Starlight Wood: Walking back to the Romantic Countryside

Starlight Wood is a nourishing, occasionally provoking hybrid of group biography, cultural criticism, and travelogue that seeks to restore to Romanticism its radicalism and show how much the countryside shaped its manifesto. It explores the importance of the countryside in shaping Romantic attitudes and offers a gripping insight into the lives of some of the most influential figures of the age.

Format: Hardback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 01 September 2022
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

A captivating and thought-provoking blend of group biography, cultural critique, and travelogue, this book aims to reclaim the radical essence of Romanticism while also highlighting the profound influence of the countryside on its manifesto.

The Romantic countryside, as we perceive it today, is a familiar landscape etched in paintings, poems, and music, deeply ingrained in Britain's self-identity. However, for the Romantics themselves, the countryside was a catalyst for transformative change, both within and around them. Romanticism is not merely a cultural artifact; it is a mode of thinking that moves, as eloquently expressed by acclaimed biographer and poet Fiona Sampson in this captivating and vividly evocative book. Sampson embarks on a year-long journey, following in the footsteps of the Romantics as they traversed ten landscapes, exploring, settling, and defining the rural environment. Rather than succumbing to nostalgic clichés, Sampson walks with a profound awareness of the intricate interplay between humans and nature.

In Starlight Wood, Sampson weaves together a tapestry of group biography, cultural history, and an essay on place. Through this rich narrative, we witness Percy Bysshe Shelley and Elizabeth Barrett Browning employing diet as a symbol of radicalism, John Constable unveiling the desolation of the post-Enclosure British countryside, and young William Wordsworth embracing the ideal of radical sensibility in Revolutionary France. Moreover, the construction of the largest military structure in Britain since Hadrian's Wall is engineered on Romney Marsh, serving as a formidable defense against Napoleon's forces.

Starlight Wood offers a profound exploration of how poets, writers, artists, and philosophers of the time were shaped by their natural environment. It prompts us to revisit the vividness with which they experienced the world, urging us to reconnect with our surroundings and embrace the transformative power of nature. This book serves as a reminder that Romanticism was not merely a romanticized ideal but a movement that sought to challenge the status quo.

Weight: 506g
Dimension: 145 x 226 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781472156020