Scholar Mathelinda Nabugodi examines the impact of the transatlantic slave economy on the lives and legacies of some of our most celebrated Romantic poets.

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In The Trembling Hand, a new history of British Romanticism, Mathelinda Nabugodi, Lecturer in Comparative Literature at University College London, spotlights the Romantic ideals of liberty and the contemporary realities of slavery and colonialism. She draws on intimate archival materials—a baby rattle, a lock of hair, a sugar bowl—to illuminate the complexities of the lives and legacies of poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley. As a Black woman scholar, Nabugodi confronts what it means to handle the artifacts of an era in which her ancestors were largely erased from the official record, moving beyond narratives of trauma to highlight moments of resistance, beauty, and joy.

Nabugodi will discuss the book with Liz Denlinger, curator of the Library's Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle.

To join | Please register for an In-Person Ticket. Doors will open around 1:30 PM. For free events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. All registered seats are released shortly before start time, and seats may become available at that time. A standby line will form 30 minutes before the program.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Mathelinda Nabugodi is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature at University College London. She has previously held post-doctoral fellowships at Cambridge and Newcastle, including in the literary archive at the Fitzwilliam Museum. She is the author of Shelley with Benjamin: A Critical Mosaic (2023) and one of the editors on the six-volume Longman edition of The Poems of Shelley (1989–2024). Her current research explores the connections between British Romanticism and the Black Atlantic.

Liz Denlinger worked for the publication Shelley and his Circle long before she became curator of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle in 2008. She has curated or co-curated a number of exhibitions on Frankenstein, Byron, and more, and is the author of Before Victoria: Extraordinary Women of the British Romantic Era and It's Alive! a Visual History of Frankenstein.

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• Borrow: NYPL Catalog

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Mathelinda Nabugodi © Mary Hinkley
Courtesy Liz Denlinger