Nervous Reactions: Victorian Recollections of Romanticism(SUNY series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century)

Addresses how Victorian receptions of Romanticism and Romantic writers were shaped by notions of "nervousness."

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Joel Faflak and Julia M. Wright I. NERVOUS CONTAINMENTS: RECOLLECTION AND INFLUENCE 1. De Quincey Collects Himself Joel Faflak 2. Mrs. Julian T. Marshall's Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Lisa Vargo 3. Between Action and Inaction: The "Performance" of the Prima Donna in Eliot's Closet Drama Grace Kehler 4. Nervous ReincarNations: Keats, Scenery, and Mind Cure in Canada during the Post-Confederation Period, with Particular Reference to Archibald Lampman and Related Cases D. M. R. Bentley II. A MATTER OF BALANCE: BYRONIC ILLNESS AND VICTORIAN CURE 5. Early Romantic Theorists and The Fate of Transgressive Eloquence: John Stuart Mill's Response to Byron Timothy J. Wandling 6. Dyspeptic Reactions: Thomas Carlyle and the Byronic Temper Kristen Guest 7. "Growing Pains": Representing the Romantic in Gaskell's Wives and Daughters Julia M. Wright III. HESITATION AND INHERITANCE: THE CASE OF SARA COLERIDGE 8. Snuffing Out an Article: Sara Coleridge and the Early Victorian Reception of Keats Joanne Wilkes 9. Her Father's "Remains": Sara Coleridge's Edition of Essays on His Own Times Alan Vardy 10. Opium Addictions and Metaphysicians: Sara Coleridge's Editing of Biographia Literaria Donelle Ruwe Bibliography List of Contributors Index

About the Author :
Joel Faflak is Assistant Professor of English at Wilfrid Laurier University. Julia M. Wright is Canada Research Chair in English at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is the author of Blake, Nationalism, and the Politics of Alienation, the editor of The Missionary: An Indian Tale, and the coeditor (with Tilottama Rajan) of Romanticism, History, and the Possibilities of Genre.

Review :
"In its 'nervous' focus, its consideration of a range of genres and literary institutions (reviews, editions, biographies), and its combination of theoretical sophistication and empirical groundedness, Nervous Reactions is a strong contribution to the field." - University of Toronto Quarterly "This book makes an extremely persuasive case for the end to the traditional disciplinary division in English between Romantic and Victorian periods. It demonstrates the compelling practical necessity for critics to abandon their entrapment within the Victorian construct of Romanticism, because they each open up new and manifestly promising areas of inquiry." - Peter Melville Logan, author of Nerves and Narratives: A Cultural History of Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century British Prose