Bracing and essential a radical reframing of British Romanticism through the lens of Black
experience - for fans of David Olusoga Gretchen Gerzina Saidiya Hartman and Emma Dabir
Wordsworth Shelley Byron Keats - the Romantic poets are titans of English literature taught
and celebrated around the world. Their work is associated with sublime passions violent
stormscapes and a questing search for the inner self. It is rarely associated with the racial
politics of the transatlantic slave economy. But these literary icons lived through a period
when individual and collective resistance by Black people in Britain and her overseas colonies
was making it increasingly difficult - and increasingly costly - to ignore their demands for
freedom. A time when popular support for the abolition movement exploded across the country -
and was met by a vehement reactionary campaign from the establishment. A time when white
supremacist ideologies were fomented to justify the abuse and exploitation of non-white
'races'. This cultural context is not immediately obvious in the canon of Romantic poetry. But
that doesn't mean it's not there. The Trembling Hand turns an urgent critical gaze onto six
major Romantic authors examining how their lives and works were entangled with the racist
realities of their era. Mathelinda Nabugodi pores over carefully preserved manuscripts travels
to the houses where these writers lived and died examines the personal objects which survived
them: a teacup a baby rattle a lock of hair. Amid this archive she searches for traces of
Black figures whose lives crossed paths with the great Romantics. And she grapples with the
opposing forces of reverence and horror as her fascination with literary relics collides with
feelings of sorrow and rage.
