Richard Marggraf Turley''s study of the often neglected poet Barry Cornwall offers an interesting and informative supplement to the work of critics such as Jeffrey Cox and Nicholas Roe on the social, literary and invariably political contexts of John Keats''s life and work. The book is primarily a study of what Turley frequently terms the ''interfrictive'' relationship between Keats and Cornwall but it also argues persuasively for a revised understanding of how the less well-known author''s work interacts with the writings of other ''romantics'' such as Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt. TIle book takes the form of a series of interrelated but in many ways self-contained case studies that examine different aspects of the Keats-Cornwall relationship.Turley begins by investigating the nature of Cornwall''s popularity (which is in marked contrast to the reception of Keats''s work), ascribing it in part to the ways in which he ''successfully commodified "Cockney School" aesthetics'' (p.4S). The second chapter uses two letters by Cornwall to demonstrate both his support for Keats as a fellow writer and also his awareness of their rivalry and mutual influence. The third chapter places Cornwall in a political context shared with liberal writers (including Keats) by looking at their metaphorical use of seasonal imagery as a response to the Peterloo massacre of 1819. This is followed by a chapter that compares and contrasts the eroticism of Keats''s and Cornwall''s poetry.

Turley argues that Cornwall''s work, unlike that of Keats, contains its eroticism within an overall framework of decency, thus allowing it to be both subversive and publicly acceptable. The final chapter (which is possibly the most loosely structured) examines both poets'' engagement with the theme of madness, particularly in relation to the insights gained through the poets'' experience of medical (Keats) and legal (Cornwall) professions. A significant amount of Turley''s material has been published elsewhere and this has an effect on the structure of the book as a whole. Chapters often appear to be only tangentially related to one another and a clearly developing overall argument can sometimes be difficult to discern. In the early chapters there is a certain amount of repetition of material or local argument and, in the later sections, Turley has a tendency towards digression. This is particularly evident in the final chapter where the (interesting) material on the institutional care of the insane and the treatment of insanity as a theme in Lyrical Ballads seems in excess of what is strictly required for the specific discussions of Keats and Cornwall. A more recurrent methodological problem relates to the precise nature of the relationship between Keats and Cornwall that is being proposed. At several points in the book Turley wishes to suggest that personal contact between the writers was greater that has previously been acknowledged.

The problem is that, whilst this is possible, Turley fails to provide conclusive evidence that this was so - at best such evidence is circumstantial and is apparently contradicted by Cornwall''s own claim that he met Keats ''only two or three times'' (p.8). However, what Turley does demonstrate with absolute certainty is that there are numerous ways in which Keats and Cornwall possess shared concerns about poetry and politics in their broadest sense and that these concerns link both poets in interesting and significant ways to what the book''s subtitle refers to as ''Romantic Literary Culture''. The book is at its most successful in the many places where it offers detailed and extremely suggestive comparisons of specific poems by the two authors. The effect of these is not only to provide new ways of reading the canonical poet but also to make the ''minor'' poet far more interesting than he might otherwise appear. Turley ultimately persuades the reader that the current critical neglect of Cornwall is unjustified and this study quite properly re-establishes him as a central protagonist in the complex cultural landscape of early nineteenth-century England. Philip Cox, Literature & History , Third Series 20/1.