Alan Bewell's Romanticism and Colonial Disease (1999) is a fascinating re-reading of the contextual and textual discourses of Wordsworth and his fellow poets. Bewell notes that a significant context for the Romantic age was colonial expansion. English ships were travelling all over the world. In India, soon to be Britain's greatest possession, the East India Company had transformed itself from a trading body into a political power after Plassey (1757) and Baksar (1764). The money from these colonies was helping a financially drained British exchequer. Colonies in West Indies and Africa also flourished.

This was only one side of the picture. Many Englishmen died in the colonies. Tropical diseases – to which they had no immunity and to which they were being exposed for the first time – claimed their lives in huge numbers in India, West Indies and Africa. Many died during the lengthy voyages too. This meant that many families in England had lost their family members in the colonies. In terms of writing, this was the period when the first treatises on tropical diseases began to get published and circulated in England. Other countries were also mapped in terms of their medical geography (the incidence of specific diseases in certain geographical areas). In fact, Bewell shows how every single Romantic writer, from Wordsworth to Austen, had at least one family member in the colonies, had a colonial connection, and were often familiar with tropical diseases.