Nichols chronicles the Enlightenment view of 'Nature' as static and separate from humans as it moved towards the Romantic 'nature' characterized by dynamic links among all living things. Engaging Romantic and Victorian thinkers, as well as contemporary scholarship, he draws new conclusions about 21st-century ideas of nature.

B. ASHTON NICHOLS is John J. Curley '60 and Ann Conser Curley '63 Faculty Chair in the Liberal Arts and Professor of English Language and Literature at Dickinson College, USA. He is the author of The Revolutionary 'I': Wordsworth and the Politics of Self-Presentation and The Poetics of Epiphany: Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Modern Literary Moment.

Prologue: Urbanatural Roosting Spring-Vernal Roosting: Romantic Ecocriticism Summer-Estival Roosting: Ecocriticism Fall-Autumnal Roosting: Urbanature Winter-Hibernal Roosting: Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism Epilogue: Urbanatural Roosting