Romanticism Goes to University: Introduction

The introduction to a special issue of Romantic Textualities, 'Romanticism Goes to University' (no. 25), guest edited by Andrew McInnes. ‘Romanticism Goes to University’ comes out of a two-day symposium held at Edge Hill University in April 2018. The aim of the special issue and symposium alike is to think about how the university functioned in Romantic writing as a symbol of authority and tradition, with the concept of Higher Education available as an alternative way of thinking about creativity and criticality. The special issue begins with a triptych of papers thinking in and out of the Romantic-period university about issues around education. It ends with a focus on the Wollstonecraft–Godwin circle and its own ideas about learning. All of the essays reflect current concerns about the future of Higher Education today, striking an elegiac note for a lost past at the same time as offering hope for the future.