Bringing together studies in theater history, print culture, and literature, this book offers a new consideration of Romantic-period writing in Britain. Recovering a wide range of theatrical criticism from newspapers and periodicals, some of it overlooked since its original publication in Regency London, Jonathan Mulrooney explores new contexts for the work of the actor Edmund Kean, essayist William Hazlitt, and poet John Keats.  Kean's ongoing presence as a figure in the theatrical news presented readers with a provocative re-imagining of personal subjectivity and a reworking of the British theatrical tradition. Hazlitt and Keats, in turn, imagined the essayist and the poet along similar theatrical lines, reframing Romantic prose and poetics. Taken together, these case studies illustrate not only theater's significance to early nineteenth-century Londoners, but also the importance of theater's textual legacies for our own re-assessment of 'Romanticism' as a historical and cultural phenomenon.

'The value of (this book) is in its meticulous historicism, and its careful attention to the rarely acknowledged role of theatre and theatrical affairs in the lives of its authors.'

Chris Townsend Source: Times Literary Supplement

'Mulrooney makes a valuable contribution to Romantic-period studies through his sustained attention to the ways in which public and private experiences were transformed by both print and performance … This is a beautifully written and important book.'

Susan Valladares Source: The Review of English Studies

‘This truly important book - generous in its acknowledgment of other scholars and energizing in its vivid, sharp, entertaining style - expands our sense of Romantic era theater and print culture, advances our sense of Cockneyism in the period, and offers fresh, powerful accounts of Haz-litt and Keats.’

Jeffrey N. Cox Source: The Wordsworth Circle

‘… makes a convincing case for the importance of the theatre in the literary world of the early nineteenth century.’

Eva Lippold Source: The Charles Lamb Bulletin