'The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins' shares similarities with that of 'Robinson Crusoe', with a unique twist: The hero discovers and ultimately marries a woman who has the ability to fly. This captivating tale was highly praised by literary greats such as Walter Scott, Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and Charles Lamb. The book, written by Paltock, has captured the hearts and imaginations of readers for generations.

The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1751) is an adventure novel by Robert Paltock. No doubt inspired by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), Paltock's novel is a brilliant work of fiction in its own right, earning praise from such figures as Walter Scott and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Republished in an influential 1884 edition with an introduction by editor and academic Arthur Henry Bullen, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins remains a uniquely entertaining novel of shipwreck, romance, and discovery. "It was about the middle of June, when the days are there at the shortest, on a very starry and moonlight night, that we observed at some distance a very black cloud, but seemingly of no extraordinary size or height, moving very fast towards us, and seeming to follow the ship, which then made great way." While sailing around Cape Horn, the crew of the Hector spots a mysterious object flying toward them in the sky. Alarmed, the men open fire, causing the object to crash into the sea. Soon, cries for help alert them to an old man afloat on the waves, grasping the remnants of his flying machine for dear life. Safely on board, the man introduces himself as Peter Wilkins. Decades prior, he left his home and family in Cornwall to embark on a voyage to Africa. There, he was stolen into slavery by Portuguese settlers, but managed to escape with the help of the native Glanlepze and his wife. Later, Wilkins fell in with a group of English prisoners, who managed to steal a Portuguese vessel before being shipwrecked and lost at sea. The sole survivor, Wilkins washed ashore on a desert island, where he would fight every second to survive. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Robert Paltock's The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

This collection of essays by leading and new British scholars demonstrates the different ways in which Romanticism is currently being revalued and reconceived. No longer are scholars working within the constraints of the old canon which insisted on the division of the central and the marginal, for new Romanticism is being realised as a wider range of cultural activity unconfined by genre, gender, class, rhetoric or style.