This innovative book revises many standard assumptions in both literary and sociological fields. Approaching English Romanticism through sociological theory, Hewitt argues that Wordsworth and Coleridge tested hypotheses about social organization and (inter)action in their poetry. She analyzes their achievements in representative works and looks at ways in which Byron, Shelley, and Keats modified the older poets' endeavor. She also describes the context for "poetic" sociology within the intellectual systems of the poets' day, comparing it to the context in which "scientific" sociology was later institutionalized.

Regina Hewitt is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Florida. She is the author of Wordsworth and the Empirical Dilemma.