Named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2009
Romanticism and the Rise of English addresses a peculiar development in contemporary literary criticism: the disappearance of the history of the English language as a relevant topic. Elfenbein argues for a return not to older modes of criticism, but to questions about the relation between literature and language that have vanished from contemporary investigation. His book is an example of a kind of work that has often been called for but rarely realized—a social philology that takes seriously the formal and institutional forces shaping the production of English. This results not only in a history of English, but also in a recovery of major events shaping English studies as a coherent discipline. This book points to new directions in literary criticism by arguing for the need to reconceptualize authorial agency in light of a broadened understanding of linguistic history.

"Admirable for its breadth, the book dwells mainly on the canonical Romantic writers but also spends time with composition manuals, grammar books, dictionaries, and guides to pronunciation. . . Elfenbein succeeds in making what might seem a musty and highly specialized topic relevant to contemporary literary criticism and the classroom teaching of English and composition. . . [G]enuinely compelling and deserves a wider audience than Romantic studies." - Modern Philology

"...undeniably fascinating and important book." - Modern Language Quarterly

"The product of wide-ranging research, acute critical intelligence, and a mature knowledge of English studies, Romanticism and the Rise of English is that rare book that changes minds, pleases readers, and presents highly original, stimulating arguments about what seem to be unpopular ways of thinking." - SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900

"Elfenbein's outstanding and provocative book returns to questions about Romanticism and language incompletely explored in the scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s and presents an argument that is informed by but goes beyond the historicist work so influential these past fifteen to twenty years." - Brown University

"This is an important and original work by one of British Romanticism's most innovative voices. Romanticism and the Rise of English is a broadly arching account of how Romanticism created the terms for how we conceive of and use the English language. It is an impressive call for radical thinking about language as at the root of literature and for how we read it." - University of Pennsylvania