Overview

From the birth of the museum to the explosion of mass-produced illustrated books, the Romantic period (c. 1770-1840) was a moment of rapid change and fruitful experimentation in the fields of art and literature alike. New advances in print production encouraged a wider range of readers to engage with literary forms that opened a path into the once aristocratic field of the visual arts. This Companion captures the way recent engagements with visual studies have reshaped how we approach and understand the boundaries between print and visual culture in the period. It brings together 27 research-led chapters that offer a detailed account of the productive, if sometimes tense, interactions between emergent forms of intermedial expression that were redefining culture in the Romantic period -- as they continue to do today.

Full Product Details

Author:   Maureen McCue (former Senior Lecturer in nineteenth-century British Literature, Bangor University) ,  Sophie Thomas (Professor of English, Toronto Metropolitan University)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781399557115

ISBN 10:   1399557114
Pages:   568
Publication Date:   01 December 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Language:   English

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations List of TablesNotes on ContributorsIntroduction, Maureen McCue and Sophie Thomas PART I: PERSPECTIVES1. ‘The happiest vehicles of antiquarian knowledge’: The Visual Arts and Romantic Antiquarianism, Katharina Boehm2. The Gothic Aesthetic: Word and Image, Katie Garner3. Aesthetic Landscapes: Travel and Tourism, Mary-Ann Constantine4. Visualizing the Indigenous Pacific, Kacie Wills5. Elite and Popular Orientalisms, Jim Watt PART II: EXHIBITION, COMMERCE AND CULTURE6. Collecting and the Country House, 1750–1840, Joan Coutu7. Public Improvement as ‘National Ornament’: Commerce, Culture, and Patriotism in London and Edinburgh, Alison O’Byrne8. Commemoration, Domestic Display and the Decorative Arts: Romantic Nelsonia, Charlotte Boyce9. Building(s) For Art: The Evolution of Public Art Galleries in England, 1780-1840, Susanna Avery-Quash10. Exhibitions Culture, Consumerism and the Romantic Artist, Martin Myrone11. Portraiture: Commerce and Celebrity, Peter Funnell12. Convergence and Dissonance: Romantic Theatre and the Visual Arts, Heather McPherson13. Sound and Vision in Blake’s London, James Grande14. Taken By Storm: Multisensory Learning in the Lecture Room, Sarah M. Zimmerman15. Romanticism, ‘Real’ Illusions, and the Transformation of Experience in Modernity, Peter Otto PART III. CIRCULATIONS: PRINT CULTURE AND THE ARTS16. Romantic Art and the Novel, Jillian Heydt-Stevenson17. Mired in Print: Romantic Writers and Caricature, Ian Haywood18. ‘A Point to Aim at in a Morning’s Walk’: Encounters at the Print Shop, Maureen McCue19. Illustrated Poetry in the Romantic Period, Susan Matthews20. Fashioning the Female Artist: Allegory and Celebrity in Lady Diana Beauclerk’s Watercolours of The Faerie Queene, Laura Engel21. Angelica Kauffman and the Sister Arts, Thora Brylowe22. Illustrated Magazines and Periodicals: Visual Genres and Gendered Aspirations, Jennie Batchelor PART IV: ROMANTICISM REIMAGINED, THE 1830S AND BEYOND23. Album Culture: Begging for Scraps, Samantha Matthews24. Nineteenth-Century Illustrated Poetry: Mise-en-Page and the Visual Rhythms of Seriality, Alison Chapman25. Romantic Caricature and Comics, Jason Whittaker26. Cultural Manifestations of Romanticism on the Contemporary Screen, Hila Shachar27. Looking Back Through Fashion: Regency Romances and a ‘Jumble of Styles’, Hilary Davidson Index

Reviews

At last, proper emphasis is given to the interaction between print and the visual cultures of the Romantic period. Wonderfully comprehensive and authoritative, ranging from aesthetic discourse through exhibition practices, popular spectacle, the print shop, illustration, magazine culture and the afterlife of Romanticism in film. Inspirational and indispensable in equal measure.--Nicola Watson, Open University

Author Information

Maureen McCue is former Senior Lecturer in nineteenth-century British Literature at Bangor University (UK). She is the author of British Romanticism and the Reception of Italian Old Master Art, 1793–1840 (Ashgate, 2014), which was short-listed for the British Association of Romantic Studies First Book Prize (2015). She has published essays on Romantic periodicals, the development of the National Gallery in London, Anglo-Italian relations and illustrations. Her current project, funded in part by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant, examines how the rich ecology of women’s visual lives determined the period’s wider print culture. Sophie Thomas is Professor of English at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the author of Romanticism and Visuality: Fragments, History, Spectacle (Routledge, 2008), and of numerous articles and chapters that address the crosscurrents between literature, material culture and visual culture in the Romantic period. She is currently completing a book on objects, collections, and museums at the turn of the nineteenth century—The Romantic Museum, 1770 – 1830: Matter, Memory, and the Poetics of Things—and beginning a new, funded program of research on Romanticism, museums and the poetics of sculpture.

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