Romantic Revelations argues that Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, John Clare, and Jane Austen sketch out a post-apocalyptic world that is paradoxically the vision that offers us hope. Washington contends that these authors craft an optimistic vision of the future that leads to a new politics.

Chris Washington is Assistant Professor of English at Francis Marion University.

"The philosophically speculative twist Washington brings to bear on what are undoubtedly, unavoidably acute, searing political challenges makes this a book for our times. As we exit the Anthropocene, hopefully with grace rather than blindness and resentment, to paraphrase John Ricco, we are compelled, as Washington suggests, to understand ‘the world on its own terms.’ Seems damn-near impossible to me. But Washington gives me hope that this can be done with hope, and love, and that an emerging generation of Romantics scholars among whom he counts himself might just pull it off."

Fuson Wang, University of California, Riverside:

"Washington’s richly suggestive book is a timely and useful polemic for all those working in Romantic studies who value the period as an age of revolution and institutional change. In postapocalyptic constructions of hope and love, Romanticism finds new resonance in our own age of climate crisis. Even amidst the so-called sixth extinction, Washington makes the case that there is ample space and time to defamiliarize ‘the thing with feathers’ and the ‘ever-fixed mark.’ Washington’s call for a new social contract that thinks beyond narrow species categories is a welcome reminder that this cohort of two-hundred-year-old Romantic reformers is still changing the world."

Evan Gottlieb, School of Writing, Literature, and Film, Oregon State University:

"Romantic Revelations represents the most vital, provocative, and timely contribution to Romantic Studies that I have read in quite some time. Offering a serious advance in state-of-the-art research, Romantic Revelations masterfully brings together and interweaves three of the most innovative, timely approaches to Romanticism today: Anthropocene eco-theory, Speculative Realism, and the ethico-political turn in post-structuralism/ deconstruction."

David Collings, Department of English, Bowdoin College:

"This book provides a rigorous, transformative account of Romanticism's post-apocalyptic visions, proposing the compelling thesis that life can begin at last after the extinction of human dominance. Drawing on aesthetics and ethics, close reading and political critique, it constitutes a singular contribution to anti-anthropocentric thought."

David Higgins, Associate Professor of English, University of Leeds:

"Fascinating, and brimming with energy, ideas, and critical intelligence, Romantic Revelations offers a new account of ‘post-apocalyptic’ Romantic literature in Byron, the Shelleys, Clare, and Austen."