List of illustrations; 1. Introduction: being there, circa 1824; 2. Periodical performances: Blackwood's, Knight's, and The Bachelor's Wife; 3. Mediating improvisation and improvising mediation: Tommaso Sgricci and periodical culture; 4. Personal identity, impersonation, and Charles Mathews: who is he when he's at home?; 5. Theodore Hook's Sayings and Doings on the page and the stage: 'a curious matter of speculation'; 6. Speculating on property: to and from the village with Galt, Mitford, and Scott; 7. Scottish fictions of 1824: permutations of identity; Bibliography; Index.

Angela Esterhammer, FRSC, is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, and General Editor of the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt. Her previous books include The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism (2001), Romanticism and Improvisation, 1750-1850 (2008), and the edited volume Romantic Poetry: Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages (2002).