'Sharon Ruston's Romanticism provides a detailed and comprehensive survey of the literature of the Romantic period and its social, historical and intellectual contexts. This study weaves from an impressive range of texts and histories a narrative of the writings of the male and females writers whose work we describe as engaging with that complex and contested term Romanticism. Alive to the social and political milieu in which Romantic period writers lived, work and thought, Ruston's study is an exemplary and attractive introduction to this fascinating period of literary endeavour.' Professor Peter J. Kitson, University of Dundee, UK