Wu's Companion should be mandatory reading for serious scholars of English Romanticism. With major sections on historical milieux, readings of major canonical (and non-canonical) texts, major genres, and critical debates, the Companion is valuable to those just approaching Romantic writing and those who have studied a long time but want a condensed (?) version of the critical conversations. In addition, Wu had the good sense (and good fortune) to gather together some of the foremost scholars of Romantic literature: among others, contributors are Nelson Hilton, Jonathan Wordsworth, David Bromwich, David Simpson, and Alan Richardson. I know more than one Ph.D. student who credits Wu's book with getting him or her through the Romantic portion of comprehensive exams, and many professors are finding it invaluable for classroom prep.

I recently studied Romanticism in a collegiate class using this text as the main "bible" of Romanticism, if you will. I thumbed through it shortly after I purchased it and found most of the authors I thought of as Romantics and some that I had no idea were considered part of the era. The content is logically organized with helpful commentary by the contributors who are expert in the field. Of course, with Romanticism, individual ideas were always most important, so each contributor may have something to say that differs from another, but all opinions are welcome.

My particular avenue of interest is John Keats and, though an anthology's companion and an anthology itself, this text gave me enough information to whet my appetite for more and to consider enrolling in graduate study in Keats's poetry and prose.

I would recommend this to all teachers of Romanticism who want to supplement their students' learning process and all those who are Romantics at heart and want an overview of the era. Be advised, however, that it is mostly the poetry and some excerpts of prose and does not include any of the novels of the era, nor does it touch much on the other arts except in a broad historical sense.

Although recognising that this is an anthology, and not (as a previous reviewer seemed to want) a critical or biographical account, I found some problems with it.

How does Duncan Wu decide how to choose the best, most representative poems and works of these writers?

For me there is simply too much variety in this volume. It ranges from poems to philosophical works to diary excerpts in very short space.

The introduction is full of vague and largely useless generalisations: 'Women of the romantic period, like those of any other, had a good deal to say about experiences peculiar to their social and political situation'. Why does this need to be stated? It's a bit like saying, 'right we better get the feminist credentials in', even if it's not appropriate. Why social and political in particular? Why not all other kinds of experience? It's just that lazy literary critics use these terms rather than admit that they don't know what to say.

I don't feel that this is a good way to teach literature. It is a bit like saying 'we've condensed it all down for you and this is all you need to know'. It is impossible for a reader to read 6 pages of Burke for example and then start applying his ideas in essays as if they knew exactly what he was talking about.

Recommended: 'Wordsworth: The Major Works' ed. Stephen Gill.

Being certainly one of the most comprehensive and sensibly assembled collections of English lyric between 1790 and 1850, this book still disappointed me like so many other anthologies. At the end of the day, it is only a large collection of poems, nothing else. Okay, a short paragraph introduces every poet and there is the odd footnote and cross-reference (often stating obvious or unimportant things, while explanations are missing where they are really needed). But interpretations and comments is what makes an anthology really good. I could put some poems together in a book and publish it, especially if I would be a lecturer at Oxford, that's no big deal. If you want to see some really great anthologies, written by an author who shows real love and enthusiasm for his subject, look at Richard Holmes' books on S.T. Coleridge !

...This book is not a work of literary criticism or a critical biography. Critical anthologies do exist--William Harmon's 'The Classic Hundred Poems' is a fine example--but Wu's compilation sits more appropriately beside the Norton 2A or Mellor and Matlak's 'British Literature: 1780-1830.' Wu's text is a comprehensive and teachable option among these, but none will meet everyone's demands; that is a necessary condition of anthologizing.

He said this (as of course is his right), just a couple of days before 4 people were killed in their beds in West Bank, including a 5-year-old. Obviously, this has no relation to his criticism.

One of the great quotes from Hazlitt says that if something isn't controversial, it isn't interesting. Paulin hates the Brooklyn born land-grabbers because he sees in them the same bigotry and fanaticism that he saw in his fellow Protestants growing up in Belfast. He resents the fact that they are using the bible as a real estate development manual and he resents the notion that some clown from New York can simply get off a plane and claim land that has belonged to local families for generations. As this volume shows, Hazlitt dedicated his life to sparking thought and piercing the pieties of the self righteous. A knitted yarlmuke does not entitle one to the keys to the kingdom. I'm sure Hazlitt (and Paulin!) wouldn't really want them shot; but they would surely wish for them a ticket back to Bensonhurst.

Hazlitt is one of the greatest writers of English prose. The Plain Speaker is an essential book and Blackwells have done our culture a service by re-issuing it.

Duncan Wu is a highly-regarded scholar of romanticism. Therefore one can totally rely on the integrity of the text.

Tom Paulin is a foremost authority on Hazlitt and his book The Day-Star of Liberty is also, incidentally, one of the most stimulating books on Edmund Burke of recent times.

Hazlitt's work, sadly, has become obscure even to well-educated readers. It is most regrettable that a 'reviewer' abuses this public platform to mug this fine edition because he is angry at Paulin's intemperate views on Israel. Giving a one-star rating to a great work by one of the finest writers in world literature is surely an inappropriate response.