In a series of articles published in Tait's Magazine in 1834, Thomas DeQuincey catalogued four potential instances of plagiarism in the work of his friend and literary competitor Samuel Taylor Coleridge. DeQuincey's charges and the controversy they ignited have shaped readers' responses to the work of such writers as Coleridge, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, and John Clare ever since. But what did plagiarism mean some two hundred years ago in Britain? What was at stake when early nineteenth-century authors levied such charges against each other? How would matters change if we were to evaluate these writers by the standards of their own national moment? And what does our moral investment in plagiarism tell us about ourselves and about our relationship to the Romantic myth of authorship? In Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period, Tilar Mazzeo historicizes the discussion of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century plagiarism and demonstrates that it had little in common with our current understanding of the term. The book offers a major reassessment of the role of borrowing, textual appropriation, and narrative mastery in British Romantic literature and provides a new picture of the period and its central aesthetic contests. Above all, Mazzeo challenges the almost exclusive modern association of Romanticism with originality and takes a fresh look at some of the most familiar writings of the period and the controversies surrounding them.

Ebenezer Sibly was a quack doctor, plagiarist, and masonic ritualist in late eighteenth-century London; his brother Manoah was a respectable accountant and pastor who ministered to his congregation without pay for fifty years. Drawing on such sources as ratebooks and pollbooks, personal letters and published sermons, burial registers and horoscopes, Susan Sommers has woven together an engaging microhistory that offers useful revisions to existing scholarly accounts of brothers Ebenezer and Manoah, while locating the entire Sibly family in the esoteric byways of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Views the Victorian novel through the prism of literary imitations that it inspired.

This volume collects together a wealth of material ranging from verse parodies originally published in pamphlet form, to longer works such as P.G. Patmore's parodies of the works of Byron, Lamb and Hazlitt.

Michael Gamer explodes the myth of the unworldly Romantic poet, showing writers' interest in public presence, and profit and loss.

This book explores what it means to read the six major works of Jane Austen, in light of the ten major works of fiction by Charlotte Smith. It proposes that Smith had a deep and lasting impact on Austen, but this is not an influence study. Instead, it argues for the possibility that two authors who never met could between them write something into being, both responding to and creating a novelistic zeitgeist. This, the book argues, can be called co-writing. This book will appeal to students and scholars of the novel, of women’s writing, and of Smith and Austen specifically.

The Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature is an authoritative three-volume reference work that covers British artistic, literary, and intellectual movements between 1780 and 1830, within the context of European, transatlantic and colonial historical and cultural interaction. Comprises over 275 entries ranging from 1,000 to 6,500 words arranged in A-Z format across three fully cross-referenced volumes Written by an international cast of leading and emerging scholars Entries explore genre development in prose, poetry, and drama of the Romantic period, key authors and their works, and key themes Also available online as part of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature, providing 24/7 access and powerful searching, browsing and cross-referencing capabilities

Students and academics involved with literary studies and history will find this exploration of the British cultural understanding of India extremely useful. The essays within this collection cover a wide range of topics and are written by an impressive troupe of contributors including P.J. Marshall, Anne Mellor and Nigel Leask.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of British Romantic literature and an authoritative guide to all aspects of the movement including its historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts, and its connections with the literature and thought of other countries. All the major Romantic writers are covered alongside lesser known writers.