Eighteenth-century landscape description formed part of a larger debate over the nature of liberty and authority which was vital to a Britain newly defining its nationhood in a period of growing imperial power and rapid economic change. Tim Fulford examines landscape description in the writings of Thomson, Cowper, Johnson, Gilpin, Repton, Wordsworth, Coleridge and others, revealing tensions that arose as writers struggled for authority over the public sphere and sought to redefine the nature of that authority. In his investigation of poetry and political and aesthetic writing, Dr Fulford throws new light on the legacy of Commonwealth and Country-party ideas of liberty. Also discussed are the significance of the Miltonic sublime, the politics of the picturesque and the post-colonial encounter of the Scottish tour. Dr Fulford goes on to show how the early radicalism and later conservatism of Wordsworth and Coleridge were shaped, in part, by eighteenth-century literary political and literary authorities. His innovative study offers an understanding of literary and political influence that cuts across conventional periodization, finding new links between the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

• Reveals political and literary context of landscape description in a wide range of writers of eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries • Makes new links between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political and literary thought • New readings of canonical authors in wider context

Contents
Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Thomson and Cowper: the ‘stubborn country tam`d’?; 2. Johnson: the usurpations of virility; 3. Unreliable authorities? Squires, tourists and the picturesque; 4. Wordsworth: the politics of landscape; 5. Coleridge: fields of liberty; Index.