The book examines canonical and lesser-known Romantic works alongside fakes such as Thomas Chatterton's medieval poems and 'Caraboo', the impostor-princess.

Taking an intertextual approach, Russett situates De Quincey's career against the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge; the essays of Lamb, Hazlitt, and other writers for the London Magazine; and discourses of ethics and political economy ...