Reading, Writing, and Romanticism

This beautifully thought-through and carefully orchestrated book is remarkably wide-ranging in its materials, drawing not only on the work of canonical male poets, but also on the poetry of women writers and on the prose of Romantic essayists. Throughout, Newlyn strikes a balance between theoretical sophistication and nuanced practical criticism. This is a very accomplished and brilliant study. * Michael O'Neill *
Lucy Newlyn's fascinating new study reconsiders and historicises the theory of poetic influence, shifting the focus away from antecedents towards posterity. She brilliantly analyses the relations of fantasy, fear, and anticipation in the mind of the poet when confronted with the idea of an audience. In an impressively wide-ranging discussion, Newlyn shows how the rise of the reader as a figure of both allure and chastisement shaped the poetic projects of significant Romantic poets. The claims of the reader are, Newlyn argues, woven into poems, as both symptoms and defences. Newlyn tells a story of poetic identity which engages with both social life and literary tradition. * Anne Janowitz *
Lucy Newlyn's lucid and eloquent new book shows just how crude - and therefore symptomatic - our idea of literary influence has been. What is inspired about Newlyn's approach is that the newly emerging complicities between readers and writers that she traces in Romanticism begin to seem like the most illuminating paradigm for our distinctively modern relationships with ourselves and others. It is clear, after reading this book, that we have been living in the age of the anxiety of reception. * Adam Philips *