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COPYRIGHT 2000 Boston University
Andrew Ashfield, ed. Romantic Women Poets, 1770-1838: An Anthology. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: St. Martin's. Vol. 1, 1995. Pp. 327. $24.95; Vol. 2, 1999. Pp. 260. $27.95.
It is highly unusual for a journal like this to publish a review of current textbooks, but if you want to see a revolution in process, these volumes represent the very front line. Scarcely ten years ago the first calls were issued for a radical change in the university curriculum that defines British romanticism, and we are now faced with responsibility for whatever it is that has replaced the standard course dealing with the Big Six and a few ancillary (male) prose stylists plus a theorist or two. If what most of us grew up on was largely a uniform syllabus, we couldn't be farther from that simple situation than we seem to be now. The Mellor-Matlak title is truly indicative: some of us don't even call it "romanticism" any longer. Perhaps you are now reading Studies in 1780-1830 without knowing it?
Since I was one of those issuing this call for a major revision in what we construe to be our subject matter, I couldn't be happier to see such an extensive shift in what is available to professors and students alike, but I do acknowledge the somewhat anarchic conditions in which we now find ourselves and recognize that there will be much sorting before we return to anything like the comfort level in...
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