Romanticism Books

In 1995 & '96 I was traveling to London regularly on business trips. During one of my site seeing ventures the name of William Blake finally penetrated my consciousness. I became fascinated with the gallery the Tate museum (now Tate Britain) had of his work. I saw this book at the airport and picked it up and it became a London obsession for me. When I would get back to London I would look up streets and sites that I had read about in this WONDERFUL book.

This was the first book of Ackroyd's I read and became a fan immediately. Since he is also a writer of fiction and is a profound scholar of London he offers great insight into Blake and his art. I have since added many other volumes of Blake's works and other books on Blake to my library but I still have deep affection for this book. When someone asks me what book they should read about Blake I always point them to this great book.

You will get to know Blake's life and work, but you will also get to know Blake's relationship to London (where he spent almost all of his life) and to the other artists of his time such as Flaxman, Reynolds, and others. It is even worth re-reading. That is high praise!

With all the fantastic titles of Blake books out there ("Witness Against the Beast"; "Prophet Against Empire") all Ackroyd could come up with was, uh, "Blake"? From the book's bland title to its dry rehashing of many misconceptions and stereotypes about Blake and his work, Ackroyd's is just another voice tossed into the gathering wilderness of Blake scholarship. There is nothing distinctive or even revelatory about this book, and it seemed to me throughout my reading that it was written more out of obligation than passion. Ackroyd seems more interested in toning down the embellishments of a 150-year-old biography (Gilchrist's) than telling a good story, when it has long been understood that Gilchrist was writing with the fervor and love any writer might have when penning the very first biography of a figure whose legend was already blossoming into something gargantuine.

But more frustrating than Ackyrod's dispassion is the eagerness with which he embraces enduring but disastrous presumptions about Blake. Chief among these is the astounding claim (made by so many others besides Ackroyd) that Blake somehow decided to "turn inward" and thus deny fame: "he had the capacity to become a great public and religious poet but, instead, he turned in upon himself and gained neither influence nor reputation." But Blake WAS the "great religious poet" of his day, and Ackroyd himself concedes this early on: "it can truly be said that he is the last great religous poet in England." Well, which is it, Peter? Any suggestion that Blake somehow missed out on his claim to this distinction says less about Blake than it does about our own epoch, in which we find it increasingly hard to measure success with any yardsticks other than those of the dollars, cents and celebrity.

It is no secret that many of history's most brilliant artists died in squalor because of their practical ineptitude. I don't think Blake cared much for mortgage rates or 401Ks when he was around, and thank god he had the courage not to. Ackroyd repeatedly demonstrates his understanding that Blake was a wholly impractical man and completely unskilled at the cruder concerns of survival, yet he still somehow finds a way to hold Blake responsible for his failures as an entrepreneur. "He never could have been a tradesman," Ackroyd writes, "he was 'totally destitute of the dexterity of a London shopman' and was 'sent away from the counter (of his father's shop) as a booby'." A "booby." Sure doesn't sound like the description of a PR genius to me.

But Ackroyd goes even further in what amounts to a clear understanding that in order to become this "public poet" or "great engraver" Blake would have had to either ignore or compromise his artistic integrity. Sound like a familiar paradox? What Blake did for money and what Blake did for himself were two entirely different worlds in his life, and it is the latter that brought us "Jerusalem," "The Four Zoas," "Milton" and so many stirring and vibrantly colored plates. "He could have continued as one of the best copy-engravers of his day," Ackroyd carries on, "But ... he wished to experiment with his own technique." God forbid. Yes, he could have been marketable, but he was a visionary far more intrigued by his private muse than public fortune and the sacrifices it entailed. As Blake himself writes: "I must create a System, or be enslav'd by another mans/I will not reason and Compare: my business is to create."

Throughout this book the conenction is made -- though apparently without Ackyroyd's comprehension -- between convention and success, withdrawal and genius. This does not have to be the fate of every innovator, but with Blake there just doesn't seem to have been any other way. Why Ackroyd choses not to see this when he himself weaves together all the evidence is truly baffling. Observations such as "in want of income or renown, he had decided to return to more orthodox styles" both make and miss the point. This was Blake's life-long misfortune and that of so many artists who, for the sake of survival, often have to make art of massive appeal, not of private vision or originality. Worse, the banality of the work Blake was sometimes hired to illustrate condemned him to contribute material of corresponding weakness. What an acute agony it must have been for this man to be employed by writers whose skill he knew fell far short of his own, and yet to have to sanction their own work with his time and sweat! I'll take poverty over such indignity any day of the week.

Predictably, Blake himself puts it best: "To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way." Amen, Mr. Blake.

To be fair, Ackroyd does show great sympathy for the complexity of Blake's character, and especially for the plight described above. Specifically, Ackroyd's investigation into the various personalities Blake manifested over the years, Blake's deep and heartbreaking identity with Job, and Ackroyd's explication of Blake's "London" are long-lasting contributions to Blake scholarship and show that Ackroyd is capable of far more inspiration than he otherwise exhibits throughout the book. For more informed and illuminating discussions of Blake's life and work, David Erdman's "Prophet Against Empire," Harold Bloom's "Blake's Apocalypse" and, to a lesser extent, E.P. Thompson's "Witness Against the Beast" are so good as to render Ackroyd's book obsolete.

I have really enjoyed Ackroyd's writing in the past. His London Biography, in particular, is an outstanding book.
I had, therefore, high hopes for his life of Blake, the 18th century visionary being a famous Londoner and a fascinating man.

I was a little disappointed. It's certainly learned and well researched (though it eggregiously overuses the word "vouchsafe"), but seems to skip over a number of important points: for one thing, Ackroyd hints darkly the Blake may have had misogynistic tendencies, but then declares "this isn't the place for a discussion of such things". Well, if a balanced biography isn't, I don't know what is.

Additionally, Ackroyd is somewhat credulous in his desire to portray Blake as a misunderstood genius, rather than a somewhat troubled individual. Serious credence is given to statements that certain people in Blake's circle (including, to an extent, Blake himself) were clairvoyant, whilst on the other hand short shrift is given to far more credible notions: such as that Blake - a man given to regular visions of angels and saints, after all - might have been mentally ill. Blake's behaviour may have been that of a genius, but is equally explainable as that of a flat-out nutcase, which appears to have been the general consensus of the time (and might partly explain Blake's lack of success during his own life).

This is a great biography. Blake is a complex character. A visionary, an artist whose writing and paintings created a total vision. Ackroyd doesn't belittle the aspirations or eccentricities of Blake, and fleshes out his portrait with interesting details and contextualizes Blake's life within the world events through which he lived.

Of course the reproductions of Blake's work don't do justice to them. Particularly the watercolors in which the luminous white comes from the color of the unpainted paper. These works come off looking clumsy in reproductions. If you have the chance to see these works in person, the effect is altogether different. Blake created a worldview, and he inhabited that (largely interior) mythos.

Find this book. Buy it, and then do anything you can to see Blake's works themselves.

Peter Ackroyd's 1995 "Blake: A Biography," is a good, but not a great biography of the late 18th-early 19th century poet, prophet, painter, and genius, William Blake. Ackroyd's prose is fluid and easy to follow, but the structuring of the book, while it does mostly follow the pattern of Blake's life, is somewhat inconsistent. There are chapters in which Ackroyd does nothing but profile one poem (do we really need a biographer's interpretation of "The Tyger"?), which detracts from the progress of his narrative. Also, there are points in the course of the book where Ackroyd seems a little too condescending to his subject, which imposes a distance between biographer, subject, and reader - my own preference is for the biographer to bring the reader into the subject's life.

One thing that Ackroyd is good at is allowing Blake and his contemporaries to speak for themselves on a number of topics - revealing a depth of ambivalence towards, for example, Blake's lifelong experience of visions, Blake's business acumen (or lack thereof), his hardheaded independence, and so on. Henry Fuseli, John Flaxman, John Linnell, and of course, William Hayley, to whom Blake owed his three year sojourn at Felpham - all are quoted extensively, revealing the social network in which Blake moved. Ackroyd is at his best when he is examining Blake's movements in life, from engraver's apprentice, to art student, through his life of engraving, and in outlining what he was doing to support himself while he produced his illuminated masterpieces.

Ackroyd falters, though, when he tries to play the intentional fallacy game - attempting to explain Blake's nearly-inexplicable works of poetic and prophetic genius by way of the events of his life. Certainly, Blake is one artist who invites such interpretations, with the fact that he attributed his method of illuminated printing to a conversation with his dead brother, Robert, and the fact that Blake incorporates figures from his own life in his works. However, while Ackroyd acknowledges that biographical interpretations are far too simplistic for Blake's works, he does it anyway. I would have much preferred Ackroyd to stick to the conditions and circumstances in which Blake worked and lived and produced his works, than his half-handed attempts at literary and artistic criticism.

The sheer number of illustrations - three sets of portraits, and samples of Blake's works (commercial and non) - are worthy of praise and show a discernment in selection. However, none are noted or labeled anywhere in the text, which makes for somewhat confusing reading. And there are some works which are mentioned once which are represented in Ackroyd's seleciton of illustrations; while others mentioned several times go completely undepicted.

On the whole though, this is an interesting biography - I found myself reading through a lot of it quite voraciously - but I think this is more a testament to the inherent fascination which William Blake's life provides on its own, than the manner in which Ackroyd presents it. Is the book worth reading? Absolutely. For the Blake novice, it provides an entrancing glimpse which should certainly lead many readers into an enjoyment and appreciation for Blake's work. For the most part, Ackroyd does justice to Blake in presenting him as a working man - like anyone - who struggled and failed to make a name for himself in his own time, but whose genius has outlasted the fame of nearly all of his own artistic contemporaries.

this is a smaller version of a bigger set.. these are nice sort of like excerpts from a larger text.. if you're only studying a small section of history and don't need to ever compare before or after they are ok..but you're better off getting the vol. I or II or both depending on what your needs are. most profs are going to want you to compare and contrast what came before and after ... these books have great pics..but get the larger versions.. as these are a lot of little books, and depending on your class you may need to carry 6 little books with you instead of 1 text..

I wasn't expecting to recieve a new book but I am glad I did and didn't go to the expensive bookstore across the street

I highly recommend this series of six books. When I was in college, I bought one of the books because it looked so interesting even though I wasn't taking the course. In the past year, I've ordered the other books in the series. The books are very interesting and informative, with many color pictures of the art and architecture discussed. The books also discuss literature, philosophy, and the history of science. The graphic layout of the books is excellent and there are many reading selections of literature and philosophy. Even though the series concentrates on western humanities, there are also excellent sections on Asian, African, Islamic, and Native American arts.

After using this book (as well as books 2 and 3) as texts for a class, I must say that I found all of them to be overrated and a poor choice of reference. The volumes contain nice photographs but are ineffective as textbooks. For example, as material is introduced a sudden segue to a new subject leaves the reader cold. I would not recommend any of this series to those who need detail. These books support a teaching methodology that relies upon mundane memorization of incidental information rather than comprehensive study.

"The wisdom of the Egyptians was a proverb with the Greeks, who felt themselves children beside this ancient race." Plato, Timaeus, 22B, (Quoted from Will Durant, the Story of civilization:I)



Early Civilizations:
As summarized by Will Durant, the development of agriculture helped people to settle in villages and create communities, where the early civilizations gradually developed. Ancient people developed their specialized trades, arts, and crafts, establishing an economy based on trade, which led to the first civilizations. Since there were but few written records, as in the case of ancient Egypt, archaeologists have patiently recreated the history of the first civilizations by putting together artifacts and studying ruins which have been discovered over time. A cardinal characteristic of civilizations was that each had a leader, ruler, priests, and civil administrators. It has been discovered also that early civilizations were tinted by a class system of rich and poor people. First great civilizations were built around rivers, which were crucial to their development, and became a catalyst for the growth of agricultural civilization.

The Humanistic Tradition:
This colorful work is a thoughtful, methodical topical approach to the first classical civilizations that helps not only humanity students but all seekers of common global experience understand humanity's creative traditions as a continuum in space and time, rather than isolated events by human races or nations. This compelling acclaimed survey offers a global perspective, through a gifted editor of many vivid illustrations, integrating an amazing ocean of literary sources. It explores the sociopolitical, economic, and artistic contexts of human culture, providing an analytical perspective of the global multicultural quest which humanity pursued. Gloria Fiero's popular work offers the reader an opportunity to be introduced to 'The Humanistic Tradition' clearly demonstrating the close relationship between the culture of the past and sophisticated life and rich culture of the present. The book explores the arts and thought of the West in relation to ideas of other world cultures, from the ancient mid-East to the modern far East.

Ancient World's Light:
The above being said, I would like to caution the reader that the colorful author, and creative editor adopts a rather questionably biased theory, lately in great doubt (Ps. see: Barnel's Black Athena,) that Greek philosophy is the foundation of the Humanistic tradition, at least/ even in the West. Late Medieval Alexandria, Egypt was no doubt, the "Mind of Western Tradition". Eugene Holley Jr. expressed it beautifully, "Historians of philosophy have been wont to begin their story with the Greeks. It may be that we are all mistaken; for among the most ancient fragments left to us by the Egyptians are writings that belong under the rubric of moral philosophy. The Egyptians were the light of the ancient world. They produced many early medical instruments, designed the world's first step pyramid, and laid the empirical groundwork for scientific reasoning. Akhenaton, the rebel pharaoh, is cited as "the Father of Monotheism." Asante stresses throughout the book that these developments came from a confluence of African cultures, and not from other parts of the world. "The practice of the African philosophers along the Nile was a practice of maintaining Maat [the principle of truth, order, and justice] in every aspect of life," he writes. "If we could only learn from them the value of harmony, balance, and righteousness, we would be on our way toward a revival of the spirit of human victory."

Sonia's fine Review:
"The Humanistic Tradition is quite simply the finest book of its type. Fiero manages to integrate the political, cultural, and social history of the world into one coherent and fascinating whole. It is a masterpiece of scholarship... balanced, interesting, easy to read, and consummately beautiful." -- Sonia Sorrell, Pepperdine University

This new edition of Peter Viereck's classic is very gratifying in that it has stood the test of time. Prophetic when it was published before the war, wise and insightful when I first read it in the sixties. Even more interesting forty years later. This is one of the few intellectual historians whose autobiography I would loved to read.

This book has a sweeping scope that can initially seem impressive. Until you fact-check Viereck's claims, especially his citations. This was no genuine exploration of the origins of Nazi ideas, "the roots of the Nazi mind". This was a polemicist with an extremely conservative cultural, religious and political agenda, smearing with a proto-Nazi tag those aesthetic and cultural movements that he happens to dislike.

Viereck's main target was the romantic movement of the 19th century, especially but not only Richard Wagner. Although Viereck wrote in the manner of a moralist condemning the romantics from on high, his agenda led him into certain failings of his own. His portrayal of "Father Jahn" and other figures bear false witness, and he commits academic sins like altering texts, inventing fictitious works, misleading quotation, and the like.

Basically Viereck's story was that the National Socialist flame was lit by Friedrich Jahn, who supposedly influenced the early German romantics, Fichte, Herder and so on, who then passed the torch to Wagner, who synthesised their evil ideas into a fully-fledged Nazi philosophy with all pieces complete, from Führer-principle to Holocaust, which Hitler then picked up and applied.

This is nonsense. First, the historical Friedrich Jahn was neither a proto-Nazi nor an especially important figure. Viereck truthfully called Jahn a German nationalist, which sounds sinister because of 20th century history, but glossed over the fact that Jahn's nationalism came at a time when the German states were occupied, ruled and plundered by foreign armies under Napoleon. To be a nationalist under those circumstances was to resist tyranny, not promote it.

Viereck elides the fact that Jahn was an outspoken democrat who insisted that French rule should be replaced by a democratic, independent and unified Germany. I feel no defensiveness towards Jahn; though no proto-Nazi he was an antisemite with insufficient other merits to balance that fact. But misrepresentation is irritating.

Viereck greatly exaggerates Jahn's importance. Jahn founded his Turnverein (gymnastics organisation) movement in 1811 and lost control of it with his imprisonment in 1819, and though he remained generally respected until his death in 1852, he exercised precious little influence. I've looked for references to Jahn in the work of the German romantics, and found only a satirical _attack_ on Jahn in an 1823 play by the romantic playwright Joseph von Eichendorff.

Viereck's portrait of the early German romantics defames admirable people, brotherhood-of-man democrats and liberals like Herder. Fichte is less admirable, but is also utterly misrepresented. Even those German Romantics who did lose their liberalism in old age didn't turn to any form of radical rightwingery that could be called proto-Nazi. They reverted to conservative Catholicism and monarchism.

Viereck's attack on Wagner illustrates his method. For example Viereck's first, 1941, edition of this book was the first text to frame Wagner by quoting the concluding words of "Judaism in Music" while - without alerting the reader - omitting Wagner's key words, "for then we shall be one and indivisible", in order to hide the fact that Wagner was calling for assimilation. This deception has been much imitated since.

(Viereck also brings in additional words from another Wagner essay. Several of Viereck's supposed Wagner quotes are actually mosaics assembled by Viereck from fragments of Wagner text. Wagner was undoubtedly a disgusting antisemite; Viereck's damning quotes from Cosima's _Diaries_ are real enough. Though selective; he does not cite passages where Wagner defends Jews from antisemitic attacks, or says he would no longer write against the Jews. And Wagner called for assimilation, unlike some of his contemporaries who really were proto-Nazis.)

Viereck claimed that Wagner's call for the founding of a people's army, in his "The Revolution" essay, was "a dream akin to what Röhm in 1934 envisaged for his Storm Troopers." But Wagner's text called for the army to be under the control of a democratically elected government. Did Viereck really not know the difference between Storm Troopers in a Nazi state, and an army accountable to an elected government?

Viereck also claimed that Wagner invented the Führer-principle. You'll find no such idea in Wagner, since Wagner was a young anarchist who eventually drifted as far right as supporting constitutional monarchy. So Viereck claimed that when Wagner used "a number of other terms, especially 'hero', 'folk-king' and 'Barbarossa'", he really meant "Führer". Viereck pioneered the technique of claiming that if Wagner's words don't support your conspiracy theory, then the words must be in a secret code. Thus anything can be said to mean any old thing, making "proving" a case much easier.

Viereck also invented a Wagner essay called "Heroism", which apparently called for racial purity under a dictatorship. There is no such Wagner essay, nor any Wagner essay that ever called for either racial purity or dictatorship. Wagner's clearest late statement on political systems, "State and Religion", advocated constitutional monarchy, the monarch exercising a symbolic function above politics, while political parties of "men of equal rights" contended for office.

Wagner did write, in an essay called "Heroism and Christianity", that there was no such thing as a German race and that Europeans should get used to racial intermingling, explicitly advocating racial equality "under a universal moral concord, such as only Christianity can bring about."

Is "Heroism and Christianity" related to Viereck's fictitious "Heroism" essay? Hard to say. Still, Viereck, who writes from a rightwing Christian worldview, needed to insist that the late Wagner was anti-Christian, though the essays and _Diaries_ show this is quite untrue. This can have comic results, as when Viereck used an anti-Christian remark by the young Wagner to prove that _Parsifal_, written decades later, must be anti-Christian. It may be that Viereck, with his own agenda, was embarrassed by the words "and Christianity" from Wagner's "Heroism and Christianity" title, so he "disappeared" them, along with the actual content of that essay.

Summary: This book has been tremendously influential, especially in its earlier editions. But it is a sustained piece of academic misrepresentation, and its influence has been pernicious and regrettable.


Laon

This transaction reprint from 1941 is a classic chestnut and still reads well as one of the first analyses of the sources of fascist ideology. The case against the Romantics, and such as Fichte, is always important, although it is open to challenge. We can find the earlier sources, but no simple causal sequence--and yet...
As Nietzsche well knew Wagner's spiritual odyssey was a strange one and we see the attempt at high tragedy itself turning into a tragedy, irony indeed.
One of those books... Significant and lively reading with a 'genealogy' on the mark.

_Metapolitics: From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler by Peter Viereck was one of the earliest books written during the World War to show the influence of Wagner on the thinking of Hitler. Previously it had been believed that Nietzsche's amoralistic thinking had played a larger role in the development of Hitler's Third Reich. However, as Viereck shows in this book, it was indeed Wagner who was the antisemite (and one of the most virulent antisemites even prior to the coming of Hitler).

This edition put out by Transaction publishers of _Metapolitics_ is expanded not only to cover the influence of German Romanticism on Hitler (which preceded Wagner himself), but also to include a new introduction and several appendices on Albert Speer (Hitler's architect of the Third Reich), Count Claus von Stauffenberg (the aristocrat who tried to assassinate Hitler), the poet George Heym, and the poet Stefan George and his circle.

In the letters of Richard Wagner is included a letter from an admirer and ardent nationalist which states: "To be genuinely German, politics must soar to metapolitics. The latter is to commonplace pedestrian politics as metaphysics is to physics." Metapolitics as defined by Viereck is the type of political thought serving as inspiration for Hitler and his Third Reich regime.

The book begins with a discussion of German Romanticism and its influence on Hitler. For Viereck, the Third Reich may be perceived in some sense as German Romanticism writ large. The book also discusses the influence of "Father" Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a German nationalist in the 1800's, on the storm troopers and on Volkish nationalism in general. The book next moves on to discussing the case of Wagner. Many of Wagner's operatic pieces can be seen as allegories for different components of his metapolitical thinking. For example, it has been suggested that certain characters (the dwarves and the dragon) represent capitalists or Jews within his operas. The book subsequently discusses Houston Stewart Chamberlain whose racialist tracts served as inspiration for Hitler. Also, the book includes several chapters on Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi philosopher. Rosenberg was also influenced by German Romanticism and his understanding of history proved particularly virulent. Viereck opposed Christian morality to Rosenberg's neo-paganism.

In sum, this book presents an interesting discussion of some of the precursors of the Third Reich. Both German Romanticism and Richard Wagner played a large part in the development of the thinking of Hitler, and also in many of his primary proponents and Nazi fellow travelers.

Tom Lehrer a few decades back satirically warned us about the march of 'the Folk Song Army'. He was lampooning the social radicals of America in the early 1960s. Maybe his warning came too late for Germany which had it's own folk song army to deal with.

Recently deceased Peter Viereck is something of an interesting character. His father, George Sylvester Viereck, possibly the Kaiser's illegitimate grandson, argued the pro-German case in America during Woodrow Wilson's run up to war. By all accounts his Great War oppositionism was both principled and loyal to America. After Versailles however GSV became more radical in his pro-Germanism and was eventually imprisoned as a German agent during World War Two. He also broke with his two sons around this time, both of whom served in the US Army with one dying in the Anzio landings, and the other, Peter, working for the Army Psychological Warfare Division.

Peter Viereck sees Germany as uniquely torn between two souls, in short, a western looking, european and Christian civilisation soul and a northern looking Volkish Kultur soul. Goethe versus Wagner. Considering his family history perhaps the conflict struck home.

Peter Viereck wrote "Metapolitics" whilst a Harvard undergraduate. Not bad work for a twenty four year old! He went on to an academic career and earned the 1949 Pullitzer Prize for poetry. A life long political conservative he was an ardent critic of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

The term 'metapolitics' is derived from Wagner, similar to 'geopolitics', it refers to the German nationalists' metaphysical vision as it approached cultural and spiritual issues, where 'geopolitics' looked at the intersection of geography and politics. The book was one of the first in English to explore the Wagnerian roots of Nazism. Wagner was not only a great composer but something of a radical political pamphleteer. Despite having jewish promoters and agents Wagner blamed a jewish conspiracy for is works not being as popular as he imagined. Viereck explores not only the cultural roots of nazism but the appeal of nazism to what he calls Germany's "Greenwich Village Warriors", alienated bohemians in exile in their own hometown. And then there is the unusual number of 'failed' artists drawn to the nazi movement.

Viereck's analysis starts with Ludwig Jahn, who Viereck recognises as a pioneer German "Volkish" nationalist, a forerunner of nazism but perhaps one who would be appalled by the later developments of his thought. It proceeds via Wagner, the Wagnerians and moves on to Hitler's "official philosopher" Rosenberg.

He speculates Wagner may also be appalled at how his ideas were used but in Wagner's case, he was truly a proto-nazi, there is a stronger chain of responsibility than in Jahn's case, despite some minor retreat from full bore Volkism towards the end of his career. In any case , the first generation of 'Wagnerites', including family members (for example, the in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain) were not just proto-nazis but the real thing, indeed taking Hitler into their circle as "Uncle Wolf" to the children.

Viereck explores the development of Volkish German romanticism, and he doesn't condemn all threads of romanticism, in laying a popular and intellectual foundation for the later growth of nazism. He also explores the role if Rosenberg and the "Realpolitlik" pioneers, Fichte, Hegel and Treitschke in the development of nazi ideas. Viereck notes the attempts by the Nazis to appropriate Nietzche, something some of the philosopher's family promoted, but highlights Nietzche's prescient warnings against the rise of antisemitic German nationalism.

Viereck's analysis helps get us beyond the simplistic and misleading Verailles / inflation / depression analyses of the origins of nazism. Much of Rosenberg's "Myth of the Twentieth Cenury" was written before Versailles and the worst of the Great Depression did not hit Germany until after the Nazis had already emerged as Germany's biggest political party. Viereck provides some unfortunately brief debunking of economic determinist explanations of Nazism, focusing mainly on the how Hitler double crossed and ultimately expropriated his former sponsor, the industrialist Thysen. To his credit he does recognise that the allies were not guiltless in feeding the bear, besides the well known condemnations of Chamberlainian appeasement, there was the British Hunger blockade in World War 1 and the French occupation of the Rhineland, all of which undermined the liberal west's claim to moral leadership, at least in the eyes of the German public, when dealing with Hitler.

Viereck devotes about a chapter or so to another idea that needs more exposure. He says we tend to overestimate the otherwise rootless Weimar Republic. It's very foundation may have been something of a strategem by Germany's military leaders to avoid popular responsibility for defeat, obtain a softer peace and pave the way for a militarist renewal down the track. Certainly the artifice of circumventing Versailles armament restrictions was well practiced before Hitler assumed power. And his assumption of power was aided by old school militarists who retained pivotal positions in the army and bureaucracy throughout the Weimar period where they behaved like a government-in-exile at home.

Still the core of Viereck's book is in analysing the 'spiritual' dimension of nazism. This can be easily forgotten, for example, nazi racism, although it did attract a corps of racial scientists, their role, however repulsive, was more opportunist and parasitic to the whole enterprise. Nazi racialism, as expounded by Rosenberg was not even a corrupted version of darwinism, it was essentially a romantic attachment to 'blood'.

Readers should check the various editions of Metapolitics available. I have the 1941 edition which comes with excellent appendices that include correspondence with Wagner scholar Thomas Mann as well as some reviews from the period. I understand the later editions include more supplementary material. Also readers should hunt online for Peter Viereck's 2004 essay entitled "Metapolitcs Revisited" which provides some additional insights and further developments that I am sure readers of the original volume would appreciate.

By Richards' own account this book is not your traditional history of the philosophy of science. It is trying to please many masters, is trying to be accessible to people interested in many different types of things, and I think that it does it very well.

The first point that I wish to focus on is the biographic information presented in this work. This is the most impressive and well-executed part of the text. Much of it (around 200 odd pages) is simply and unabashedly a biography of several key figures in the history of Romanticism. The first 100 pages of the book gives an account of the lives of the main Romantics, and towards the end we get another impressive slog of information specifically about Goethe. Interspersed through the other sections, however, are discussions on the biography of the key scientists of the time, so that section seems more like an intellectual biography. The weight of information that he brings to bear on these discussions is impressive. My only concern is why Kant and Schiller were left out of this. Kant's first and third critique get continual mention throughout, and the reactions people had to the third critique was what really glued this book together. I would have liked to have seen more of a discussion of Kant, but then most people who would read this book should know it already, so its probably not a big issue. But my main concern was Schiller's absence. Many authors (Pinkard, Beiser, Henrich etc.) write books on this time, and all mention how big an influence Schiller is, and yet no-one ever dedicated a whole chapter to him. You find out a lot about him here, but its spread our throughout the work.

The second emphasis on this text is the history of the philosophy. By philosophy here I am referring to the metaphysics and the idealism of the time, rather than the philosophy of science. Given the difficulty of the philosophy he is dealing with Richards does a very admirable job of making it lucid, and treading that fine line between detail and generalisation. My only concern is that the idealist conception of nature, and how representations gain their content without referring to a thing-in-itself, though central to the thesis, was probably underdeveloped. But besides that, this is a really excellent introduction, particularly to the works of Schelling, and it has some great gems about Kant's third critique.

Finally this book is a history of the philosophy of science. This is the area I know least amount, but it is the centre of this work. I can't comment too much on the accuracy of the work, but I thought that the discussion of the development of the concept of organicism was incredibly interesting, and I thought that the concluding arguments of the book, regarding Darwin's relationship to the Idealists, was well put forward. It certainly made me interested in exploring these issues more.

One last comment I'd like to make, which I see has been made by other reviewers, regards why Goethe was chosen as the focus of this book. He was a great poet, indeed, but I do think that his scientific nor philosophical acheivements were so great that fully half of the book should be dedicated to him specifically. He was an integral figure in these times, and for someone of his stature to have supported a Romantic conception of organicism would certainly have put it in good stead on the Continent, and beyond (as it seemed to have done). But I really thought more focus on Reil and the other biologists would have been welcome.

Overall this is a very impressive work, and in structure it is a testament to philosophical simplicity. Give a personal biography, then an intellectual biography, then examine the impacts on others. It is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in Romanticism, or the philosophy of science, and even, as I mentioned, for those who like to read intellectual biographies (which I love).

The romantics envisioned a unity of science and aesthetics. Their vision can be seen as an extrapolation of Kant's theories.

According to Kant, aesthetics and science are connected as follows. "Organisms and aesthetic objects both exemplify purposiveness in their constructions---their parts harmonize and stand in reciprocal relation to one another. Such purposiveness could not arise by accident ... or at least our human reason balks at such notion." (p. 70). "In our appreciation of an artistic work, our understanding considers its various parts, allowing the free play of imagination, to get a sense of the harmony of forms; as imagination recreates those forms and compares their arrangements with the requirements of understanding, a feeling of purposiveness arises, an aesthetic feeling that we generically call a feeling of beauty. ... The situation of the biologist is comparable. When he assesses the traits of an organism, the same reflective procedure occurs: through an initial exploration of the parts, he formulates an idea of the whole---though now a conscious and articulate conception of the whole, an archetype---and thereby understands the organism's particular traits in relation to the whole. Indeed, the student of nature must, according to Kant, judge the structures investigated as if they came to exist by reason of the archetype... But in this instance the biologist makes only a heuristic assessment, and does not---cannot---presume the idea at which he arrives to have actually caused the structure." (pp. 488-489).

But elsewhere Kant had showed that the way we perceive the world is coloured by our cognitive apparatus. This prompted Fichte to claim that "Kantianism properly understood" implied the absolute subjectivity of nature: "even the manifold of sense has been produced by us out of our own creative faculty" (p. 79). Kant of course protested, as did Schiller: "The world is for [Fichte] only a ball, which the I has thrown and which it again catches in reflection!! He ought, therefore, to have simply declared his divinity, something we expect any day now." (p. 83). Nevertheless, Fichte's ideas took hold among the younger generation. Schelling, "the philosopher king of the Romantic circle," maintained similarly that "'the objective world is only the original, though unconscious, poetry of the mind.'" "Hence, the biologist's great aid in comprehending nature would be poetic, that is, aesthetic judgement" (p. 114), or, in Schelling's words, "'the common organ of philosophy---and the keystone of the whole arch---is the philosophy of art'" (p. 160).

These ideas had significant impact on biological research. "Most biologists of the period ... believed, in part due to Schelling, that teleological processes could be found governing natural phenomena and that valid laws could be formulated to capture such relationships," contrary to Kant who "maintained that biology could never really be a science, but at best only a loose system of uncertain empirical regularities" (p. 231). One example is Blumenbach, who claimed that "there exists in all living creatures, from men to maggots and from cedar tree to mold, a particular inborn, lifelong active drive. This drive initially bestows on creatures their for, then preserves it, and, if they become injured, where possible restores their form. ... I give it the name of Bildungstrieb. (pp. 218-219). He hoped to uncover laws governing this force, such as, "for instance, that the strength of the Bildungstrieb was inversely related to the age of the organism" (p. 226).

Goethe was also a scientist of this type. As the above romantics, "Goethe resonated to several features of Kant's conception" (p. 430), but he was also influenced by Spinoza. "Spinoza's conception of the amor Dei intellectualis, that deeply intuitive relation of the individual min to God-Nature, became emblematic of Goethe's own love and pursuit of nature. The identification of the self with nature meant, as Goethe came to believe, that deep within the soul pathways could be found to hidden aspects of nature and that discoveries within one world would lead to revelations in the other." (p. 377).

One philosophically motivated discovery made by Goethe was the intermaxillary bone in man. "Contemporary authorities ... had denied the existence of [the intermaxillary bone] in human beings [and] offered up this bone as a natural sign of man's radical separation from the animals" (p. 369). Goethe proved them wrong: "I have found---neither gold, nor silver, but something that makes me unspeakably glad---the os intermaxillare in man!" (p. 369). This was in line with his philosophical convictions. "For Goethe, the Spinozistic approach to anatomy meant that one had to examine the range of animal skeletons in comparative fashion in order to come to an adequate idea, or archetype, of the animal skeleton. Having achieved such an idea would then indicate how each of the skeletal parts related internally. If the human skeleton, for instance, exhibited a pattern comparable to other vertebrates, then one would expect that every kind of bone would be represented in the human frame ... Hence the expectation that human beings also exhibited an os intermaxilliaris." (p. 380).

Goethe followed the same principle in his botanical researches. During his first Italian journey, when in Palermo, "Goethe went to the public gardens in the city to relax with a copy of the Odyssey. ... But as he sat down ..., as he recalled, 'another spirit seized me...' He gazed around the garden, and inquired of himself: 'Whether I might not find the Urpflanze within this mass of plants? Something like that must exist! How else would I recognize that this structure or that was a plant, if they were not all formed according to a model'" (p. 395). This "quasi-Platonic principle ... carried enormous weight within him" (p. 416). When he tried to explain his Urpflanze to Schiller, however, "Schiller listened politely, shook his head, and exclaimed: 'that's no observation, that's an idea.' Goethe recalled being struck by this remark and not a little irritated. He replied: 'Well, I am quite happy that I have ideas without knowing of them and that I can even see them.'" (p. 424).

But Goethe did not willingly call himself a romantic, famously saying "The classical I call healthy and the Romantic sick" (p. 458). "With the Romantic there is nothing natural, original, but something contrived, labored, overblown, overdone, and bizarre, descending into the grotesque and into caricature." (p. 458). In science, the antidote to such "Schwärmerei and obscurity" (p. 463) was to be empiricism, while maintaining the unity of art and science. "'These great works of art are comparable to the great works of nature; they have been created by men according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary, imaginary collapses. Here is necessity, here is God.'" (p. 402). Goethe's emphasis on empiricism was surely healthy, but he went too far. The culmination of his empirical work is his optics, where he thought that "Newton sinned" in that he "selectively employed a few experiments to prove what he had already assumed" (p. 437). "He believed that as a result of the multitude and variety of experiments he was conducting that Newton's hypothesis would 'collapse like an old wall as soon as I will have undermined its foundation'" (p. 441). This of course did not happen and "with blighted hopes..., Goethe returned to literature to expiate his depressed cynicism about human folly" (p. 441). In the end he revised his views on empiricism (p. 438) and had to admit that he was a romantic after all. "Schiller 'demonstrated to me that I myself, against my will, was a Romantic'" (p. 458).

In the epilogue, Richards notes that Darwin had a rather romantic outlook. "Darwin never referred to or conceived natural selection as operating in mechanical fashion" (p. 534), instead natural selection "was cast in the image of a divine Being, whose 'forethought' might teleologically produce creatures of great 'beauty' and with progressively intricate 'adaptations.' Natural selection, in its original, metaphorical conception, was hardly machinelike, rather godlike" (p. 536). "Indeed, one might even say, without distortion, that evolutionary theory was Goethean morphology running on geological time" (p. 407).

I got a lot more from this book than I expected, though it's less than it promises. It reads like droppings from the author's hobbies of researching German romanticism and evolutionary theory. It comes in disconnected chunks that could be separate books.

But I loved learning about "Bildungstreib," the romantic root behind Humbolt's travels and his journals of those travels that so inspired Darwin. It accounted for the "grandeur" Darwin saw in his evolutionary theories that is so at odds with the grubby mechanism of natural selection he came up with. That sense of grandeur Darwin got from German romanticism he used to sell his mechanism along with the really-grand theory of evolution itself.

I have long been curious about Goethe, but the extended treatment in this book read as if for specialists. In general I felt there was material here for a popular book on the German-romantic contribution to biology pre-evolutionary theory, but this book isn't it. There is in fact little about Humbolt.

Richards presents two major theses here. First, that German Romantic science was not a dead end, but led directly to Darwin's theories of evolution. Second, that the personal sexual behavior of the Romantics was linked to a view of nature itself as sexualized. The present reviewer actually agrees with Richards on these points, yet still found this a disappointing and unbalanced book.

Richards is obsessed with Goethe. This is all very proper and German, and no doubt leads to brownie points in the form of research grants. It is also a woefully unfair and lopsided view. We get all the details about Goethe's mistresses, such deathless poetry as "I have fallen so in love with her/It's if I had drunk her blood" (where is Buffy when you really need her?), the intermaxillary bone, the Urplanze, and so on and on. This maximization comes at the price of minimizing every other contemporary thinker. Herder is dismissed as merely a sidekick of Goethe - indeed, since the bibliography doesn't list the Suphan edition (page 562) one may wonder if Richards even bothered to read the "Ideen" in full. Among the younger Romantics, only Schelling receives anything like a fair discussion. Alexander von Humboldt, who as a scientist and explorer had enormous and lasting influence not only on the German but European and American scientific scene, and whom Darwin himself credited with inspiring him, is given particularly derisive and cursory treatment, and one suspects more than a whiff of homophobia here. Chamisso, who was inferior to Goethe as a poet, but overwhelmingly superior to him as a scientist, doesn't even get so much as a footnote.

There could be a good book written on romantic science and its continuing if unacknowledged influence - but this isn't it.

Robert J. Richards is the only scholar that has offered a huge and conclusive amount of evidence on the Darwin's true anti-mechanistic prespective. His previous little book showing albeit succintely a similar perspective, "The Meaning of Evolution", was injustely ignored. Now Professor Richards offers us a long, vivid and brilliant reconstruction of the german romantic frame we need to undertand adequetely de meaning of Darwin's true evolutionary prespective. Orthodox neo-darwinist an neo-sythetic (mechanistic) views are still jailed into the positivistic received view. Kuhnian trends haven't produced here a significative conceptual turn because their inability to cope with the "internalistic" challenges the natural selection theory actually posses. Richards displays masterfully in the book the socio-cultural dimensions of the problem, but knows also very well how to go far. If we undestand a conceptual problem we can reconstruct their socio-institucional history, the reverse not being true. The unprejudiced conceptual commitments Richards assume on evolutionary theory, particularly on natural selecction's concept, enables him to show us conclusively the strong and commnly ignored bonds that brings together Kant, the Romantic conception of life and Darwin work. Nobody concerned shoul ignore this book and perspective in advance.

One of the most interesting essays I've ever read. Exciting the chapters devoted to Chopin and Schumann. Not only pianists can benefit from its reading, but every musician will find extraordinary subtle commentaries and analysis. A book made devoutly.

This book should be called the Romantic Piano, as its expertise does not extend beyond the piano. Three chapters on Chopin and not one on Wagner or Verdi? If you want a book on romantic piano, this is a fantastic one; if you want a great text on 19th century music, check out Dahlhaus.

Rosen's "The Romantic Generation" is really written for people with a thorough grounding in music theory, but even with a limited understanding of harmony, counterpoint, and structure, I was able to derive much enjoyment from these essays.

Rosen's first love is obviously Chopin, and his three chapters on the Polish master are essential reading, I think, for anyone trying to master the subject. Rosen effectively explodes any lingering remnants of the charge that Chopin was incapable of handling large forms, or was an "untrained genius." He makes a convincing case for Chopin as the most assiduously trained and capable musician of his generation -- and it was not a generation of lightweights. The structural analyses of the Ballades (particularly the 4th) are excellent, but where Rosen really shines is in his examination of the Etudes and Mazurkas. In the former, he elucidates the Etudes' pivotal place in the history of concert music, and the interplay of theoretical composition and physical execution that they embody. In the latter, Rosen explores the Mazurkas as the receptacles of Chopin's most subtle, and personal, artistic accomplishments.

Other chapters are not always as convincing, but Rosen's examinations of Liszt, Mendellsohn, Berlioz, and Schumann all have their merits. After Chopin, Schumann is probably closest to Rosen's heart, and is given the most compelling treatment.

While I was studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music, it sometimes seemed that the professors chose only the most abstruse works of scholarship as their classroom texts. The worst example was a required text for a 20th Century analysis course, in which the author clearly had nothing to say, and merely strung along interminable chapters of the most irritating technical jargon. To add insult to injury, the campus bookstore stuck me for fifty or sixty dollars for this piece of academic trash. This text, and hordes of others like it, represents the poorest sort of scholarship. I often wonder what these writers hope to accomplish. I imagine their work must have some snob appeal, but education is too important, and life is far too short to waste time on this sort of foolishness. Imagine my elation than, upon discovering the work of Charles Rosen. I first read "Sonata Forms" in preparation for an analysis class I was teaching, and a little while later I read "The Classical Style," one of the very finest books ever written about music. Mr. Rosen has a lot to say, and his style has an engaging quality that would be the despair of many a young novelist. In fact he writes so well, that I frequently had difficulty in putting these books down. His points are well presented and amply supported with musical examples (a great challenge for the "inner ear" although I sometimes cheat and take them to the keyboard). I also enjoy Mr. Rosen's humor, which emerges at all the right moments. On the strength of these works, I devoured "The Romantic Generation" as soon as I could get a copy of it. This is a remarkable book. It maintains and even surpasses the depth of understanding achieved in "The Classical Style." Particularly with the inclusion of a breathtaking study of Romantic literature and painting, which does a very good job of showing the music in its context without going overboard into historical trivia. Mr. Rosen is (as always) very thorough. A special highlight of the book is its study of Chopin. Indeed, the Chopin section is so extensive that the other chapters seem a little cursory at first glance- especially the discussion of Mendelssohn. However, I'm sure this is just a reflection of my personal bias. So many great things are said, with such grace and wit about Liszt, Berlioz and Schumann, that I am reluctant to reiterate it in my own clumsy style, and can only commend to you the original. The only real criticism I have is that the enclosed CD is far too short. Mr. Rosen's performances have a clarity reminiscent of his prose, which is a real joy to hear. For all the penetrating analysis of the Chopin Ballades and the comprehensive study of the Mazurkas, it was odd to find him represented by only two Nocturnes. I was also sorry not to find more examples of the Schumann works: particularly the "Davidsbundlertanze." The Liszt examples though, were very well chosen. There was a time in my life when I felt as though there might be a book in me, I saw myself in the somewhat grandiose armor of a Crusader for Clarity in academic writing. It is a great relief for me, and fortunate for future generations, that Mr. Rosen has already accomplished this and henceforth I'll stick with playing the cello.

Rosen's knowledge and mastery of music is astounding. He really knows what he is talking about. There is a-lot in the chapters on Chopin.

But this is a really hard book. Don't expect to learn much unless you have a very firm grasp of music theory and piano. There are dozens and dozens of pages of notes ... often from works that are not that familar. Even when I was musically familar with some of the works I could not work through Rosen's analysis. The book also seems poorly edited in some places.

Arrived in excellent condition, fabulous book,prompt service, couldn't ask for any better value!

If you are a fan of the Hudson River school, you will not be disappointed with this book. The illustrations are large and clear, and the overview is precise. However, as noted by a previous reviewer, this is not a very detailed book. It is only a coffee table book after all.

I was more than pleased when I received this book. I teach American Literature classes at a university. I have been searching for an art book which represents adequate examples of the Hudson River School. I plan to use this book to show students samples of this type of early American art including artist Thomas Cole's paintings in connection with this time period in literature. I feel I could not have ordered a book which could have suited my purposes any better!

This book is a reprint of a 1978 exhibition catalogue of one person's private collection. There is a short (7 page) essay at the beginning which gives an overview of the Hudson River School. The rest of the book consists of illustrations of around 60 paintings, each by a different artist. Most of the artists are obscure, while the well-known painters (Bierstadt, Church, Cole) are not represented by their best works.

If you want an in-depth study of the Hudson River School with illustrations of its best paintings, this is not the book for you.

I bought this book as an undergraduate when I first began studying the Romantics and it helped me immensely. I fell in love with them and after just completing a Masters Degree, I now feel very comfortable with their poetry. I would highly recommend this book for anyone struggling to understand Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc., for the first time. They can seem so intimidating in the beginning and this book can guide the student to a better understanding of what they were trying to say and why.

It's a slim little volume which begins with a chapter entitled "Understanding Romantic Poetry" and moves on to "Studying a Blake poem" with Blake being one of the more complex writers of the Romantic period. O'Flinn dedicates two chapters to Wordsworth, i.e., "Lyrical Ballads" and then "The Prelude Books I and II." In Chapter 5 he covers Coleridge and in Chapter 6 Keats. Percy Shelley and Lord Byron are discussed but not to the detail of the other poets. Chapter 7 the next to last chapter in the book is entitled "Working with women's poetry" which is one of the weaker chapters of the book.

Again, a good beginner's guide to reading and understanding the Romantic Period and their poetry.

This book provides a loose, but organic entry into the study of lyrical and narrative Romantic verse. The author does not neglect historical, political and biographical context. On the other hand, he does not overanalyze authors or apply any modern critical approaches to their work, though he refers to them and demonstrates awareness of them.

One of the strongest aspects of the author's approach is his development and rigorous application of a methodical "recipe" for working through difficult poems. Though the approach is limited - it serves as a useful launching point for student's who are intimidated and/or relatively disinterested in poetry. The method is refreshing when employed in the classroom setting, easily personalized by the student and is certainly consistant with basic critical approaches (especially the New School approach that is so popular with disciplined high school teachers). In short, it leaves students with little excuse to say "I didn't understand it" when they are called on.

The author surveys a poem or two by most of the major Romantic poets and includes useful chapters on romantic women poets and writing about poetry. The format of the book does not permit a teacher to overly rely on it "as a script" but can help a teacher (who has diligently researched the poems and poets they have assigned) tie together many of the important threads of Romantic poetry in a cohesive manner. I would especially recommend this book for teachers who do not have a strong background in this genre/era.

At times the style of the writing is a tad self-indulgent and irritatingly vernacular, but is generally clear and useful.

Let me begin by noting my own orientation: as director of a humanities-based MA program in Media Studies, I teach a core course in Western Cultural History, and have been looking for sourcebooks in several areas -- English Romantic poetry being one of them, European Baroque painting, and Impressionism are two important others -- that would give students a profound and extensive immersion in the works of these periods (it being my job to put those works into context).

In that framework, I have found the New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse to be far and away the most useful in its area.

First and foremost, the selection is nearly comprehensive. Practically every important poem of the period is included, and a number of interesting but much less well-known works too.

This is generally a good thing, of course, but especially so when it comes to Romantic poetry, as what makes this period so powerful and engaging is the fact that so many crucial verse works appeared during this time, so the more the students (and others) can juxtapose them, the better sense of both the individual poems AND the period as a whole they will receive.

This is reinforced by the method of presentation, which is fundamentally chronological -- i.e., the poems are arrayed by the year in which they first appeared, and only within that year by author, if the writer produced several during that time.

This is quite innovative and tremendously useful, especially for my purposes, but, I would argue, even in general, as a chronological approach necessarily gives the reader (student or not) a strong sense of the historical relationship among these works -- an approach that I, at least, think is far more important than many others apparently do today -- and is valid for understanding painting and other cultural phenomena as well.

Having praised the near-comprehensiveness, and innovative chronological mode of presentation, there are certain flaws here.

The main substantive one is the way-too-abstruse tone and content of the introduction.

Having made such an advance by presenting the poems in roughly chronological order, the editor should have continued with the instinct towards accessibility and understanding.

Why write a stuffy and not very interesting academically-oriented introduction, when he could have written instead a clear piece that would help the uninitiated understand the chief issues involved in Romantic poetry, while, at the same time, offering within that framework insights that would be intriguing for experts in the field?

This is not that hard to do, although most academics -- Simon Schama and Michael Wood being notable exceptions in the cultural history field -- seem to have a problem with this approach.

From a methodological point of view, finally, it seems a little strange not to have included certain very important works -- notably Wordsworth's Prelude, but also others -- simply because they were not published during the period in question (1785-1832, a choice of years that in and of itself seems quite appropriate).

When dealing with well-known works like the Prelude, or Keats' "'Lear'," or Blake's "4 Zoas" or Shelley's "Epipsychidion," it seems bizarre not to include them during the years they were written, with little asterisks indicating that they were not published, but written, at that time.

These issues aside, this is a wonderful collection that will be incredibly useful for anyone with any reason at all to be concerned with English Romantic poetry -- which, in my view, should be all of us.

One of the great merits of this anthology is that it includes a fairly wide variety of verse; not just poets that are still familiar to us today, but ones that were widely read during the times. Without slogging through an anthology like this, you may be familiar with "the big names", but never explore the context of their verse or find gems from lesser poets that strike you as interesting or meaningful. I picked up a few new favourites from this anthology and now have a better idea of which poets I wish to pursue more deeply. And the chronological organization is a nice prompt to considering how poetry developed throughout the period.

My main gripe, to echo Mr. Caploe, is the introduction. Although interesting, it was not very helpful to me as a relative newcomer to this period. Another nice addition would have been a biography, as textual notes were fairly sparse, generally indicating only where a piece was published.

First off, I shall demur by averring that this is an interesting collection of essays and that Blechman is a sensitive and passionate writer in his own right. He clearly believes or "has faith" that all that is presented here coheres to form a basis for revolutionizing the current state of affairs.

That being conceded, this drunken boat simply doesn't float (apologies to Rimbaud). To go so far as to enlist Blake, who was arguably neither Revolutionary nor Romantic save in some oblique chiliastic sense, and is quoted in this very book as stating that, "I am really sorry to see my Countrymen trouble themselves about Politics." in a formula for Twenty-First Century revolution is illustrative of how much of this entire argument is rather out on a limb.

The best essay by far is Abensour's essay on William Morris and his News from Nowhere (1890). Here, the ambiguity inherent in all revolutionary Utopian visions when put into practice is presented with great lucidity. I would recommend this book for just this one essay.

Sadly, though, the rest of the book seems terribly dated in our "post-ideological" era. It recurrently turns to sources from the past in hopes of providing a springboard for revolutionary conceptualizations which will alter our world once put into practice. Given today's state of affairs, such an endeavour will probably only seem worthwhile to, perhaps, soi-disant French intellectuals and cranks in general.

As Christopher Winks points out in his essay on Erich Muhsam, "And once intellectuals renounce their potentially greatest asset - their independence - they become incapable of really questioning anything. Their submission is bought with grants, publisher's advances, lecture tours, and lucrative positions; under these conditions, whatever spark of creativity they may possess is sooner or later snuffed out."-Can anything ring more resoundingly true of our "intelligentsia" today and in the foreseeable future?

I wish I could be more positive about this book. But I simply can't while my eyes are open.---Of course, given the cyclical nature of history, there may come a time when books such as this can "make a difference" as it were. But that time is nowhere to be seen on our desolate horizon.

Blechman's book is an excellent introduction to the Romantic origins of radical thought. It will prove an essential anthology for all readers with an interest in anarchism, libertarian Marxism, and the avant-garde.

you need a phd in lit to understand most of it, but its really interesting if you've read every classic gothic lit book out there

This book is an excellent read for anyone with an interest in the history or scholarship the Gothic or "horrible" literature in general. Its focus on the shift in English society to a more luxury and consumer-driven economy, during the time when supernatural literature developed as a genre, becomes a little dense at times, if that isn't one's area of particular interest. However, it is full of insight into the reading public that made the field of supernatural fiction what it remains today, and why people found it (and by extension, still find it) so entertaining to be shocked and frightened by unreal events.