Boy-Man, Masculinity and Immaturity in the Long Nineteenth Century

Pete Newbon is Senior Lecturer in Romantic and Victorian Literature at Northumbria University, UK.

“Newbon is careful throughout his book, not to over-simplify the nature of the Romantic boy-man. … Newbon’s book is engaging throughout, and if his objective was to educate the reader on the shared attributes of the Romantic boy-man, he has certainly achieved this.” (Sophie Phelps, The Charles Lamb Bulletin, Issue 174, 2021)“This is an erudite book and a valuable contribution to masculinity studies.” (Tracy Hayes, BAVS Newsletter, Vol. 20 (1), 2020)

• Introduction: Too Much the Boy-Man.- Self-Incurred Immaturity.- Literary Origins: Sterne, Rousseau, Chatterton, and Wordsworth.- Namby-Pamby Wordsworth.- The Marks of Infancy Were Burned Into Him.- Chapter 6: Little Johnny Keats: A Boy of Pretty Abilities.- Lamb and the Age of Cant: Jokes, Puns, and Nonsense.- Hartley Coleridge and the Muscular Christians.- Pantomime and the Politics of Play.- The Dark Interpreter: De Quincey, and the Legacy of Wordsworthian Childhood.- A Farewell to Skimpole: Romantic Boy-Men and Canonical Occlusion.- Index