The Trembling Hand

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS 2026

Bracing and essential, a radical reframing of British Romanticism through the lens of Black experience – for fans of David Olusoga, Gretchen Gerzina, Saidiya Hartman and Emma Dabiri

‘A masterpiece about how history is made, written with power and ferocity’ Boston Globe

Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats – the Romantic poets are titans of English literature, taught and celebrated around the world. Their writings are associated with the sublime power of nature and revolutionary politics. But these literary icons also lived through the climax of the transatlantic slave economy. They witnessed both the explosion of the abolition movement - and the reactionary formation of white supremacist ideologies.

The Trembling Hand examines how the lives and works of six major Romantic authors were entangled with the racial politics of their era. Mathelinda Nabugodi studies manuscripts and archival treasures – a teacup, a baby rattle, a lock of hair – to recover startling links between the poetry of freedom and the practices of slavery in the Romantic period.

‘Urgent . . . One will never look at these poets in quite the same way’ The New York Times

‘Ambitious and ingenious, Mathelinda Nabugodi engages the reader in the quest to re-see, re-imagine and re-read the past’ Colm Tóibín