Law, Equity and Romantic Writing

Michael Demson is Professor of English at Sam Houston State University. He coedited, with Christopher Clason, Romantic Automata: Exhibitions, Figures, Organisms (2020) and, with Regina Hewitt, Commemorating Peterloo: Violence, Resilience and Claim-making during the Romantic Era (2019). He has published articles in European Romantic Review, Romanticism, Romantic Circles, The Keats-Shelley Journal, The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, among others. His graphic novel, Masks of Anarchy: From Percy Shelley to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, was published in 2013. Regina Hewitt is Professor of English at the University of South Florida. Her most recent publications include Commemorating Peterloo: Violence, Resilience and Claim-Making during the Romantic Era, co-edited with Michael Demson (2019), and an edition of Lawrie Todd for the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt (2023). Formerly Co-Editor of the European Romantic Review, she now serves as a Consulting Editor for that journal.

Exploring epistemic injustices and reforms, equity and normative standards, these essays reveal how Romantic-era literature conceptualized justice in ways that echo urgently with today’s social dilemmas and literary-critical debates.

• IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgementsContributorsPart I: Discerning PrinciplesIntroduction to Part I: Discerning Principles, Michael Demson and Regina Hewitt; 1. Law, Religion and Changing Ideas of Innocence in Romantic Literature, Jan-Melissa Schramm2. Adam Smith on Resentment and Retribution, Victoria Myers3. Indianism and the Last Performance of Edmund Burke, Padma Rangarajan4. The Trial of Queen Caroline: Radical Spectacle, Caricature and the Triumph of Public Opinion in the Shadow of the Six Acts, Ian Haywood5. Legal Vengeance and Popular Violence: Reimagining Justice in The Heart of Midlothian, Melissa J. Ganz Part II: Refining StandardsIntroduction to Part II: Refining Standards, Michael Demson and Regina Hewitt6. Rehabilitating Jacobites in Romantic-Era Britain: The Cultural Memory of the 1745 Rising in Thomas Campbell’s ‘Lochiel’s Warning’ and Anne Grant’s ‘The Highlanders’, Leith Davis7. Jews Performing Remorse: The Trials and Tribulations of John ‘Jew’ King and His Daughters, Michael Scrivener8. Fugitive Morality in Two Scots Poets: Robert Burns, Alexander Wilson and the Law, Gerard Carruthers and Moira Hansen9. ‘The Past is Irrevocable’: Justice, Punishment and Irish Romantic Writing, James Kelly10. Flogging Phelim: Christian Isobel Johnstone, the Perils of Injustice and the Promise of Reform, Elizabeth KraftPart III: Affirming ResistancesIntroduction to Part III: Affirming Resistances, Michael Demson and Regina Hewitt11. Reparatory Justice and the Afterlives of Slavery in Twenty-first-century Creative Rememberings of Mary Prince, Sue Thomas12. John Clare and Enclosure Again: Against Simplification, Timothy Clark13. Prison Hulks in Romantic Seascapes, Michael DemsonIndex