British Romanticism and the Catholic Question

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction: The Spirits of the Age

   • Michael Tomko

   Pages 1-13

3. The Purgatorial Politics of the Catholic Question

   • Michael Tomko

   Pages 14-51

4. History, Sympathy and Sectarianism in Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story

   • Michael Tomko

   Pages 52-86

5. Wordsworth and Superstition

   • Michael Tomko

   Pages 87-118

6. Shelley’s Conflicted Campaign for Catholic Emancipation

   • Michael Tomko

   Pages 119-147

7. Scott’s Ivanhoe and the Saxon Question

   • Michael Tomko

   Pages 148-181

8. Conclusion: ‘The Anxious Hour’ — England in 1829

   • Michael Tomko

   Pages 182-196

9. Back Matter

   Pages 197-224

   PDF

The debate over extending full civil rights to British and Irish Catholics not only preoccupied British politics but also informed the romantic period's most prominent literary works. This book offers the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of Catholic Emancipation, one of the romantic period's most contentious issues.

• identity
• national identity
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Romanticism
• William Wordsworth
• British and Irish Literature

'The meticulous research and probing readings in Michael Tomko's book show how unsettling the issue of Catholic Emancipation was for the major writers of the Romantic periods. It is a stunning contribution to our larger sense of the complexity surrounding issues of toleration and secularization; still more, it makes the most convincing case yet for Catholicism's centrality in Romantic politics and literary production.' - Professor Mark Canuel, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

'This is a rich and rewarding study...The reader comes away with a refreshed, more complicated picture of nineteenth-century romanticism, a thorough understanding of the "Catholic Question" and its controversial nature, and much encouragement to consider the role of religious identity in the formation of nation-states.' - Maria Lamonaca, New Books on Literature 19

'...thoughtful study...' -True Principles

'Though not the final word on the subject, Tomko's book has the clear merit of persuading readers of its importance. It will also provide them with a strong encyclopaedic basis and with possible reading strategies on which to base their own investigations into an unduly neglected aspect of British Romantic culture.' - Raphaël Ingelbien, University of Leuven

• Villanova University, UK

  Michael Tomko

MICHAEL TOMKO Assistant Professor of Literature in the department of Humanities at Villanova University, USA. He holds degrees in English literature from Swarthmore College, Oxford University, and the University of Notre Dame. His writing on the intersection of politics, religion, and romantic literature has appeared in Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, European Romantic Review, Victorian Studies, and The Wordsworth Circle.

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