Short Reviews

With this January 2021 issue, Romantic Circles Reviews and Receptions introduces new form of collective and conjunctural book review. Inspired by the spirit of conversation and exchange that animates all of our work, and that lurks secretly behind each review, we are asking scholars to reflect collaboratively on recent publications in Romanticism. These reviews are new in another sense as well. Expanding beyond the constraints of periodization, these reviews seek to create conceptual and/or historical resonances between work in Romanticism and work situated elsewhere. In particular, these reviews are meant to spark a deeper engagement between monographs in Romanticism and Black studies, Gender & Sexuality studies, Indigenous studies, and work that is situated in a contemporary context. Perhaps most significantly, these reviews aim to make academic publications that are grounded in Romanticism more useful to us today, in both academic and non-academic contexts alike. Upcoming reviews will take up Matthew Sandler’s The Black Romantic Revolution (Verso, 2020) and Peter Linebaugh’s Red Round Globe Burning Hot (UC Press, 2019), Ryan Hanley’s Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing 1770-1830 and Fred Moten’s Stolen Life, and Kate Singer’s Romantic Vacancy: The Poetics of Gender, Affect, and Radical Speculation and Alexis Boyan, et al. Furious Feminisms: Alternative Routes on Mad Max: Fury Road.

If you would like to propose a collaborative review, please contact us at: lh117@nyu.edu

A collaborative review of Frances Botkin’s Thieving Three-Fingered Jack and Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism. Reviewed by Gabriella I. Johnson & Gregory Pierrot

Submitted by Suzanne L. Barnett on

Frances Botkin, Thieving Three-Fingered Jack: Transatlantic Tales of a Jamaican Outlaw, 1780-2015 (Rutgers UP, 2017). 240 pp. (Paperback, $31.95 ISBN 9780813587387; Cloth, $120.00, ISBN 9780813587394; Kindle, 28.95, ISBN 9780813595733; EPUB, 31.95, ISBN 9780813587400; PDF, $31.95.ISBN 9780813587417).

 

Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (U of NC P, 2000). 480 pp. (paperback, $47.50, ISBN 9780807848296; ebook $29.99, ISBN 9780807876121).

 

Marronage and Discomfort with the Black Rebel: a Collaborative Review

Gabriella I. Johnson, New York University 

and

Gregory Pierrot, University of Connecticut—Stamford

 

Matthew Bevis, Wordsworth’s Fun. Reviewed by Jeremy Noel-Tod

Submitted by Ross Wilson on

Matthew Bevis, Wordsworth’s Fun (University of Chicago Press, 2019). 303 pp. (Hdbk., $82.50, ISBN: 9780226652054)

Jeremy Noel-Tod
University of East Anglia
 

It’s easy to laugh at Wordsworth. Connoisseurs of parody will know J.K. Stephen’s sonnet on the poet’s ‘two voices’: one sublime, one ‘an old half-witted sheep’,

Which bleats articulate monotony,

And indicates that two and one are three,

That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep

Joseph Drury. Novel Machines: Technology and Narrative Form in Enlightenment Britain. Reviewed by Deven M. Parker

Submitted by Suzanne L. Barnett on

Joseph Drury. Novel Machines: Technology and Narrative Form in Enlightenment Britain (Oxford University Press, 2018.) 272 pp., 8 B&W illus. (Hdbk., $90.00; ISBN 9780198792383.)

 

Deven M. Parker

Queen Mary University of London

Andrew O. Winckles. Eighteenth-Century Women's Writing and the Methodist Media Revolution: 'Consider the Lord as Ever Present Reader'. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bishop.

Submitted by Suzanne L. Barnett on

Andrew O. Winckles. Eighteenth-Century Women's Writing and the Methodist Media Revolution: 'Consider the Lord as Ever Present Reader' (Liverpool University Press, 2010). 288 pp. (Hdbk., $120, ISBN 9781789620184).

Elizabeth Bishop

Daniela Garofalo and David Sigler, eds, Lacan and Romanticism; Brittany Pladek, The Poetics of Palliation; and Seth T. Reno, Amorous Aesthetics. Reviewed by Alex Freer

Submitted by Ross Wilson on

Daniela Garofalo and David Sigler (eds.) Lacan and Romanticism (SUNY Press, 2019) 208pp. $95.
Brittany Pladek, The Poetics of Palliation: Romantic Literary Therapy, 1790–1850 (Liverpool University Press, 2019) 296pp. £90.
Seth T. Reno, Amorous Aesthetics: Intellectual Love in Romantic Poetry and Poetics, 1788–1853 (Liverpool University Press, 2019) 256pp. £90.

Alex Freer

Trinity College, Cambridge

Catherine Spooner, Post-Millennial Gothic: Comedy, Romance and the Rise of Happy Gothic. Reviewed by Diana Edelman.

Submitted by Suzanne L. Barnett on

Catherine Spooner, Post-Millennial Gothic: Comedy, Romance and the Rise of Happy Gothic (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). 232 pp., (Pbk., $30.92; ISBN 9781441101211).

Diana Edelman
University of North Georgia, Gainesville

G.A. Rosso. The Religion of Empire: Political Theology in Blake’s Prophetic System. Reviewed by James Rovira.

Submitted by Suzanne L. Barnett on

G.A. Rosso. The Religion of Empire: Political Theology in Blake’s Prophetic System. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2016. xvii+273 pp. 978-0-8142-1316-2. $69.95 hardcover, $19.95 e-book.

James Rovira

Anna Kornbluh, The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space. Reviewed by Aaron Ottinger.

Submitted by Suzanne L. Barnett on

Anna Kornbluh The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space (The University of Chicago Press, 2019) 240 pp., 6 halftones, 5 line drawings. (Paper $27.50, ISBN: 9780226653341; Cloth $82.50, ISBN: 9780226653204).

Aaron Ottinger

Seattle University

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