A Century of Sonnets: The Romantic-Era Revival 1750 - 1850

by Paula R. Feldman, Daniel Robinson

Overview

Expertly edited by Paula R. Feldman and Daniel Robinson, this volume is the first in modern times to collect the sonnets of the Romantic period—many never before published in the twentieth century—and contains nearly five hundred examples composed between 1750 and 1850 by 81 poets, nearly half of them women. A Century of Sonnets includes in their entirety such important but difficult to find sonnet sequences as William Wordsworth's The River Duddon, Mary Robinson's Sappho and Phaon, and Robert Southey's Poems on the Slave Trade, along with Browning's enduring classic, Sonnets from the Portuguese. The poems collected here express the full sweep of human emotion and explore a wide range of themes, including love, grief, politics, friendship, nature, art, and the enigmatic character of poetry itself. Indeed, for many poets the sonnet form elicited their strongest work.
A Century of Sonnets shows us that far from disappearing with Shakespeare and the English Renaissance, the sonnet underwent a remarkable rebirth in the Romantic period, giving us a rich body of work that continues to influence poets even today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195115628
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	12/28/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paula R. Feldman is C. Wallace Martin Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. Daniel Robinson is Assistant Professor of English at Widener University.

Editorial Reviews

"A splendid introduction.... A first-rate anthology for students and common readers alike."—Booklist

From the Publisher

From Thomas Edwards and Charlotte Smith to Elizabeth Browning and Dante Rossetti, this book is the first modern-day collection of the sonnets of the Romantic era. While most of the poems contained appeared between 1789 and 1837 (the traditional British Romantic period), Feldman (English, U. of South Carolina) and Robinson (Literature, Widener U.) have chosen to expand their limits to the century between 1750 and 1850 to better document the revival of the sonnet. Many of the poems contained have not been previously published since that era and almost half of the sonnets in the book are by women. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

[A] rich collection of 481 sonnets from this period, some never before published in this century...[W]ould complement any serious class on poetry or Romantic Period literature, especially if the study is to address more poets of the era instead of just the most famous men.
—ForeWord

McCarthy