This book uses the theme of 'debatable lands', to explore aspects of writing in the Romantic period. Walter Scott brought it to a wider public, and the phrase came to be applied to debates which were intellectual, political or artistic. These debates are pursued in a collection of essays grouped under the headings such as 'Britain and Ireland'.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; C.Lamont & M.Rossington PART I: BRITAIN AND IRELAND Writing on the Borders; F.Stafford 'Viewing Most Things Thro' False Mediums': Iolo Morganwyg (1747-1826), Romantic Forgery and English Perceptions of Wales; M.A.Constantine 'Looking back upon a Highland Prospect': Scott, The Lady of the Lake and the Lowland/Celtic Fringe; S.Oliver He's Come Undone: Gender, Territory, and Hysteria in Rob Roy ; F.Wilson 'The Shadow Line': James Currie's 'Life of Burns' and British Romanticism; N.Leask The Debatable Borders of English and Scottish Song and Ballad Collections; J.Sorenson Debatable Geographies of Romantic Nostalgia: The Redemptive Landscape in Wordsworth and Cobbett; A.Benchimol John Clare and the Question of Place; T.Morton PART II: EUROPE AND BEYOND Uneasy Settlement: Wordsworth and Emigration; K.O'Brien Philosophy's Debatable Land in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria ; J.Faflak Interrogating the 'Valley of Wonders': Some Romantic-Period Debates about Chamonix-Mont Blanc; C.Duffy 'Those Syren-Haunted Seas Beside': Naples in the Work of Staël, Hemans and the Shelleys; N.Sweet Helen Maria Williams' Peru and the Spanish Legacy of the British Empire; J.Sánchez Borderline Engagements: The Crusades in Romantic-Period Drama; D.Saglia Debating India: Southey and The Curse of Kehama ; C.Bolton Debating China: Romantic Fictions of the Qing Empire, 1760-1800; P.J.Kitson 'Aetherial Journies, Submarine Exploits': The Debatable Worlds of Natural History in the Late Eighteenth Century; D.Coleman Select Bibliography Index