The categories of authenticity and sincerity, treated sceptically since the early twentieth century, remain indispensable for the study of Romantic literature and culture. This book, focusing on authors including Wordsworth, Macpherson and Austen, highlights their complexities, showing how they can become meaningful to current critical debates.

Using authors such as Wordsworth, MacPherson and Austen, this book examines Romantic notions of sincerity and authenticity and shows how they can become meaningful to current critical debate

Contents Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors List of Abbreviations Introduction; K.Sinanan& T.Milnes PART I: FORGING AUTHENTICITY Genuity or Ingenuity? Invented Tradition and the Scottish Talent; M.Russett 'A Blank Made': Ossian , Authenticity, and the Possibilities of Forgery; D.Moore Authenticity Among Hacks: Thomas Chatterton's 'Memoirs of a Sad Dog' and Magazine Culture; D.Cook PART II: ACTS OF SINCERITY The Scandal of Sincerity: Wordsworth, Byron, Landon; A.Esterhammer Making Sense of Sincerity in The Prelude ;  T.Milnes   Too Good to be True? Hannah More, Sincerity, and Evangelical Abolitionism; K.Sinanan Sincerity's Repetition: Carlyle, Tennyson and Other Repetitive Victorians; J.Wright PART III: MARKETING THE GENUINE By Its Own Hand: Periodicals and the Paradox of Romantic Authenticity; S.Lodge Acts of Insincerity? Thomas Spence and Radical Print Culture in the 1790s; J.Halliwell PART IV: THE CASE OF AUSTEN Austen, Sincerity and the Standard; A.J.Dick 'Facts are Such Horrible Things!': The Question of Authentic Femininity in Jane Austen; A.Tauchert Notes Bibliography Index