The Dissolution of Character in Late Romanticism, 1820 - 1839

Restructures and revitalises late Romantic literature as a movement fascinated with competing claims about the reality and knowability of character The idea of character that many of us still take for granted – whether considered in print as an object of representation, or in life as a congenital ‘bias’ or an acquirable moral possession – is the shared concern of a multidisciplinary debate in reform-era Britain. This book argues for the independent merits of several lesser-known works written in