William Wordsworth's later poetry complicates possibilities of life and art in war's aftermath. This illuminating study provides new perspectives and reveals how his work following the end of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars reflects a passionate, lifelong engagement with the poetics and politics of peace. Focusing on works from between 1814 and 1822, Philip Shaw constructs a unique and compelling account of how Wordsworth, in both his ongoing poetic output and in his revisions to earlier works, sought to modify, refute, and sometimes sustain his early engagement with these issues as both an artist and a political thinker. In an engaging style, Shaw reorients our understanding of the later writings of a major British poet and the post-war literary culture in which his reputation was forged. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

This book offers a pivotal re-evaluation of English teaching one century on from The Newbolt Report of 1921, responding to this seminal work and exploring its impact on issues and contemporary aims of English teaching today. Bringing together a range of experts in English higher education, the book provides a twenty-first century inflection on the enduring issues highlighted by Newbolt’s original report. It examines topics including the demands of assessment, the narrowing of the literary curriculum, the impact of education reform, targets related to social mobility, class and widening participation, as well as broader questions about the function of literature and the arts in education. Chapters also consider issues surrounding the promotion of community cohesion, diversity and how technological advances might reshape literary education. This unique re-evaluation of the achievements and findings of the Newbolt Commission will be essential reading for those researching English education and the history of education.

Literacy and Growth is a unique genealogical study of English teaching in the UK and abroad since the 18th century. Focusing specifically on the concepts of literacy and growth, this book explores key moments in the development of ideas about English teaching. Hodgson and Harris reveal the Enlightenment forebears of such contemporary concepts as “cultural capital” and “critical literacy”; the significance of “growth” to the writers and social critics who opposed Victorian Utilitarianism; and the 20th-century influences that established English as a humane study, including the Newbolt Report, the Cambridge Scrutiny group, and the London School of Percival Gurrey and James Britton. The authors examine unpublished Dartmouth Conference papers to reconsider John Dixon’s construction of “growth” in his seminal report Growth through English (1967). They reflect on the turbulent aftermath of Dartmouth, the changes in the “growth” model following the cultural turn in English studies, and the politics behind the shift from “English” to “literacy” in the 1990s. Importantly, they redefine the growth model for the 21st century to support teachers and students in the current context of performativity, high-stakes assessment, the “knowledge curriculum”, and artificial intelligence. Essential reading for tutors and students of English and literacy as well as policymakers in the subject area, this book will engage all those interested in the history and philosophy of English in education. It will be a key resource for those involved in the education and training of English teachers, as well as those undertaking research in English education.

Previous historical studies of English have not looked closely at the similarities of its development in different cultural settings and educational systems. This book provides a cross-national perspective on attempts to establish, maintain, and modify the discursive practices that constituted English literary studies in universities. Drawing on archival sources, it takes three leading institutions as exemplary sites: Cornell University, in the United States; The University of London, in Britain; and the University of Melbourne, in Australia. places, a persistent genetic identity exists that is best understood as Romantic. More particularly, Wordsworth's writings, and a cluster of ideas, images, and attitudes associated with him, exerted a normative pressure on curriculum and pedagogy during the 19th-century emergence of the university and literature as we know them today. They also provided long afterwards a naturalized set of framing assumptions.