This book was an absorbing peek into the complications we usually don't hear about, when it comes to the lives of the iconic English romantic poets. Nabugodi has studied the poets in the conventional way, but there is more to the story than that.

Each section of the book digs into aspects of these lives by way of a visit to one or more items in the collections of things archived for posterity. She sits with the item (Shelley's coral baby rattle, Byron's orthopedic boot, and so on) and talks about what it is, but then parts the curtain of conventional wisdom to show us what else is there. It should come as no surprise that all of these people, who were connected in one way or another to the English upper class of the nineteenth century, were not only near, but bound up and supported by, the slave economy of the Caribbean, and even had things to say, directly or indirectly, about African people.

I want to tip my metaphorical hat to her for giving Mary Shelley her own chapter. And while the poetry of these people appealed to me as a teenager, there are some hints here that help explain why I lost interest in it later in life (except for Ozymandias, I will always love that one). I did not know that Rime of the Ancient Mariner was heavily revised (into the version we know now) to remove or obscure the ways in which it took sideways aim at the slave trade. I never did like Wordsworth and he certainly seems to add up to an unappealing individual.

Elegantly written and also stingingly honest, this should be read alongside any class in romantic poetry or any personal ventures into that canon. The point is not to take down a peg those famous writers who may be your favorites; the point is to know the whole story, so you can take their work in its full context.