Daniela Garofalo is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.

• Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Fantasies of National Virility and William Wordsworth’s Poet Leader2. "A Left-Handed Way": Modern Masters in William Godwin’s Caleb Williams3. Political Seductions: The Show of War in Lord Byron’s Sardanapalus4. Sublime Democracy and the Theater of Violence: Authoritarianism in William Hazlitt’s The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte5. Communities in Mourning: Making Capital Out of Loss in Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present and Heroes6. "To Please a Woman Worthy of Being Pleased": Darcymania in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice7. Dependent Masters and Independent Servants: The Gothic Pleasures of British Homes in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane EyreNotesBibliographyIndex

"Garofalo reveals a persistent anxiety in nineteenth-century British writing—a fear that the conditions of modern life would undermine both national and individual will. She shows how a series of writers responded to that threat by constructing a 'manly leader' appropriate to an age of capitalism and political liberalism." — Ted Underwood, author of The Work of the Sun: Literature, Science, and Political Economy, 1760–1860"The body chapters—especially those on Byron and Hazlitt—work through unfamiliar material with lucidity and verve, connecting ideas and texts not often put in juxtaposition with one another." — John Plotz, author of The Crowd: British Literature and Public Politics

Daniela Garofalo is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.

• Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Fantasies of National Virility and William Wordsworth’s Poet Leader2. "A Left-Handed Way": Modern Masters in William Godwin’s Caleb Williams3. Political Seductions: The Show of War in Lord Byron’s Sardanapalus4. Sublime Democracy and the Theater of Violence: Authoritarianism in William Hazlitt’s The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte5. Communities in Mourning: Making Capital Out of Loss in Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present and Heroes6. "To Please a Woman Worthy of Being Pleased": Darcymania in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice7. Dependent Masters and Independent Servants: The Gothic Pleasures of British Homes in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane EyreNotesBibliographyIndex

"Garofalo reveals a persistent anxiety in nineteenth-century British writing—a fear that the conditions of modern life would undermine both national and individual will. She shows how a series of writers responded to that threat by constructing a 'manly leader' appropriate to an age of capitalism and political liberalism." — Ted Underwood, author of The Work of the Sun: Literature, Science, and Political Economy, 1760–1860"The body chapters—especially those on Byron and Hazlitt—work through unfamiliar material with lucidity and verve, connecting ideas and texts not often put in juxtaposition with one another." — John Plotz, author of The Crowd: British Literature and Public Politics

Daniela Garofalo is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.

• Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Fantasies of National Virility and William Wordsworth’s Poet Leader2. "A Left-Handed Way": Modern Masters in William Godwin’s Caleb Williams3. Political Seductions: The Show of War in Lord Byron’s Sardanapalus4. Sublime Democracy and the Theater of Violence: Authoritarianism in William Hazlitt’s The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte5. Communities in Mourning: Making Capital Out of Loss in Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present and Heroes6. "To Please a Woman Worthy of Being Pleased": Darcymania in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice7. Dependent Masters and Independent Servants: The Gothic Pleasures of British Homes in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane EyreNotesBibliographyIndex

"Garofalo reveals a persistent anxiety in nineteenth-century British writing—a fear that the conditions of modern life would undermine both national and individual will. She shows how a series of writers responded to that threat by constructing a 'manly leader' appropriate to an age of capitalism and political liberalism." — Ted Underwood, author of The Work of the Sun: Literature, Science, and Political Economy, 1760–1860"The body chapters—especially those on Byron and Hazlitt—work through unfamiliar material with lucidity and verve, connecting ideas and texts not often put in juxtaposition with one another." — John Plotz, author of The Crowd: British Literature and Public Politics