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"The Portrait of a Lady," by Henry James, is a novel of being educated abroad. The novel's interior style forces readers to closely consider why they travel, what and whom they might encounter, and how they want to live their lives. Reading "The Portrait of a Lady" as a tale of two travelers allows it to remain the quintessential study abroad novel. This article describes how the author--a teacher at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota--used "The Portrait of a Lady" as the foundation of a senior seminar project. Students were asked to track responses to the character of their choice in the novel as part of the assignment. Students' responses to the assignment caused the teacher to shift her perspective of the novel from a single-person study of the main character, Isabel, to a comparative portrait of learners abroad. This article provides a summary of the novel, as well as insight into why students had an unexpected response to what was initially a predictable assignment.

The article presents the discussion on issue of Comparative Drama announces a partnership between Comparative Drama and the Comparative Drama Conference. Topics include journal and conference that share a name and a commitment to international, interdisciplinary scholarship on dramatic literature; and international community of scholars and encouraging us all to invest in warmer business casual attire.

Books highlighting the general Romantic era of the nineteenth century are outlined. They include Jon Mee's, 'Romanticism, Enthusiasm and Regulation: Poetics and the Policing of Culture in the Romantic Period', Eric G. Wilson's, 'The Spiritual History of Ice: Romanticism, Science and the Imagination' and Charles Mahoney's, 'Romantics and the Renegades: The Poetics of Political Reaction'.

The authors summarize and evaluate criticism published about English romanticism. Topics include general works, poetry, nonfiction prose, fiction, drama, and women authors.

The article synopsizes published works on English literature of the Romantic period, from the late 18th century through the 19th century. Topics cover fiction, non-fictional prose, and drama. Authors of works studied include John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt and George Gordon, Lord Byron.

Judith Pascoe. The Sarah Siddons Audio Files: Romanticism and the Lost Voice. Theater: Theory/Text/Performance Series. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. Pp. xiv + 160. $50.00. Romanticism is famous [...]

Tony Howard. Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xi + 329. $90.00. In William Ackerman Buell's The Hamlets of [...]

Books published in 2005 on the Romantic period of the nineteenth century are presented. They include H.L. Jackson's ' Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia', Thomas Pfau's 'Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, and Melancholy, 1790-1840' and Susan Oliver's 'Scott, Byron and the Poetics of Cultural Encounter'.

Sarah Ruhl's How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, an inquisitive comedy about polyamory, communion, and our animal nature, was criticized for its plot-light, meandering form that juggled ideas without bringing them to conclusion. In this article I argue that Ruhl has created an innovative hybrid form--a Woolfian "essay-play"--in which plot, and argument are secondary to wandering, wondering, and idea-inebriated pleasure. In contrast to the traditional play of ideas, the essay-play invites the audience into the process of thinking rather than presenting them with finished thoughts; its essayistic aesthetic is also an ethic, one that leaves breathing room for the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article summarizes scholarship published about English romanticism. Topics include general studies, fiction and non-fictional prose, selected poets, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, women poets, and drama.

In 1798 Joanna Baillie conceived of a massive project for an intimate theatre: A Series of Plays: In which it is Attempted to Delineate the Stronger Passions of the Mind--plays designed for a small theatre in which audiences could witness the unfolding of a self on stage. The plays allow us to exercise what Baillie calls our "sympathetic curiosity": the "natural desire we have to look into the thoughts, and observe the behavior of others." Her plan included plays on love, hate, ambition, fear, hope, remorse, jealousy, pride, envy, revenge, anger, joy, and grief. She never wrote the one on grief, though. This is where David Lindsay-Abaire steps in. As Baillie noted, grief is a complicated passion, intricately bound up with anger, despair, revenge, and hope. By sitting us down in the dark to listen to Becca work through the full range of grief, Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole teaches the audience to be the friend a grieving person sorely needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews theatrical production "In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play" by playwright Sarah Ruhl.

The article presents information on the first female who enacted the role of Hamlet, in the dramatic representation of Hamlet written by English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. It states that Jane Powell was the first woman to play Hamlet in London, England, who challenged the metropolitan ownership of Hamlet by men. It includes reviews given by critics on Powell's performance as Hamlet.

Chapter XII of the book "The Year's Work in English Studies," Volume 87, edited by William Baker and Kenneth Womack is presented. It discusses several studies of English literature during the Romantic period of 1780-1830. One of these is the book "Robert Southey and the Contexts of English Romanticism," edited by Lynda Pratt. Jerome McGann, an influential critic for Romantic poetry, is also mentioned.

The article discusses Hamlet, the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy, which became a psychological figure who transcended the play and reflected the present era. It is mentioned that the first female Hamlets were Sarah Siddons and Jane Powell. It is cited that Siddons' interpretation of Hamlet is an aesthetic artifact and a literary character, while Powell's performances show Hamlet fighting for authenticity in the midst of deceit.

Chapter 12 of the journal "This Year's Work in English Studies" is presented. The chapter presents a narrative bibliography of publications on English literature in the 19th century. These publications cover poetry, prose, prose fiction, and drama during the Romantic period. Some of the books presented here are "British War Poetry in the Age of Romanticism: 1793-1815," by Betty T. Bennett, "Romantic Rocks, Aesthetic Geology," by Noah Heringman, and "Harrington," by Maria Edgeworth and edited by Susan Manly.

This chapter has five sections: 1. General; 2. Poetry; 3. Prose Non-Fiction; 4. Fiction; 5. Drama. Sections 1 and 2(d) are by Emma Mason; section 2(a) is by Steve Clark, section 2(b) is by Seamus Perry, section 2(c) is by Philip Martin; section 3 is by Leonora Nattrass; section 4 is by Amanda Gilroy and W.M. Verhoeven; section 5 is by Amy Muse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the Chapter XII of the book "Year's Work in English Studies" which discusses the literary works for the 19th century or the Romantic period. It mentions the two poems which shows comprehensive and authoritative information about the works of William Blake such as "Blake in the Marketplace," by Robert N. Essick, and "William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in 1997," by G. E. Bentley Jr. It highlights the significant critical interests of Thomas De Quincey's articles and monographs that are dedicated to his writings.

The article presents Chapter XII of the book "Year's Work in English Studies" which discusses several sections including poetry, non-fictional prose, and fiction in the nineteenth century or the romantic period. It states several books including "Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style" by Jerome J. McGann, "Politics, Philosophy, and the Production of Romantic Texts" by Terence Allan Hoagwood, and "The Romantic Ideology." It mentions the book "Fantastic Modernity: Dialectical Readings in Romanticism and Theory" by Orrin Wang, which is an imaginative study which seeks to investigates how much Romanticism and much postmodernism is still Romantic.

The article presents Chapter XI of the book "Year's Work in English Studies" which discusses several sections including the works of various writers, authors, and poets with their prose, novels, and drama in the eighteenth century. It notes the book "Tradition in Transition: Women Writers, Marginal Texts, and the Eighteenth-Century Canon" in which, one of the many interesting things on the collection is the way that woman writers and marginal texts are productively related to writers and canonical texts. It mentions that Nicholas Hudson presents how the modern idea of an oral tradition is an eighteenth-century coinage. Moreover, it also focuses on Barbara Benedict who shows how literary anthologies, ranging from 1616 to 1836, provide a valuable resource for tracking literary values.

This section discusses publications in 2002 about English drama during the Romantic period. Judith Bailey Slagle's Joanna Baillie: A Literary Life is the first scholarly biography of Joanna Baillie. Slagle's principal task throughout is to show the ways in which the playwright, poet, and cultural commentator reconciled her ideological identities as nationalist, conservative, and feminist. The meticulous research that has gone into this study is evident; the biography is packed with information that will be mined by scholars and graduate students in search of material on Baillie. In Jane Moody's Romantic Shakespeare, the political nature of Shakespeare on stage is always at stake. There were institutional battles over who got to interpret him--the legitimate theaters--as well as ideological battles between conservative and radical critics.