Radical Sensibility

First published in 1993. "Radical Sensibility "provides a detailed account of the interrelations of literature, ideas and history in the eighteenth century s Revolutionary decade.

The book traces a continuity of ideas from Shaftesbury to Godwin and Wollstonecraft, and sets it beside a conservative tradition established in the work of Hume and Adam Smith. As a guide to the transformations of sensibility as a concept, Jones examines the trajectories of three writers who work spans the decade: Charlotte Smith, Helen Maria Williams, and the early Wordsworth.

A mixture of literary textual analysis and historical and political documentation, "Radical Sensibility "will be important reading for students and teachers of poetry, ideas and the novel. "