Jean-jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism ― Gender and Selfhood, Politics and Nation

Bringing together leading scholars from the USA, UK and Europe, this is the first substantial study of the seminal influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on British Romanticism.
Reconsidering Rousseau's connection to canonical Romantic authors such as Wordsworth, Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism also explores his impact on a wide range of literature, including anti-Jacobin fiction, educational works, familiar essays, nature writing and political discourse. Convincingly demonstrating that the relationship between Rousseau's thought and British Romanticism goes beyond mere reception or influence to encompass complex forms of connection, transmission and appropriation, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism is a vital new contribution to scholarly understanding of British Romantic literature and its transnational contexts.

Russell Goulbourne is Professor of French Literature at King's College London, UK. He is the author of Voltaire Comic Dramatist (2006) and a scholarly translation of Rousseau's Reveries of the Solitary Walker (2011).
David Higgins is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Leeds, UK. He has published widely on Romantic-period literature, including the books Romantic Genius and the Literary Magazine (2005) and Romantic Englishness: Local, National, and Global Selves, 1780-1850 (2014).