Romantic Marginality:

Nation and Empire on the Borders of the Page

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Alex Watson

The History of the Book

This is the first critical study of Romantic-era annotation or marginalia – footnotes, endnotes, glossaries – which formed a vital site of literary interaction. Texts of this period were often marked by an abundance of ethnographic, linguistic and anthropological details about the people that the emerging British nation-state was seeking to absorb. Watson argues that writers tried to marginalize forms of political and regional identity that conflicted with the interests of the nation-state by locating them on the borders of the page. Using Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, Watson demonstrates that such paratexts were a pivotal site of political and colonial division in Romantic-period literature. Examining the work of key figures including Maria Edgeworth, Robert Southey and Walter Scott, the study will be important to scholars of Romanticism, the history of the book and post-colonial theory.

Sample pages

• Introduction
• Index

Readership

History of the Book, Romanticism and Empire Studies

Contents

Introduction: Reading from the Margins
1 Contesting the Jupien Effect: Annotation in the Eighteenth Century
2 The Author in the Margins: Annotation as Site of Conflict
3 Margins and Marginality: Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800) and Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl (1806)
4 The Imperial Collection: Robert Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer: A Metrical Romance (1801)
5 The Margins of the Nation: Robert Burns’ Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) and Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814)
6 Byron’s Errantry: Lord Byron and John Cam Hobhouse’s Annotation for Cantos I, II and IV of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1811–16)
Conclusion: Romantic Marginality and Beyond

Reviews

‘This is the first critical study entirely devoted to annotation in Romantic literature. It’s a brilliant achievement, inviting us to view Romanticism (quite literally) from the margins. Watson enriches our reading of a wide range of texts from the period, and also casts new light on the relationship between authorship, colonialism and nationalism’ Nigel Leask, University of Glasgow

Related titles

• Charlotte Smith in British Romanticism
• Dialogue, Didacticism and the Genres of Dispute: Literary Dialogues in the Age of Revolution
• Readings on Audience and Textual Materiality
• Robert Southey: Later Poetical Works, 1811–1838
• Robert Southey: Poetical Works 1793–1810
• Romance Readers and Romance Writers: by Sarah Green
• The Wild Irish Girl
• The Works of Charlotte Smith
• The Works of Maria Edgeworth
• Wordsworth's Poetic Collections, Supplementary Writing and Parodic Reception
• Writing the Empire: Robert Southey and Romantic Colonialism

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