The Trembling Hand

Bracing and essential, a radical reframing of British Romanticism through the lens of Black experience - for fans of David Olusoga, Gretchen Gerzina, Saidiya Hartman and Emma Dabiri

Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats - the Romantic poets are titans of English literature, taught and celebrated around the world. Their writings are associated with the sublime power of nature and revolutionary politics. But these literary icons also lived through the climax of the transatlantic slave economy. They witnessed both the explosion of the abolition movement - and the reactionary formation of white supremacist ideologies.

The Trembling Hand examines how the lives and works of six major Romantic authors were entangled with the racial politics of their era. Mathelinda Nabugodi studies manuscripts and archival treasures - a teacup, a baby rattle, a lock of hair - to recover startling links between the poetry of freedom and the practices of slavery in the Romantic period.