Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850. Ed. Christopher John Murray, 2 Volumes. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn/Taylor & Francis Group, 2004. ISBN: 157958361X. Price: US$325.

Given the kind of capital, both cultural and otherwise, that a policy of inclusiveness continues to command, it comes as no great surprise to hear Christopher John Murray preface his most recent encyclopedia with the following assessment vis-à-vis the character (not to mention the size) of his two-volume text: “the Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era,” he insists, “is not […] simply an encyclopedia of Romanticism;” it is, rather, more accurately described as “a cultural encyclopedia covering the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century in Britain, continental Europe, and the Americas” (ix). That the Encyclopedia has a clear international focus is unmistakable, covering as it does artistic, literary, and philosophical developments from Britain to Greece, from the Ukraine to the Balkans, and from the United States to the Caribbean. Likewise committed to viewing the Romantic era through the specialized optics of cultural studies, the Encyclopedia also includes a refreshing number of entries on otherwise unexpected topics such as “Fashion,” “Happiness,” and “Night”–many of which make convincing connections across the culture of the period and which contribute to the Encyclopedia’s desire to represent discourses, themes, and concerns beyond (but also very much linked to) the realms of architecture, music, literature, and philosophy. As interdisciplinary, then, as it is chronologically expansive (strangely, Murray deems “controversial,” but falls short of satisfactorily justifying, his preference for the year 1760 in the title), the Encyclopedia’s overall aim is “to provide a broad-ranging guide to the profound changes in thought, sensibility, and expression that occurred during [the Romantic] era, a revolutionary period that saw many of the values of the Enlightenment redefined, challenged, or rejected, and whose principle concerns–liberty, the individual, revolution and nationalism, nature, history and human identity–provided the foundation of the modern world” (ix). If Murray’s expressed inclination to broaden even further the “ever-widening scope” (x) of Romantic studies is, as I have suggested, not altogether unexpected, then it is nevertheless impressive to witness his ambitious enterprise materialize in practice. Simply put, the Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era charts the contours of Romanticism (be it in terms of gender, genre, discipline, or nationality) well beyond–and more successfully than–any anthology, study, or list that comes to mind. I leave it for others to discuss the need for such stout period-expansion primarily because that particular debate is less important to me than the fact that Murray’s Encyclopedia will invariably become far more than a book that I will one day fondly recall having reviewed. An immensely rich and diverse resource, the Encyclopedia is as much an outstanding teaching and preliminary research tool as it is a fascinating work of scholarship in its own right–one that no doubt took an enormous collective effort on the part of its accomplished editor and its veritable convoy of gifted contributors. Even if many of the Encyclopedia’s entries are on subjects that, according to Murray, “could not be described as Romantic in any sense” (ix), those entries, when placed alongside the hundreds of entries that are, yield a uniquely unprecedented vantage point from which to gauge the socio-political, philosophical, and literary dialogues, debts, and contexts of the period. Of course, casually distinguishing between texts and topics that are or are not Romantic raises contentious issues regarding the signification of words like “Romantic” and “Romanticism.” Fortunately, the Encyclopedia handles these issues exceptionally well, calling on its contributors to treat Romanticism as an open question and to attend to a wide range of categories of difference when considering the terms they define. (Regretting the lack of a better, more inclusive term, Murray …