Romantic biography lives. Despite the so-called 'death of the author', popular interest in the lives of the major Romantic writers has reached a new peak. Romantic Biography examines a range of canonical and non-canonical biographical subjects from a variety of practical and theoretical standpoints, bringing together Romantic biographers and critics to consider some of the key questions surrounding this publishing phenomenon. What precisely is Romantic biography? What is the relationship between it and Romantic writings more generally? And to what extent is Romantic biography itself the product of Romantic ideas about the self, time and creativity? Romantic Biography is a major new survey of Romantic life-writing and an important contribution to biographical studies more generally.

Arthur Bradley is a lecturer in the Department of English at Chester College of Higher Education, UK. Alan Rawes is a lecturer in the Department of English at Canterbury Christ Church University College, Canterbury, UK. He is the author of Byron's Poetic Experimentation (Ashgate, 2000) and co-editor of English Romanticism and the Celtic World (Cambridge, 2002).

Contents: Introduction: Romanticizing biography, Arthur Bradley and Alan Rawes; 'The tears shed or unshed': Romantic poetry and questions of biography, Michael O'Neill; John Clare: prologue to a new life, Jonathan Bate; Romantic biography: the case of Robert Southey, Mark Storey; A tale of two titles, Kenneth R. Johnston; Austen, 'enigmatic lacunae' and the art of biography, Joe Bray; 'That perverse passion' and Benita Eisler's 'Byronic' biography of Byron, Alan Rawes; Remaking Romantic Scotland: Lockhart's biographies of Burns and Scott, Gerard Carruthers; Self-possession and gender in Romantic literary biography, Julian North; Keats's frailty: the body and biography, Jennifer Wallace; 'Winging itself with laughter': Byron and Shelley after deconstruction, Arthur Bradley; Writing biography that is not Romantic, Ralph Pite; Bibliography; Index.