A provocative, revelatory history of British Romanticism that examines the impact of the transatlantic slave economy on the lives and times of some of our most beloved poets—with urgent lessons for today.

A scrap of Coleridge’s handwriting. The sugar that Wordsworth stirred into his teacup. A bracelet made of Mary Shelley’s hair. Percy Shelley’s gilded baby rattle. The death mask preserving Keats’s calm face. Byron’s silk-lined leather boot. Who would have known there could be vast worlds contained in these items? In a completely new interpretation of the Romantics and their context, Mathelinda Nabugodi uses these items to frame her interrogation of the poets, leading us on an expansive journey through time and memory, situating us in depth of their world, and her own.