Romanticism and Popular Culture

This evolving bibliography collects media that represent Romantic-era works and historical figures in fictional contexts. We welcome feedback and additions from the RC community.

Music

Recording Artist:

Album:

A Farewell to Kings

Publication Information:

Anthem Records

Date:

1977

Reference to Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment’

Image of composer Norman Mathews

Recording Artist:

Date:

2014

"Ye Are Many—They Are Few, Cantata for a Just World, an art song with text and music by Norman Mathews, was performed 12 May 2014 at the Cultural Center...in Chicago with the VOX3 Collective Company....This premier of Mathews’ work came at the end of a program entitled Fellow Citizens: Songs of Social Engagement....A powerful amount of text comes from Shelley’s 'The Masque of Anarchy.'" -Keats-Shelley Association of America (k-saa.org)

Recording Artist:

Album:

Veedon Fleece

Publication Information:

Warner Bros.

Date:

1974

The song references the writings of William Blake.

Van Morrison mentions Blake in the song "You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push The River" on his 1974 album, Veedon Fleece. -Wikipedia

Literature

Author:

Publication Information:

Scorpion Press

Date:

2002

A fictional Shelley befriends cavalry officer Matthew Hervey in the 2002 Allan Mallinson novel A Call to Arms. -Wikipedia

Author:

Date:

2015

"This delightful retelling of Pride and Prejudice is illustrated throughout with full color photos of the finest guinea pig actors working today. Costumers familiar with the elegant curves of the guinea pig form have tailored lush period looks. And of course, it is the love between guinea pigs that can best illustrate the depth of feeling between Jane Austen's Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy."

“This may be the definitive version of Pride and Prejudice. If they could get War and Peace down to this length, it would be a service to mankind.” –  Salman Rushdie

Publication Information:

W. W. Norton & Company

Date:

2008

Novelist Benjamin Markovits produced a trilogy about the life of Byron. A Quiet Adjustment (2008), is an account of Byron's marriage that is more sympathetic to his wife, Annabella. -Wikipedia

Author:

Publication Information:

The Viking Press

Date:

1970

A Single Summer With L.B.: The Summer of 1816 (1969; published in the US as A Single Summer With Lord B in 1970)

Author:

Publication Information:

Little Brown and Company

Date:

2002

Novelist Julian Rathbone fictionalises Shelley in A Very English Agent (2002), wherein a 19th-century government spy tampers with the poet's boat, causing his death. -Wikipedia

Author:

Publication Information:

Harcourt Brace & Company

Date:

1981

A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers is a children's picture book written by Nancy Willard and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen, published by Harcourt Brace in 1981.

Author:

Publication Information:

Faber and Faber

Date:

1977

The theme is the last months in the life of John Keats. The sonnets of Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli that feature in the novel were translated by Burgess's Italian wife, Liana Burgess. -Wikipedia

Author:

Publication Information:

Dionysia Press

Date:

1996

Susanna Roxman's Allegra in her 1996 collection Broken Angels (Dionysia Press, Edinburgh) is a poem about Byron's daughter by Claire Clairmont. In this text, Byron is referred to as "Papa". -Wikipedia

Austenland book cover

Author:

Publication Information:

Bloomsbury USA

Date:

2007

"Austenland is a novel by Shannon Hale, published on May 9, 2007 by Bloomsbury. It is first in her Austenland series." -Wikipedia

Author:

Publication Information:

Kennedy & Boyd

Date:

2006

Ed Bemand's novel Beheld (2006) refers to both "The Fly" and "The Tyger" and describes ideas of perception inspired by Blake's work. -Wikipedia

Author:

Date:

1990

Donald Fitch’s Blake Set to Music: A Bibliography of Musical Settings of the Poems and Prose of William Blake (U of California Press, 1990) is a significant resource of information on William Blake and representations of Blake's work.

http://www.ucpress.edu/op.php?isbn=9780520097346

Author:

Publication Information:

Bantam Books

Date:

1994

"a wonderful book by a Nebula award-winning author. The basic premise is that Frankenstein's creature never died and is alive and playing baseball for a minor league team in the South during WWII. The story is told through the eyes of a young man recently drafted to the team who ends up sharing a room with 'Jumbo.' Said young man was deserted by his father early in life and his efforts to handle his anger and betrayal are mirrored by Jumbo's feelings toward his creator. Adding complexity is Jumbo's increasingly parental role.

Author:

Publication Information:

Dutton Adult

Date:

2007

In her new novel, Burning Bright, she pursues similar themes, inspired this time by the poetry of William Blake. Like Vermeer, Blake struggled to make a living, and it was only after his death that the extent of his talents was fully appreciated. Blake was a religious visionary and mystic, a supporter of free love and an outspoken critic of the political reaction in England to the French revolution, and his views were regarded, during his lifetime, as at best eccentric and by many as downright treasonable. It is not difficult to understand his appeal to the historical novelist.

Author:

Publication Information:

Hutchinson

Date:

1995

"as I understand, is in part a take on Don Juan (it adopts the Juan's verse form)." —R. Anderson

Composed mostly in the same ottava rima stanzas that Byron used for his Don Juan, the story follows the fortunes of Michael Byrne, an Irishman with Spanish blood in him, as a result of Spanish survivors of the war between England's Royal Navy and the Spanish Armada settling in Ireland and breeding with the Irish in the 16th century. -Wikipedia

Date:

1944

Lawrence Durrell wrote a poem called Byron as a lyrical soliloquy; it was first published in 1944. -Wikipedia

Publication Information:

William Heinemann Ltd

Date:

1993

"Her best-known novel is Byron, published in 1988. The book paints a picture of the English poet through a compositional change between present and past where Byron is partly illustrated by a group of Byron enthusiasts of today, partly through the environment in his own time." —Wikipedia

Author:

Publication Information:

Hamish Hamilton

Date:

1986

Historical fiction investicating the lives of Thomas Chatterton and George Meredith.

Publication Information:

W. W. Norton & Company

Date:

2011

Novelist Benjamin Markovits produced a trilogy about the life of Byron. Childish Loves (2011) is a reimagining of Byron's lost memoirs, dealing with questions about his childhood and sexual awakening. -Wikipedia

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