Jeffrey N. Cox refines our conception of "second generation" Romanticism by placing it within the circle of writers around Leigh Hunt that came to be known as the "Cockney School." Cox challenges the traditional image of the Romantic poet as an isolated figure by recreating the social nature of the work of Shelley, Keats, Hunt, Hazlitt, Byron, and others. This book not only demonstrates convincingly that a "Cockney School" existed, but shows that it was committed to putting literature in the service of social, cultural, and political reform.