Writing in the Age of William IV

This volume explores the literary, cultural, social and political climate in Britain during the
reign of William IV (1830–37). Rarely discussed by scholars searching to define the ‘Romantic’
period, and overshadowed by Queen Victoria, William IV’s reign signifies an important moment
within the long nineteenth century, one whose literary output is marked by experimentation
and generic instability. Rather than simply blurring the boundaries between the Romantic
and Victorian periods, this diverse collection of essays demonstrates how the spirit of reform,
creative experimentation, and an increasingly politically active middle-class readership produced
a peculiar literary and material culture of its own. Responding to a wide range of print culture,
including periodicals, albums, graphic satires, novels, poetry, travel writing and guidebooks,
by canonical and non-canonical authors, such as Catherine Gore, James Hogg, John Ruskin,
Mariana Starke, Thomas Hosmer Shepherd and Thomas Pringle, the essays in this volume map
a complex network of conversation, personal and national identities, radical and conservative
ideologies, and contested domestic and public spaces, both in Britain and abroad. By addressing
various aspects of this remarkable period’s material culture and aesthetic innovations, the essays
in this collection complicate our contemporary understanding of the long nineteenth century
in Britain and open up new spaces for discussion.