Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-171) and index
"The unfair sex" -- "The stock of love": unending desire in women's periodicals and in Letitia Landon's Improvisatrice -- "Take thy bliss": consumer culture and Oothoon's enjoyment in Blake's Visions of the daughters of Albion -- Beyond platonism: Byron's Don Juan and the critique of political economy -- "Give me that voice again, those looks immortal": gaze and voice in Keats's Eve of St Agnes -- Impossible things: Scott's Ivanhoe and the limits of exchange -- Impossible love and commodity culture in Emily Brontë's Wuthering heights
Offering a new understanding of canonical Romanticism, Garofalo argues that Romantic writers critiqued the idea that erotic love enabled one to transcend political and economic realities. William Blake, Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, John Keats and Emily Brontë engaged with the period's concern with political economy and the nature of desire, challenging stereotypical representations of women consumers and conceiving of women's desire as a force for radical change
