Book excerpt: The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism was first published by Basil Blackwell of Oxford in 1987. A paperback edition appeared two years later, while in the following five years it was reprinted four times. However although the intervening years have seen the appearance of Italian, Portuguese, Slovenian and Chinese editions, no copies have been available in English since 1998. This Alcuin Academic edition has therefore been published in order to fill this gap, and more specifically to meet the needs of those academics and students who have contacted me over the past six or seven years in search of an English-language version of the book. Naturally I have considered writing a revised edition (which indeed some critics, as well as a few friends, have suggested is long overdue). -- Amazon.com.