The Queer Bookishness of Romanticism
Ornamental Community- Authors:
- Publisher:
- 2021
Summary
How did the buying and collecting of books figure in the lives and works of the Romantics, those supposed apostles of spiritualized poetic genius? Why was book collecting controversial during the Romantic period, and what role has book collecting played in the history of homophobia? The Queer Bookishness of Romanticism: Ornamental Community addresses these and more questions about the suppressed bookish dimension of Romanticism, as well as Romanticism’s historical forebears and Victorian inheritors. The analysis ranges widely, addressing the bookish proclivities of the "romantic friends" the Ladies of Llangollen, the camp works about book collecting produced by a subculture calling themselves “ornamental gentlemen,” narratives of prototypically punk collecting and flâneuring by the essayist and collector Charles Lamb, and rare-book forgeries by Thomas J. Wise and Harry Forman, queer bibliographer-scholars responsible for canonizing some of the Romantic poets during the Victorian period. In the process, this book uncovers surprising connections between conceptions of literature and sexuality; literary materiality and queerness; and forgery, sexuality, and authorship.
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Bibliographic data
- Copyright year
- 2021
- ISBN-Print
- 978-1-7936-0793-5
- ISBN-Online
- 978-1-7936-0794-2
- Publisher
- Lexington, Lanham
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 234
- Product type
- Book Titles
Table of contents
- Dedication No access
- Contents No access
- Acknowledgments No access
- Introduction No access Pages 1 - 30
- Chapter 1 Collecting the Ladies of Llangollen No access Pages 31 - 80
- Chapter 2 Thomas F. Dibdin’s Club for Ornamental Gentlemen No access Pages 81 - 116
- Chapter 3 The Punk Antiquarianism of Charles Lamb No access Pages 117 - 158
- Chapter 4 Henry Buxton Forman and Thomas J. Wise, a Curious Pair of Bookmen No access Pages 159 - 206
- Bibliography No access Pages 207 - 220
- Index No access Pages 221 - 232
- About the Author No access Pages 233 - 234





