Product Description: This book re-examines the literary significance of poet and translator William Cowper (1731-1800). Cowper is too often read as an 'escapist' poet, whose retirement constitutes and attitude of political retreat and disengagement. This book recovers the highly politicised context of 'retirement' as a mode of political opposition in the eighteenth century and shows the extent to which one poet drew from, and contributed to, this radical traditions...read more

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