In the Romantic period's economics of 'fiat' money the legacy of romanticism involves absolutist gestures of verbal fiat. Focused on William Wordsworth, but in constant range of his poet-successors and modern critics, Romantic Fiat presents an argument for a double romantic signature of 'let there be' and 'let be.'
"In the course of the volume, Lindstrom gathers an impressive number of 'let be' statements . . . From discussions of Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey' and 'The Old Cumberland Beggar' to Shelley's Peter Bell and Byron's Don Juan, the book accomplishes something that is all too rare in scholarship . . . the book changes what one notices in a poetry that has become all too familiar . . . I conclude with an injunction: 'do not let this book be,' by which I mean, read this book." - Studies in Romanticism