About this item
A surprising history of the era that brought our modern world decisively into view.Though the Victorians are often credited with ushering in our modern era, the seeds were planted in the years before. The Regency (1811- 1820) began when the profligate Prince of Wales replaced his insane father, George III, as Britain's ruler; around the regent surged a society of evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. The arts showcased extraordinary writers and painters such as Austen, Byron, the Shelleys, Constable, and Turner. Science gave us the steam locomotive and the blueprint for the modern computer.Yet the dark side of the modern era was visible in the poverty, slavery, pornography, opium, and gothic imaginings that birthed Frankenstein. And all the while, the British Empire fought in foreign lands: the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and the War of 1812 in the United States. Exploring these crosscurrents, Robert Morrison illuminates the profound ways this period shaped and indelibly marked the modern world. 38 black and white illustrations
About the Author
Robert Morrison studied at the University of Lethbridge; the University of Oxford; and the University of Edinburgh. Currently he is British Academy Global Professor at Bath Spa University and Queen's National Scholar at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He specializes in nineteenth-century British literature and culture.His most recent book, The Regency Years, During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love and Britain Becomes Modern (2019) , was longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize, and named by The Economist as a Book of the Year. His biography of Thomas De Quincey, The English Opium-Eater (2009) , was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize. Morrison published Thomas De Quincey: Selected Writings in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series (2019) . His annotated edition of Jane Austen's Persuasion was published by Harvard University Press (2011) . With Daniel Sanjiv Roberts, he edited Romanticism and Blackwood's Magazine: "An Unprecedented Phenomenon" (2013) and Thomas De Quincey: New Theoretical and Critical Directions (2008) . With Chris Baldick, he edited The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre (1997) and Tales of Terror from Blackwood's Magazine (1995) for Oxford World's Classics.
