Romantic Sustainability: Endurance and the Natural World, 1780–1830

Ben P. Robertson, Editor. Lexington Books: Lanham MD, 2015. Contributions by ASLE members Molly Hall, Madison Jones IV, Seth Reno, and William Stroup.

Romantic Sustainability is a collection of sixteen essays that examine the British Romantic era in ecocritical terms. This international collection addresses the works of traditional Romantic writers such as John Keats, Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and Samuel Coleridge but also delves into ecocritical topics related to authors added to the canon more recently, such as Elizabeth Inchbald and John Clare. The essays examine geological formations, clouds, and landscapes as well as the posthuman and the monstrous.

The common theme is sustainability, as each contributor examines Romantic ideas that intersect with ecocriticism and relates literary works to questions about race, gender, religion, and identity.