Poetry as an Occupation and an Art in Britain, 1760-1830

Peter Murphy's book examines the tension between the material, economic pressures motivating poetry as an occupation, and traditional notions of the forces of literary history defining poetry as an art. It focuses on five writers in the Romantic period: James MacPherson, Robert Burns, James Hogg, Walter Scott, and William Wordsworth. The first four are Scottish; the economic and linguistic status ...