Romanticism has often been associated with lyric poetry, or otherwise confined within mainstream genres. As a result, we have neglected the sheer diversity and generic hybridity of a literature that ranged from the Gothic novel to the national tale, from monthly periodicals to fictionalized autobiography. In this new volume some of the leading scholars of the period explore the relationship between ideology and literary genre from a variety of theoretical perspectives. The introduction offers a fresh examination of how genre was rethought by Romantic criticism.

Notes on contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction Tilottama Rajan and Julia M. Wright; Part I. Genre, History, and the Public Sphere: 1. Godwin and the genre reformers: on necessity and contingency in romantic narrative theory Jon Klancher; 2. Radical print culture in periodical form Kevin Gilmartin; 3. History, trauma, and the limits of the liberal imagination: William Godwin's historical fiction Gary Handwerk; 4. Writing on the border: the national tale, female writing, and the public sphere Ina Ferris; Part II. Genre and Society: 5. Genres from life in Wordsworth's art: Lyrical Ballads 1798 Don Bialostosky; 6. 'A voice in the representation': John Thelwall and the enfranchisement of literature Judith Thompson; 7. 'I am ill-fitted': conflicts of genre in Elisa Fenwick's Secresy Julia M. Wright; 8. Frankenstein as neo-Gothic: from the ghost of the couterfeit to the monster of abjection Jerrold E. Hogle; Part III. Genre, Gender, and the Private Sphere: 9. Autonarration and genotext in Mary Hays' Memoirs of Emma Courtney Tilottama Rajan; 10. 'The science of herself': scenes of female enlightenment Mary Jacobus; 11. The failures of romanticism Jerome McGann; Index.