Introduction

Abstract

The introduction provides an overview of the book’s larger argument, that radical publishers and editors carefully and purposefully excerpted the works of the Romantic period, excavating useful political claims from the midst of less amenable texts, and remaking texts and authors alike in the process. This chapter also argues that radical editors’ engagement with the literature of their recent past was profoundly creative. Their practices of reprinting make evident the agency and independence to be found in the reuse and remaking of a pre-existing text. This chapter considers the importance of excerpting, reprinting, and remixing to literary history, and suggests a rethinking of traditional ideas of authorship.