"The romantic movement had profound social implications for nineteenth-century British culture. Among the most significant, Debbie Lee contends, was the change it wrought to the insular Britons' ability to distance themselves from the brutalities of chattel slavery. In the broadest sense, she asks: what is the relationship between the artist and the most hideous crimes of him or her era? In dealing with the Romantic period, this question becomes more specific: what is the relationship between the nation's greatest writers and the epic violence of slavery? In answer to this question, Slavery and the Romantic Imagination provides a completely historicized and theorized account of the intimate relationship between slavery, African exploration, "the Romantic imagination," and the literary works produced by this conjunction."--Jacket