Romanticism and the Letter is a collection of essays that explore various aspects of letter writing in the Romantic period of British Literature. Although the correspondence of the Romantics constitutes a major literary achievement in its own right, it has received relatively little critical attention. Essays focus on the letters of major poets, including Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Keats; novelists and prose writers, including Jane Austen, Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb; and lesser-known writers such as Melesina Trench and Mary Leadbeater. Moving from theories of letter writing, through the period¿s diverse epistolary culture, to essays on individual writers, the collection opens new perspectives for students and scholars of the Romantic period.

Constitutes full-length study of letters written by the poets and other writers of the period

1.Introduction.- 2.Mary O'Connell, Romantic Letter Writing and the Publisher.- 3. Stephen Behrendt, The Letter and the Literary Circle: Mary Leadbeater, Melesina Trench, and the Epistolary Salon.- 4.Oliver Clarkson, The Disappointment of Wordsworth's Letters.- 5.Susan J. Wolfson, Two Wordsworths: Mountain-climbing, Letter-writing.- 6. Gregory Leadbetter, 'Hare and Hound': Ends and Means in Coleridge's Letters.- 7.Lynda Pratt, The 'entire man of letters'?: Robert Southey, Correspondence, and Romantic Incompleteness.- 8. Timothy Webb, Charles Lamb and the Rattle of Existence.- 9. Joe Bray, The Tensions of Jane Austen's Epistolary Style.- 10. Daniel Westwood, 'Transported to your presence': Leigh Hunt's Letters to the Shelleys.- 11. Jane Stabler, 'Foam is their foundation': The Poetics of Byron's letters.- 12.Madeleine Callaghan, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, and the Limits of Letters.- 13. Michael O'Neill, 'The Varied Pauses of His Style': Shelley's Letters from Italy.- 14.Andrew Bennett, John Keats's Epistolary Intimacy.- 15. Anthony Howe, 'don't imagine it an a propos des bottes': Keats, the Letter, and the Poem.- 16. Angela Wright, 'The house of misery': Space and Memory in the Later Correspondence and Literature of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.