The period in British poetry between the death of Pope and the Lyrical Ballads (1798) is a rich one, yet it has always proved difficult to come to terms with this 'Age of Transition'. This collection raises the whole question of this distinctively eighteenth-century romanticism and demonstrates that the poetry is bold and challenging in its own right. Topics discussed include the political dimension in this work, the need (sometimes literally) to forge a past and the recently rediscovered women poets of the period.