British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind

In this provocative and original study, Alan Richardson examines an entire range of intellectual, cultural, and ideological points of contact between British Romantic literary writing and the pioneering brain science of the time. Poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, and novelists such as Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, are shown to have shared a surprising extent of common ground with pioneering brain scientists including Erasmus Darwin and F. J. Gall. It demonstrates the value for literary and cultural history of learning from recent work in neuroscience and cognitive science.