This book examines the male Romantics' versions of poetic authority in
theory and practice in the context of their involvement in the political
debates of Regency Britain and argues that their response to Burke's
gendered discourse about power effected radical changes in the
definitions of masculinity and femininity. It portrays their influence
on each other as a series of unstable struggles and alliances in which
the formulation of an authoritative masculinity was a political as well
as an aesthetic issue. The author investigates the writers' portrayals
of women and their collaborations with women writers and throws new
light on their nature poetry by relating it to their reactions to the
sexual and political scandals of the Regency.