This groundbreaking volume not only documents the richness of their literary contributions but changes our thinking about the poetry of the English Romantic period.

These volumes will present, in some cases for the first time, the lives and works of a coterie of Nonconformist women writers from the West Country.

Charlotte Smith's early sonnets established the genre as a Romantic form; her novels advanced sensibility beyond its reliance on emotional facility; and her blank verse initiated one of the most familiar of Romantic verse forms. This volume draws together the best of current scholarship.