Literature, education, and romanticism
Subtitle: reading as social practice, 1780-1832
By: Alan Richardson.
Series: Cambridge studies in Romanticism ;; 8
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 327
Subjects: English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.; Books and reading -- Social aspects -- Great Britain -- History.; English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism.; Education -- Great Britain -- History.; Romanticism -- Great Britain.
Description: In this wide-ranging and richly detailed book Alan Richardson addresses many issues in literary and educational history never before examined together. The result is an unprecedented study of how transformations in schooling and literacy in Britain between 1780 and 1832 helped shape the provision of literature as we know it.

In chapters focused on such topics as definitions of childhood, educational methods and institutions, children's literature, female education, and publishing ventures aimed at working-class adults, Richardson demonstrates how literary genres, from fairy tales to epic poems, were enlisted in an ambitious program for transforming social relations through reading and education. Themes include literary developments such as the domestic novel, a sanitized and age-stratified literature for children, the invention of 'popular' literature, and the constitution of 'Literature' itself in the modern sense.

Romantic texts - by Wordsworth, Shelley, Blake, and Yearsley among others - are reinterpreted in the light of the complex historical and social issues which inform them, and which they in turn critically address.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.