Overview

This provocative and timely volume examines the activity of seeking justice through literature during the 'age of revolutions' from 1750 to 1850 a period which was marked by efforts to expand political and human rights and to rethink attitudes towards poverty and criminality. While the chapters revolve around legal topics, they concentrate on literary engagements with the experience of the law, revealing how people perceived the fairness of a given legal order and worked with and against regulations to adjust the rule of law to the demands of conscience. The volume updates analysis of this conflict between law and equity by drawing on the concept of 'epistemic injustice' to describe the harm done to personal identity and collective flourishing by the uneven distribution of resources and the wish to punish breaches of order. It shows how writing and reading can foment inquiries into the meanings of 'justice' and 'equity' and aid efforts to humanise the rule of law.

Full Product Details

Author:   Michael Demson (Professor of English, Sam Houston State University) ,  Regina Hewitt (Professor of English, University of South Florida)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781399500388

ISBN 10:   1399500384
Pages:   312
Publication Date:   31 March 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Contributors Part I: Discerning Principles Introduction to Part I: Discerning Principles, Michael Demson and Regina Hewitt; 1. Law, Religion and Changing Ideas of Innocence in Romantic Literature, Jan-Melissa Schramm 2. Adam Smith on Resentment and Retribution, Victoria Myers 3. Indianism and the Last Performance of Edmund Burke, Padma Rangarajan 4. The Trial of Queen Caroline: Radical Spectacle, Caricature and the Triumph of Public Opinion in the Shadow of the Six Acts, Ian Haywood 5. Legal Vengeance and Popular Violence: Reimagining Justice in The Heart of Midlothian, Melissa J. Ganz Part II: Refining Standards Introduction to Part II: Refining Standards, Michael Demson and Regina Hewitt 6. Rehabilitating Jacobites in Romantic-Era Britain: The Cultural Memory of the 1745 Rising in Thomas Campbell’s ‘Lochiel’s Warning’ and Anne Grant’s ‘The Highlanders’, Leith Davis 7. Jews Performing Remorse: The Trials and Tribulations of John ‘Jew’ King and His Daughters, Michael Scrivener 8. Fugitive Morality in Two Scots Poets: Robert Burns, Alexander Wilson and the Law, Gerard Carruthers and Moira Hansen 9. ‘The Past is Irrevocable’: Justice, Punishment and Irish Romantic Writing, James Kelly 10. Flogging Phelim: Christian Isobel Johnstone, the Perils of Injustice and the Promise of Reform, Elizabeth Kraft Part III: Affirming Resistances Introduction to Part III: Affirming Resistances, Michael Demson and Regina Hewitt 11. Reparatory Justice and the Afterlives of Slavery in Twenty-first-century Creative Rememberings of Mary Prince, Sue Thomas 12. John Clare and Enclosure Again: Against Simplification, Timothy Clark 13. Prison Hulks in Romantic Seascapes, Michael Demson Index 　

Reviews

Exploring epistemic injustices and reforms, equity and normative standards, these essays reveal how Romantic-era literature conceptualized justice in ways that echo urgently with today’s social dilemmas and literary-critical debates. -- Mark Schoenfield, Vanderbilt University

Author Information

Michael Demson is Professor of English at Sam Houston State University. He coedited, with Christopher Clason, Romantic Automata: Exhibitions, Figures, Organisms (2020) and, with Regina Hewitt, Commemorating Peterloo: Violence, Resilience and Claim-making during the Romantic Era (2019). He has published articles in European Romantic Review, Romanticism, Romantic Circles, The Keats-Shelley Journal, The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, among others. His graphic novel, Masks of Anarchy: From Percy Shelley to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, was published in 2013. Regina Hewitt is Professor of English at the University of South Florida. Her most recent publications include Commemorating Peterloo: Violence, Resilience and Claim-Making during the Romantic Era, co-edited with Michael Demson (2019), and an edition of Lawrie Todd for the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt (2023). Formerly Co-Editor of the European Romantic Review, she now serves as a Consulting Editor for that journal.

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