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Hazardous Experiments: The Elusive Prefaces Of William Godwin, Mary Hays, William Wordsworth And Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jeffrey W. Miles

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study analyzes the prefaces of four Romantic-period writers: William Godwin, Mary Hays, William Wordsworth, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Historically, the preface can be traced back to the insinuatio of classical rhetoric, the purpose of which is to evade audience hostility for writers presenting a bad case. Given the repressive political and cultural atmosphere of the Romantic period, writers like Godwin, Hays, Wordsworth, and Shelley, idealists who seek to disseminate radical ideas in an era of state censorship, must devise a strategy to convey their messages without attracting attention to their subversiveness. Thus, all four writers continually preface their works …