British Labouring-Class Nature Poetry, 1730-1837 - by B Keegan (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This study shows how poets worked within and against the available forms of nature writing to challenge their place within physical, political, and cultural landscapes. Looking at the treatment of different ecosystems, it argues that writing about the environment allowed labouring-class poets to explore important social and aesthetic questions.

Review Quotes

'Bridget Keegan's book is a work of meticulous scholarship and will be welcomed as a substantial contribution to the postmodern reassessment of the English literature canon that is going on in the academic world; but it also has things to reveal to the non-academic reader who holds that the realm of poetry is a classless republic.'

- M.M. Mahood, John Clare Society Journal

'Her [Keegan] survey as a whole appears to be both well-informed and well-balanced. Students and lovers of English poetry will read it with profit and pleasure.' - Thomas Kullmann

About the Author

BRIDGET KEEGAN is Professor of English at Creighton University, USA. She is the editor of volume two of Eighteenth-Century Labouring-Class Poets and (with James C. McKusick) of Literature and Nature. With Simon White and John Goodridge, she co-edited Robert Bloomfield: Lyric, Class and the Romantic Canon. She is the author of numerous articles and chapters on labouring-class writers.