Authoring the Self

Drawing upon historicist and cultural studies approaches to literature, this book argues that the Romantic construction of the self emerged out of the growth of commercial print culture and the expansion and fragmentation of the reading public beginning in eighteenth-century Britain. Arguing for continuity between eighteenth-century literature and the rise of Romanticism, this groundbreaking book traces the influence of new print market conditions on the development of the Romantic poetic self.

Scott Hess is Assistant Professor of English at Earlham College, where he also teaches Environmental Studies courses. He has published essays on Romantic and eighteenth-century literature, print culture, authorship, and the environment in Nineteenth Century Studies, TheAge of Johnson, European Romantic Review, and International Studies in Literature and Environment.