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Romanticism and Popular Magic

Poetry and Cultures of the Occult in the 1790s

Palgrave Macmillan
  • Examines a wide range of source material, from dramatic lyric to polemical tract
  • Examines work from a variety of writers, both canonical and less well-known
  • Addresses the Romantic era, which has been largely (and unjustly) overlooked by historians of British occult practice to date

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
  2. Introduction

    • Stephanie Elizabeth Churms
    Pages 1-16
  3. Adjacent Cultures and Political Jugglery

    • Stephanie Elizabeth Churms
    Pages 81-107
  4. John Thelwall’s Autobiographical Occult

    • Stephanie Elizabeth Churms
    Pages 109-130
  5. Lyrical Ballads and Occult Identities

    • Stephanie Elizabeth Churms
    Pages 131-163
  6. Coleridge and Curse

    • Stephanie Elizabeth Churms
    Pages 165-213
  7. Robert Southey’s Conservative Occult

    • Stephanie Elizabeth Churms
    Pages 215-261
  8. Conclusion

    • Stephanie Elizabeth Churms
    Pages 263-272
  9. Back Matter

    Pages 273-303

About this book

This book explores how Romanticism was shaped by practices of popular magic.  It seeks to identify the place of occult activity and culture – in the form of curses, spells, future-telling, charms and protective talismans – in everyday life, together with the ways in which such practice figures, and is refigured, in literary and political discourse at a time of revolutionary upheaval.  What emerges is a new perspective on literature’s material contexts in the 1790s – from the rhetorical, linguistic and visual jugglery of the revolution controversy, to John Thelwall’s occult turn during a period of autobiographical self-reinvention at the end of the decade.  From Wordsworth’s deployment of popular magic as a socially and politically emancipatory agent in Lyrical Ballads, to Coleridge’s anxious engagement with superstition as a despotic system of ‘mental enslavement’, and Robert Southey’s wrestling with an (increasingly alluring) conservatism he associated witha reliance on ultimately incarcerating systems of superstition.



Authors and Affiliations

  • Independent Scholar, Surrey, UK

    Stephanie Elizabeth Churms

About the author

Stephanie Elizabeth Churms completed her PhD at Aberystwyth University in September 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Damian Walford Davies.  Her first article, ‘“There was One Man at Llyswen that could Conjure”: John Thelwall – Cunning Man’, was published in the July 2013 edition of Romanticism.  She has also presented papers at several international conferences, including ‘The Wye Valley: Romantic Representations, 1640-1830’ (2011), ‘Locating Revolution: Place, Voice, Community, 1780–1820’ (2012), ‘Visions of Enchantment: Occultism, Spirituality and Visual Culture’ (2014), and the Bicentennial Keats Conference ‘John Keats: Poet-Physician, Physician-Poet, 1815-1821’ (2015).

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access