Starlight Wood

Walking back to the Romantic Countryside

Author: Fiona Sampson

Paperback

We think we know the Romantic countryside; it has become the stuff of cliche. Here, renowned biographer and poet Fiona Sampson explores how Romanticism shaped the British countryside and our attitudes to it,via series of ten walks through the British landscape, punctuated by the author's vivid and personal reflections.

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PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

Description

'A nourishing, occasionally provoking hybrid of group biography, cultural criticism and travelogue that seeks to restore to Romanticism its radicalism, and also show just how much the countryside shaped its manifesto' Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday

'"Romanticism isn't a cultural artefact," [Sampson] writes. "It's a way for thought to move." She is taking her own mind for a walk and [...] the essence is intellectual and fully freighted. The cast list is long and international and the method shifting, subtle and demanding' Adam Nicolson, Guardian

For the Romantics, the countryside was a place of radical change. But those real life experiences have been overlaid by two centuries of cliche. To rediscover - and learn from - their radicalism we need to find a fresh approach.

In this extraordinary hybrid of scholarship, biography, cultural history, travelogue and lifewriting, acclaimed poet and Romantic biographer Fiona Sampson does just that. As she walks the British countryside, from the Isle of Wight to Kintyre, her evocative and thought-provoking book helps us see clearly what's hiding in plain sight.

Critic Reviews

A nourishing, occasionally provoking hybrid of group biography, cultural criticism and travelogue... Accompany Sampson on her varied rambles you'll find your eyes opened anew to the beauty not only of nature, but also of creative engagement with every aspect of the world Mail on Sunday
'Rigorous scholarship and extensive biographical knowledge underpin Sampson's text... entertaining and illuminating... arresting' Times Literary Supplement
'There are fine evocations of place and season... It has so much to offer the reader' Literary Review
[An] eloquent, evocative meditation Saga

About the Author

Professor Fiona Sampson MBE FRSL is a leading British poet published in thirty-eight languages. Come Down (2020) was awarded the Naim Frasheri Laureateship, the European Lyric Atlas Prize and Wales Poetry Book of the Year. A biographer and critic, librettist and literary translator, her In Search of Mary Shelley was internationally acclaimed, and Two-Way Mirror: The life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2021) was a New York Times Editors' Choice and Washington Post Book of the Year, a Sunday Times Paperback of the Year, and finalist for the Plutarch Prize and the PEN Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography.