Revision and romantic authorship

by Zachary Leader

The Romantic author as spontaneous, extemporizing, otherworldly and autonomous is a fiction much in need of revision. Zachary Leader argues that the continuing influence of a Romantic preference for what comes naturally, with a concomitant devaluing of secondary processes, distorts our understanding of the actual creative practices of writers of the period, even those most closely associated with Romantic assumptions. 'Second thoughts' (including those of collaborators) play a crucial role in the writings of Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Clare, and Keats. Other assumptions...

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