The first major study of the relationship between Scottish Romanticism and medical culture In the early nineteenth century, Edinburgh was the leading centre of medical education and research in Britain. It also laid claim to a thriving periodical culture. Literature and Medicine in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press investigates how Romantic periodicals cultivated innovative literary forms, ideologies and discourses that reflected and shaped medical culture in the nineteenth century. It examines several medically-trained contributors to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, the most influential literary periodical of the time, and draws upon extensive archival and bibliographical research to reclaim these previously neglected medico-literary figures. Situating their work in relation to developments in medical and periodical culture, Megan Coyer’s book advances our understanding of how the nineteenth-century periodical press cross-fertilised medical and literary ideas. Key Features Describes a distinctive Scottish medical culture of the Romantic-era and its synergistic relationship with literary cultureAdvances our understanding of the medical content of key periodicals of the nineteenth centuryDraws upon extensive archival and bibliographical research to reclaim several previously neglected medico-literary figuresExamines the ideological roots of nineteenth-century popular medical writing Case Studies Medical Discourse and Ideology in the Edinburgh ReviewThe Tale of Terror and the ‘Medico-Popular’‘Delta’: The Construction of a Nineteenth-Century Literary Surgeon Professionalisation and the Case of Samuel Warren’s Passages from the Diary of a Late PhysicianThe Rise of Public Health in the Popular Periodical Press: The Political Medicine of W. P. Alison, Robert Gooch, and Robert Ferguson

Redefines the British historical novel as a key site in the construction of British national identity The British historical novel has often been defined in the terms set by Walter Scott’s fiction, as a reflection on a clear break between past and present. Returning to the range of historical fiction written before Scott, Reinventing Liberty challenges this view by returning us to the rich range of historical novels written in the late eighteenth-century. It explores how these works participated in a contentious debate concerning political change and British national identity. Ranging across well-known writers, like William Godwin, Horace Walpole and Frances Burney, to lesser-known figures, such as Cornelia Ellis Knight and Jane Porter, Reinventing Liberty reveals how history becomes a site to rethink Britain as ‘land of liberty’ and it positions Scott in relation to this tradition. Key Features Recovers the richness of the historical novel and history writing before Walter Scott, including the contribution of women writers to this debate Explores how historical fiction probes anxieties at the rise of commerce, the question of empire, and radical political change Rewrites our understanding of Scott and his relation to the earlier British historical novel