Starlight Wood

Walking back to the Romantic Countryside
We think we know the Romantic countryside; it has become the stuff of cliche. Here, renowned biographer and poet Fiona Sampson explores how Romanticism shaped the British countryside and our attitudes to it,via series of ten walks through the British landscape, punctuated by the author's vivid and personal reflections.

'A nourishing, occasionally provoking hybrid of group biography, cultural criticism and travelogue that seeks to restore to Romanticism its radicalism, and also show just how much the countryside shaped its manifesto' Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday

'"Romanticism isn't a cultural artefact," [Sampson] writes. "It's a way for thought to move." She is taking her own mind for a walk and [.] the essence is intellectual and fully freighted. The cast list is long and international and the method shifting, subtle and demanding' Adam Nicolson, Guardian

For the Romantics, the countryside was a place of radical change. But those real life experiences have been overlaid by two centuries of cliché. To rediscover - and learn from - their radicalism we need to find a fresh approach.

In this extraordinary hybrid of scholarship, biography, cultural history, travelogue and lifewriting, acclaimed poet and Romantic biographer Fiona Sampson does just that. As she walks the British countryside, from the Isle of Wight to Kintyre, her evocative and thought-provoking book helps us see clearly what's hiding in plain sight.

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