A history of British Romanticism that examines the impact of the transatlantic slave economy on the lives and times of some of our most beloved poets—with urgent lessons for today.
Powerful, revelatory ... Despite the scholarly weight of the book, as a writer Nabugodi is warm and witty, her prose both intimate and animated. To unite scholarship with storytelling, the political with the personal, and the funny with the grim, is something that really should be required for tenure because it shows how nimble her intellect is.
Her argument is tighter than it looks, propelled by a voice that is urgent, exasperated and eager to share what it knows. Not all of her chapters have this force or cohesion ... Her section on John Keats is...problematic ... Her concluding chapter on Lord Byron saves everything ... Far from perfect, but its passion, and its learning, ensure that one will never look at these poets in quite the same way.
