Alan Richardson. British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. 266. $60.00. This important book attempts a very brave feat. It argues that the study of literary romanticism has taken insufficient account of the blossoming of scientific interest in the brain that occurred towards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. To remedy this shortcoming, it reads a handful of canonical romantic-period texts through the lens of romantic-era brain science. Its seven chapters do not pretend to offer a systematic introduction to romantic brain science. They attempt instead to reveal an underlying harmony between the Weltanschauung of romantic brain science and the literary responses of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Austen and Keats. The readings of individual authors' works contain a wealth of interesting information and for the most part work well.
