This book examines the male Romantics' versions of poetic authority in theory and practice in the context of their involvement in the political debates of Regency Britain and argues that their response to Burke's gendered discourse about power effected radical changes in the definitions of masculinity and femininity. It portrays their influence on each other as a series of unstable struggles and alliances in which the formulation of an authoritative masculinity was a political as well as an aesthetic issue. The author investigates the writers' portrayals of women and their collaborations with women writers and throws new light on their nature poetry by relating it to their reactions to the sexual and political scandals of the Regency.

Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: Some Versions of Masculinity in Romanticism Burke: The Gendering of Power Coleridge in the 1790s: Lord of Thy Utterance 'Manly Reflection': Masculinity in Coleridge's Criticism Sexual Politics: Burke, Coleridge and Cobbett Wordsworth: the 'Time Dismantled Oak' De Quincey and Hazlitt: to Have and Have not the Power Index

TIME FULFORD is a Reader in English at Nottingham Trent University. He is the author of Coleridge's Figurative Language and Landscape, Liberty and Authority.