Book excerpt: First published in 1971. This collection of contemporary reviews of the five major English Romantic poets – Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelley – makes available the critical documents of a great period of literature and literary reviewing. Professor Hayden has selected sixty-eight reviews in which twenty-six periodicals are represented, ranging from the powerful quarterlies and the monthly reviews to the newly established weeklies and the fashionable ladies’ magazines. The reviews give an insight into the Romantic period in England, its literature, critical values, and general interests. This title includes annotations to explain allusions to contemporary events and persons and to translate foreign words and phrases. This title will be of great interest to students of English literature.