Manly Leaders in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Examines fantasies of charismatic, virile leaders in British literature from the 1790s to the 1840s.

From the 1790s to the 1840s, the fear that Britain had become too effeminate to protect itself against the anarchic forces unleashed by the French Revolution produced in many British writers of the period a desire to portray strong leaders who could control the democratic and commercial forces of modernization. While it is commonplace in Romantic studies to emphasize that Romantic writers are...