Mathelinda Nabugodi

Propelled by a voice that is urgent, exasperated and eager to share what it knows… Her account of Byron shows why she wrote this book, and also her ability to argue with herself, to dramatize her own doubts. That’s a rare gift for any critic… [Her] passion, and [her] learning, ensure that one will never look at these poets in quite the same way

Powerful, revelatory... Mathelinda Nabugodi performs what she calls “an act of historical recovery,” re-examining British Romanticism’s beloved literary superstars through the debris they left behind... A masterpiece about how history is made, maintained, and remembered, while also including what history forgot — with trembling hands, she admits — and with power and ferocity

Ambitious and ingenious, Mathelinda Nabugodi engages the reader both emotionally and intellectually in the quest to re-see, re-imagine and re-read the past. A voice sometimes tentative and searching, then sure of its scholarship, then puzzled by some large absence in the archive, then engrossed by a poem, an essay, a letter

An intimate and singular perspective on the Romantics—and race

Mathelinda Nabugodi reveals the racial wounds behind the pristine face of British Romanticism. Her journey—part scholarly excavation, part personal pilgrimage—takes readers through abandoned archives and hallowed homes, where she confronts not just history but her own complex relationship with poets whose words shaped her life even as their era sought to erase people who looked like her… Nabugodi shows us how to hold two truths at once: beautiful craft and painful context, literary genius and racial violence. Her reckoning is a love letter written in disquiet, a map for those seeking the unvarnished truth of our literary inheritance, and a gift for anyone who values personal storytelling that illuminates our shared past

Professor DJ Lee, author of 'Slavery and the Romantic Imagination'

A viscerally bold, challenging and often uncomfortable study of our major British Romantic writers. Based on extensive archival research and highly sensitive to the lived experience of Black people, their real but often effaced or distorted presence in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Britain, this study will redefine our understanding of British Romanticism and its troubled relationship to slavery and colonial for years to come

Peter Kitson, author of 'Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter'

The Trembling Hand offers a crucial corrective to the ways in which Romanticism has often been taught and positioned in British culture, confronting the aspects of Romanticism that have been hidden amidst the shared cultural project to make Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron and the Shelleys into British national treasures. Nabugodi unearths new contexts for the study of Romanticism and also considers the ethical debates and dilemmas surrounding some of the most well-known poems in the period

Dr Amelia Worsley, co-editor of 'Romanticism, Abolition and Anti-Slavery Literatures'

With intellect, precision and empathy, Mathelinda Nabugodi speaks to the shadows hovering at the archive's edges, the presences that most have ignored. These presences are those Africans who travelled alongside Europeans, affecting – and creating – history. We needed Nabugodi’s courage in writing this history: Now, we do see and we do hear – and may the ancestors be pleased

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of 'The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois'

The Trembling Hand is an unflinching account of the racist cruelty and nonsense regurgitated by canonical Romantic poets alongside their greatest poetry. Interweaving archive encounters, biography and haptically close reading, Mathelinda Nabugodi shares searingly personal experiences of hate and love, the taste of words and the feel of paper. It is a strong and moving work of resistance that has changed how I see Romanticism

Prof. Jane Stabler, author of 'Byron Poetics and History'

Ferociously intelligent, lyrical, and true, The Trembling Hand is a hero’s journey through the beauty of poetry and the nightmare of history—and sometimes the other way around. Nabugodi has done something at once wholly original and utterly Romantic. This book marks the advent of a new criticism, or should

Anahid Nersessian, author of 'Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse'

Mathelinda Nabugodi confronts the pain, joy, and silences of the Romantic archive, laying bare the contradictions and hypocrisies of Romantic poets who sang of liberty while remaining complicit in slavery. She writes with clarity about the ethics and emotional life of archival work; she tries to get close to Romantic poets while contending with their most disturbing views. A powerful, important book and a real pleasure

Dr Lily Gurton-Wachter, author of 'Watchwords: Romanticism and the Poetics of Attention'

Mathelinda Nabugodi shows us that those palely loitering Romantic poets were deeply entwined with the Black Atlantic, and that these connections inform our ongoing encounters with canonical whiteness. The Trembling Hand reaches out to readers, contributes to a highly topical reevaluation of the literary canon, and offers itself as a generous and thoughtful memoir

Emma Smith, author of 'This Is Shakespeare'

Mathelinda Nabugodi dazzles with her originality of approach in this exhilarating tour de force, opening new ways of seeing and reading. A scholar of the highest caliber, she uses archival treasures—a teacup, a baby’s rattle, a necklace made of human hair—to reframe the dusty portraits of the Romantic poets in relation to what has been termed the ‘racial capitalism’ of chattel slavery, the engine of their eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Her own story provides sparkling grace notes as she delves into the influence of the slave trade on a literary tradition associated with personal and political freedom, and among this project’s most moving moments is Nabugodi’s reckoning with the limits and possibilities of writing herself into this lineage

The Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction jury

Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive

Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats – the Romantic poets are titans of English literature, taught and celebrated around the world. Their work is associated with sublime passions, violent stormscapes and a questing search for the inner self. It is rarely associated with the racial politics of the transatlantic slave economy. 
 
But these literary icons lived through a period when individual and collective resistance by Black people in Britain and her overseas colonies was making it increasingly difficult – and increasingly costly – to ignore their demands for freedom. A time when popular support for the abolition movement exploded across the country – and was met by a vehement, reactionary campaign from the establishment. A time when white supremacist ideologies were fomented to justify the abuse and exploitation of non-white 'races'. This cultural context is not immediately obvious in the canon of Romantic poetry. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. 
 
The Trembling Hand turns an urgent critical gaze onto six major Romantic authors, examining how their lives and works were entangled with the racist realities of their era. Mathelinda Nabugodi pores over carefully preserved manuscripts, travels to the houses where these writers lived and died, examines the personal objects which survived them: a teacup, a baby rattle, a lock of hair. Amid this archive, she searches for traces of Black figures whose lives crossed paths with the great Romantics. And she grapples with the opposing forces of reverence and horror as her fascination with literary relics collides with feelings of sorrow and rage.

Mathelinda Nabugodi

Praise for The Trembling Hand

Propelled by a voice that is urgent, exasperated and eager to share what it knows… Her account of Byron shows why she wrote this book, and also her ability to argue with herself, to dramatize her own doubts. ...

Powerful, revelatory... Mathelinda Nabugodi performs what she calls “an act of historical recovery,” re-examining British Romanticism’s beloved literary superstars through the debris they left behind... A ...

Ambitious and ingenious, Mathelinda Nabugodi engages the reader both emotionally and intellectually in the quest to re-see, re-imagine and re-read the past. A voice sometimes tentative and searching, t ...

Propelled by a voice that is urgent, exasperated and eager to share what it knows… Her account of Byron shows why she wrote this book, and also her ability to argue with herself, to dramatize her own doubts. ...

Powerful, revelatory... Mathelinda Nabugodi performs what she calls “an act of historical recovery,” re-examining British Romanticism’s beloved literary superstars through the debris they left behind... A ...

Ambitious and ingenious, Mathelinda Nabugodi engages the reader both emotionally and intellectually in the quest to re-see, re-imagine and re-read the past. A voice sometimes tentative and searching, t ...

Propelled by a voice that is urgent, exasperated and eager to share what it knows… Her account of Byron shows why she wrote this book, and also her ability to argue with herself, to dramatize her own doubts. ...

Powerful, revelatory... Mathelinda Nabugodi performs what she calls “an act of historical recovery,” re-examining British Romanticism’s beloved literary superstars through the debris they left behind... A ...

Ambitious and ingenious, Mathelinda Nabugodi engages the reader both emotionally and intellectually in the quest to re-see, re-imagine and re-read the past. A voice sometimes tentative and searching, t ...

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