The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age
This is the last volume of essays from the pen of English social historian Thompson (Witness Against the Beast, New Pr., 1993), a scholar of exceptional acuity and a graceful writer who died in 1993. The essays here?on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the reformers William Godwin and William Thelwall?focus on the 1790s and early 1800s, when their subjects confronted the gap between the high ideals of the French Revolution and the sordid reality of a self-seeking Directorate and tyrannical Napoleon. Wordsworth, argues Thompson, was invigorated by his republican faith in "the worth of the common man...in universal brotherhood." In a lecture to an adult education class, Thompson, championing the common man, asserts: "Universities engage in adult education not only to teach but also to learn;...[they] need the abrasion of different worlds of experience, in which ideas are brought to the test of life." An illuminating work; enthusiastically recommended.?David Keymer, California State Univ., StanislausCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.