Within key texts of Romanticic-era aesthetics, William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, and other writers and theorists pointed to the poet, naturalist, and physician Erasmus Darwin as exemplifying a lack of originality and sensibility in the period's scientific literature--the very qualities that such literature had actually sought to achieve. The success of this strawman tactic in establishing Romantic-era principles resulted in the historical devaluation of numerous other, especially female, imaginative authors, creating misunderstandings about the aesthetic intentions of the period's scientific literature that continue to hinder and mislead scholars even today. Regenerating Romanticism demonstrates that such strategies enabled some literary critics and arbiters of Romantic-era aesthetics to portray literature and science as locked in competition with one another while also establishing standards for the literary canon that mirrored developing ideas of scientific or biological sexism and racism. With this groundbreaking study, Melissa Bailes renovates understandings of sensibility and its importance to the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century movement of scientific literature within genres such as poetry, novels, travel writing, children's literature that obviously and technically engage with the natural sciences.

A lively and far-ranging interest in place(s), space(s), and situation characterizes the writing of the British Romantic-era author Charlotte Smith (1749-1806). Smith repeatedly questions what it means to be British in her literature. In an era of intense nationalism, Smith explores her world in cosmopolitan terms. Placing Charlotte Smith offers new insights into how Smith utilized the idea of place in multiple ways, such as a theme, an idea, a principle, or a metaphor. Several chapters in the collection examine of Smith's own frequent change of location and the effect on these moves had on her conceptions of home and well-being. Other chapters analyze Smith's accounts of radicalism and patriotism in terms of family and locate Smith's literature within comedic, aesthetic, and scientific traditions. This volume of original essays advances contemporary understanding of two overarching themes in Smith studies: her place as a writer central to her period, and her contribution to the creation of "place" as a thing of social and literary importance.

Within key texts of Romanticic-era aesthetics, William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, and other writers and theorists pointed to the poet, naturalist, and physician Erasmus Darwin as exemplifying a lack of originality and sensibility in the period's scientific literature--the very qualities that such literature had actually sought to achieve. The success of this strawman tactic in establishing Romantic-era principles resulted in the historical devaluation of numerous other, especially female, imaginative authors, creating misunderstandings about the aesthetic intentions of the period's scientific literature that continue to hinder and mislead scholars even today. Regenerating Romanticism demonstrates that such strategies enabled some literary critics and arbiters of Romantic-era aesthetics to portray literature and science as locked in competition with one another while also establishing standards for the literary canon that mirrored developing ideas of scientific or biological sexism and racism. With this groundbreaking study, Melissa Bailes renovates understandings of sensibility and its importance to the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century movement of scientific literature within genres such as poetry, novels, travel writing, children's literature that obviously and technically engage with the natural sciences.