Gothic to Brutalist. Oxford also has many churches, a Covered Market, an extraordinary museum of Natural History in soaring iron, glass and stone, and a flamboyant neo-Jacobean Town Hall. In such a place, suggested W.B. Yeats, 'one almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking'. Nevertheless, Oxford has become a busy modern city. For much of the twentieth century the car industry, established in Cowley by William Morris (Lord Nuffield), dominated local life. Today there are cinemas, theatres, innumerable restaurants, shopping centres, an ice-rink, business and technology centres, close links to London by bus and train. Amidst the expanding city Oxford University retains its academic excellence, its student exuberance and its physical beauty.And it has been joined by a notably successful second university, Oxford Brookes. Martin Garrett discusses the literature Oxford has generated: from Chaucer to Lewis Carroll, Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, Barbara Pym, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Iris Murdoch. There are also chapters on architecture, on religion, on theatre, film and art--including Oxford's great museum of art and history the Ashmolean--and on leisure pursuits (punting and rowing, gardens, student pranks, city fairs and carnival). A chapter on commerce focuses on Victorian shops, Cornmarket and the Morris Motor Works, while a brief social history includes the former Oxford Castle and a gallery of dons as rulers--visionary or ignorant, charismatic or dull. Garrett looks at social change, especially the transformation in the position of Oxford women, and considers the city's darker side of crime. A final chapter explores its rich surroundings: the countryside where Matthew Arnold's 'black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames', the baroque grandeur of Blenheim Palace, the ancient windswept Ridgeway and White Horse.

Gustave Flaubert called the Loire "the most French of French rivers." It is the longest river in France and the most varied in scenery and moods. Beginning as a mountain stream in the Ardeche, it issues, 630 miles later, into the Atlantic beyond the great modern port of St.-Nazaire. Small and rapid at first, the Loire runs through dark volcanic hills; further downstream it becomes the broad, slower river of sandy islands, poplars, and chateaux and of the vibrant cities of Orleans, Blois, Tours, and Nantes (the former capital of Brittany). It is lined with vineyards, forests, medieval fortresses, and flamboyant Renaissance palaces. It is fed by countless tributaries, from rivulets to mighty rivers like the Allier, Cher, and Vienne, each with their own remarkable sights.
Martin Garrett follows the Loire's course through cities and countryside, tracing its dramatic history from the days of feuding warlords and barons to the battles of 1940. Looking at the wide range of literature, art, and architecture created along its banks, he considers works from Du Bellay and Balzac to Virginia Woolf, from Renaissance palace builders to Le Corbusier."

Celebrated by writers from Petrach to Peter Mayle, Provence's rugged mountains, wild maquis, and lavender-filled meadows are world-famous. Martin Garrett explores a region littered with ancient monuments and medieval castles. Looking at the vibrant dockside atmosphere of Luberon, he considers how writers like Mistral and Daudet have captured the character of a place and its people. He traces the development of Provence as a Roman outpost, medieval kingdom, and modern region of France, revealing through its landmarks the people and events that have shaped its often tumultuous history. Through its architecture, literature, and popular culture, this book analyzes and celebrates the identity of a region famous for its pastis and petanque. Linking the past to the present, it also evokes the intense light and sun-baked stones that have attracted generations of painters and writers.