Kirkyard Romanticism - (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism) by Sarah Sharp

About the Book

Examines Scottish Romantic writers' shared focus on the ideological import of an imagined national dead

Book Synopsis

The early nineteenth century saw the dead take on new life in Scottish literature; sometimes quite literally. This book brings together a range of Scottish Romantic texts, identifying a shared interest an imagined national dead. It argues that the publications of Edinburgh-based publisher William Blackwood were the crucible for this new form of Scottish cultural nationalism. Scottish Romantic authors including James Hogg, John Wilson and John Galt, use the Romantic kirkyard to engage with, and often challenge, contemporary ideas of modernity. The book also explores the extensive ripples that this cultural moment generated across Scottish, British and wider Anglophone literary sphere over the next century.

Review Quotes

In Kirkyard Romanticism, Sharp transcends the national to make a significant contribution to nationhood theory, as well as 19th-century Scottish literature and politics.

Summing Up: Highly recommended.

--J. Walker, emeritus, Queen's University at Kingston "CHOICE"

Sarah Sharp's brilliant account of a Blackwood's-based 'Kirkyard School' of fiction shows how Romantic-era Scotland figured as a repository for regional values at risk of being forgotten in modernity's sweep. In so doing, the book helpfully reconnects the period with a longer nineteenth century history of both literary and colonial engagements with the dead.--Anthony Jarrells, University of South Carolina