Romanticism and Animal Rights

Demonstrating how English Romantic writing took up issues of what we now call animal rights, this study joins the growing number of studies that seek precedents or affinities in English Romanticism for ecological concerns. An unprecedented amount of writing advocated kindness to animals in England during the second half of the eighteenth century. This theme was carried through many genres, from sermons to encyclopedias, scientific works to literature for children, and to the poetry of Cowper, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Clare and others.