An Oxford Companion to The Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832

by Iain McCalman (Editor), Mark Philp (Contributor), John Ernest Cookson (Contributor)

For the first time, this innovative reference book surveys the Romantic Age through all aspects of British culture, rather than in literary or artistic terms alone. This multi-disciplinary approach treats Romanticism both in aesthetic terms--its meaning for painting, music, design, architecture, and literature--and as a historical epoch of "revolutionary" transformations which ushered in modern democratic and industrialized society.

Genres: History, Romanticism, Art

796 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 1999

About the author

Iain McCalman is professor of history and the humanities at the University of Sydney. He has published numerous books and journal articles. His latest book, The Reef: A Passionate History, from Captain Cook to Climate Change, was published in Australia and the USA. Beyond his research, he has been an historical consultant and narrator for the BBC, ABC and other TV and film documentaries. His interest areas are the history of western environmental and cultural crises; scientific voyaging, ethnography and environmentalism and is currently the co-director at the Sydney Environment Institute.

Reviews

[Warwick]

I always love these big encyclopaedic reference works, by means of which the publishing arms of Oxford and Cambridge attempt to outdo each other in thoroughness and intellectual scope. This (from Oxford) is a particularly outstanding example that aims to cover the Romantic Age, by which they mean not ‘sixteen’ but the period from 1776–1832, or roughly from the American Declaration of Independence to the Great Reform Act.

I particularly like the way the editors have structured this. Half the book is a dictionary of key names and concepts; the other half is a collection of long essays on overarching themes of the period (‘Medicine’, ‘Education’, ‘Language’ etc.). The two refer back and forth to each other, so for example the essay on ‘Publishing’ cross-references the encyclopaedia entries for ‘advertising’, ‘copyright’, ‘newspapers’ as well as people from TJ Mathias to William Hazlitt; under the entry for Hazlitt, there is also a call-out to the longer essays on ‘Theatre’ and ‘Painting’ for a discussion of those issues. This alternation works incredibly well at giving you both strategic overview, and granular detail, at your fingertips.

It was pretty impressive to see entries here on quite minor figures I've been interested in, like William Roscoe or Joseph Johnson; and the summaries of more important personalities about whom I now know quite a lot, like Henry Fuseli, are excellent – in many cases better, I thought, than those in the Dictionary of National Biography. There is space amid the bios for entries, too, on such things as the ‘Irish cultural revival’, ‘pornography’, ‘riots and disturbances’ and ‘street literature’, which I suppose tells you something about the kind of things I look up.

My only complaint is a lack of clear sources; it would be nice, under each entry, to have some indication of further reading on the subject, but perhaps the space required for this would be prohibitive. The thematic essays do at least include brief bibliographies. In any case, this is one of those books that's enormously satisfying to slap up on a shelf, and to take down whenever you feel the urge to check the finer points of liberal Toryism, or Mungo Park. Anyone interested in novels, politics or culture of the period will find it hugely rewarding.

[Claris ✨]

pues muy interesante no os voy a mentir, creo que esta vez me lo leeré entero en verano porque pues solo he leido capitulos sueltos que necesitaba pero oye gente muy lista dando info interesante me gusta me gusta

[Jen]

I need to own this, but I can't afford it. Sadly, I ran out of renewals at the LA public libaray, so I'll have to go back and check it out again later. I hardly scratched the surface.