Romantic Cruxes: The English Essayists and the Spirit of the Age

Although the English essayists Lamb, Hazlitt, and De Quincey are not customarily examined in the context of European Romanticism, their shared connection with the intellectual upheaval of that movement is undeniable. McFarland's study is the first to consider the essayists in this light, relating them to the larger engagements of their age. As Romantic Cruxes reveals, each writer was a figure deeply embattled amid the disruptions and accumulating stresses that defined Romanticism; each was more intense, darker, and more symbolic of larger situations in human experience than received opinion would have it. And each essayist projected his personality and experience into idiosyncratic statement that has won its author a lasting place in the pantheon of cultural achievement. Unlike most studies of these authors, which tend toward straightforward biography, simple appreciation, or narrowly historical treatments, this book illuminates both their statement and their achievement in the fullest possible terms.