‘This Cambridge Companion testifies to the highly nuanced picture of the 1790s developed by literary critics and historians in the course of the last few decades as well as to the vibrancy and productiveness of recent discussions on this watershed decade. Clemit, herself a specialist on William Godwin and his circle, has recruited some of the best and most influential scholars in the field from England, Scotland, the USA, and Australia for this very dense albeit accessible volume…. It will certainly contribute to an increasingly differentiated view of the early Romantic period as a time when literature was emphatically brought into the service of politics.’ (From Pascal Fischer, Anglia: Journal of English Philology/Zeitschrift für englische philologie, 129: 3-4 (Dec. 2011), 531-4.)
‘This is a book that raises more questions than it answers, but the questions it raises are central to any adequate understanding of the literature of the 1790s, and central, I suspect, to an understanding of the relationship between literature and politics in any period. For that reason, and for the high quality of the individual essays, it is to be welcomed.’ (From Richard Cronin, Notes and Queries, 60: 1 (Mar. 2013), 146-7.)
Pamela Clemit 