The debate over extending full civil rights to British and Irish Catholics not only preoccupied British politics but also informed the romantic period's most prominent literary works. This book offers the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of Catholic Emancipation, one of the romantic period's most contentious issues.

MICHAEL TOMKO Assistant Professor of Literature in the department of Humanities at Villanova University, USA. He holds degrees in English literature from Swarthmore College, Oxford University, and the University of Notre Dame. His writing on the intersection of politics, religion, and romantic literature has appeared in Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, European Romantic Review, Victorian Studies, and The Wordsworth Circle.