John Claiborne Isbell

This groundbreaking book offers a comprehensive review of six hundred and fifty women writers from over fifty national traditions, spanning Europe and the Americas during the transformative years of 1776 to 1848. Framed by revolutionary upheavals, the book explores how women writers shaped and reflected Romanticism's global currents. It fills a critical scholarly gap, connecting disparate traditions and uncovering voices often overlooked in male-dominated literary histories.Through concise entries, the book names every woman writer identified in its vast research, from celebrated figures like Phillis Wheatley to lesser-known authors whose manuscripts lay buried in archives. Each entry provides essential biographical details, while select excerpts in seventeen languages bring these voices to life, revealing how women navigated the era's revolutionary ideals and patriarchal barriers.Structured democratically, the volume treats all writers equally-whether anonymous, pseudonymous, or celebrated in their time. It highlights their diverse experiences: poets and novelists, abolitionists and suffragists, mothers and mill workers. From memoirs to political tracts, their works testify to the rich tapestry of women's contributions to Romanticism.By illuminating these stories, this book challenges national silos, offering a panoramic view of Romanticism as a truly transnational, female-inclusive phenomenon. It represents a go-to resource for students and interested readers, while setting the ground for future scholars to expand this vital field of study.

Two centuries of sexism have hidden Staël's place in international history. Straddling the divides of the French Revolution, Napoleonic Europe, emergent nationalism, and European Romanticism, and playing pivotal roles in those movements, she was also a friend of Byron, Jefferson, and Tsar Alexander. Extensive archival research, and a complete contextual overview of Staël's writings, here restore Staël's canonical status as political philosopher, historian, European Romantic theorist, and Revolutionary. While the term stateswoman is not commonly used, it describes Staël aptly, acting as she necessarily did through men around her. The brilliant game of masks and proxies imposed on her by patriarchy is detailed here, alongside her unending fight for the oppressed, from the nations of Napoleon's subjugated Europe to the victims of the Atlantic slave trade. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Two centuries of sexism have hidden Staël's place in international history. Straddling the divides of the French Revolution, Napoleonic Europe, emergent nationalism, and European Romanticism, and playing pivotal roles in those movements, she was also a friend of Byron, Jefferson, and Tsar Alexander. Extensive archival research, and a complete contextual overview of Staël's writings, here restore Staël's canonical status as political philosopher, historian, European Romantic theorist, and Revolutionary. While the term stateswoman is not commonly used, it describes Staël aptly, acting as she necessarily did through men around her. The brilliant game of masks and proxies imposed on her by patriarchy is detailed here, alongside her unending fight for the oppressed, from the nations of Napoleon's subjugated Europe to the victims of the Atlantic slave trade. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Navigating the landscape of Romantic literature and art across Europe and the Americas, An Outline of Romanticism in the West invites readers to embark upon a literary journey. Showcasing a breadth of theoretical and contextual approaches to the study of Romanticism, John Isbell provides an insightful contemporary overview of the field, paired with wide-ranging comparative reflections on the art and literature that helped shape it.Discussing seminal Romantic texts such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or Germaine de Sta l's Corinne ou l'Italie, Isbell provides a foundation through which to investigate core concepts, such as the continuum of Romance, the Romantic hero, and Romantic literature's characteristic repudiation of its own Romanticism. Unusually for a single-author monograph, the book includes both published and unpublished material covering Romantic creation across Europe and the two Americas.Identifying Romanticism as an international movement, Isbell seeks to emphasise a theme frequently ignored by many academics: the roots of Romanticism, and its variations, as a national art. His arguments are supported by extensive interrogations of the political and historical contexts that moulded the outlooks of the writers and artists central to the period.An Outline of Romanticism in the West underlines the interplay between nationalism, history, and artistic inspiration, and will therefore be of value to students and scholars of literature and history, as well as to general readers with an interest in Romanticism in the West.

It was through Staël's best-seller De l'Allemagne that the term 'Romanticism', coined in Germany, reached Europe and America. Around this term, Staël built a new and universal agenda: her manifesto offered Napoleon's Europe an alternative to everything he stood for. The new universe she revealed helped to bury the neo-Classical world and to shape the nineteenth century. In this important work, Dr Isbell reasserts Staël's place in history and analyses her vast agenda, which covers every Classical and Romantic divide in art, philosophy, religion, and society from 1789 to 1815. This investigation sheds light upon the two different revolutions that created modern Europe, seen here by a leader of both.

It was through Staël’s best-seller De l’Allemagne that the term ‘Romanticism’, coined in Germany, reached Europe and America. Around this term, Staël built a new and universal agenda: her manifesto offered Napoleon’s Europe an alternative to everything he stood for. The new universe she revealed helped to bury the neo-Classical world and to shape the nineteenth century. In this ground-breaking work, Dr Isbell reasserts Staël’s place in history and analyses her vast agenda, which covers every Classical and Romantic divide in art, philosophy, religion, and society from 1789 to 1815. This investigation sheds new light upon the two different revolutions that created modern Europe, seen here by a leader of both.